The Beatles used to release Christmas messages to members of their fan club during the 1960s. The recording would be a mix of jokes, well wishes and a few holiday songs.
The band, though, never officially recorded a holiday album, which have been popular with recording artists since seemingly forever.
But, what if The Beatles did join in on the party?
RAIN, one of the premiere Beatles tribute shows, is going to give fans an opportunity to find out what it might have been like with “RAIN – A Beatles Christmas Tribute,” coming to Wilmington’s The Playhouse on Rodney Square on Nov. 28.
Tickets are available at www.thegrandwilmington.org/productions/8988-rain-beatles-christmas.
“The Beatles are always positive, peace and love, a very uplifting kind of thing,” said Steve Landes, the Lansdale native who has played John Lennon in RAIN for 27 years. “It kind of lends itself to a Christmas show. The idea was if this particular Christmas song or that particular Christmas song was for whatever reason on ‘The Please, Please Me’ album or the ‘Abbey Road’ album or ‘Sgt. Pepper,’ how would the Beatles have approached it? We are, authentically as we can, sort of interpreting how, how the Beatles might have might’ve attacked those songs during those times.”
Landes, a life-long Beatles fan, started his career as a member of the show “Beatlemania” at 17.
“We are always looking to do something different,” Landes said. “It’s one of those things where, after we did Broadway and after we did the West End in London, it was like, ‘How can we continue to go back to the same theaters in the same cities and see some of the same audiences and do the same Beatles, but in a different way. Bring them something new. Bring them something they’re going to enjoy.’
“People see it time and time again. Early on, we thought, ‘Let’s incorporate doing a whole album in our show.’ In 2017, I think it was, when we did the 50th anniversary of the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ album The show would open as usual with, you know, Sullivan years. Then the movie years and at Shea Stadium and all that sort of stuff. When it got to 1967, boom, you know, the needle drops on side A of ‘Sgt. Pepper.’ We do the whole album front to back and then from there continue on with the, you know, the rest of their career.”
So, that led to thinking about the holidays and bringing something new to the fans.
“This was one of those times where we really had to hop on a plane and get together and kind of hash it out,” Landes said. “How do you do ‘Rocking Around the Christmas tree’ if it was on one of their albums from 1963. Well, if they had done the same song in 1966, they would’ve done it a completely different way. So maybe we should interpret it that way. It really became, one of those things where it goes from imitation to interpretation.”
RAIN captures the Beatles from their beginnings in the Cavern Club in Liverpool to the rooftop concert at the Abbey Road studios in London. It means a lot of costume and changes in looks and attitudes.
“This is fun for us,” Landes said. “It’s very different, but you always have to keep it authentic. You don’t want to put words in their mouths, but we don’t want to just be up there quoting (The Beatles). So you interpret what would John Lennon have said to Paul McCartney if they were on tour in 1967.
“Like the Beatles, we become brothers in a sense. We are out there on the road by ourselves. We have lives and wives and kids, and you know everything at home. You get out there on the road and you become a band.”
Source: Berkshire mont
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