Listen up, blokes: Four hip malchiks do Liverpool

‘Crazy, baby.’
The air is electric with nutty hipsterisms and the images of mohair sweaters, stretch pants and girls in black eyeliner wrapping themselves up in alligator coats.

‘We gawt a special request for this next noom-bah,’ the one called ‘John’ says into a
microphone at stage left. A few feet away, ‘George’ and ‘Paul,’ wearing matching grey
collarless suits, look out at the crowd.

‘Snoogle up to soombody ya luv. Or at least, someboody ya won’t get into troooble with,’
John says and, with a downward strum of his wrist across guitar, leads the four hip moptops into a Liverpudlian serenade: ‘Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you/ tomorrow I’ll miss you...’

At any moment, you’d expect Murray the K to materialize in front of Ringo’s drum kit
and shout: ‘Hey, what’s happening, baby?’
Dig: What makes this Carnaby Street scene straight outta Sixteen magazine so crazy ab-so-lute-ly is the realization that this fab foursome - collectively known as The Brits -
are tapping their Cuban heels to the frenzied ‘60s beat for the new millenium.

‘When I was four years old, I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show,’ says Tom Raider,
who plays John Lennon in the band that ranges in age from their mid-20s to mid-40s.
‘For me, the love of the Beatles was always there.’ Raider started putting together the idea
for a Beatles tribute band in the late 1990s. His goal was to present the Fab Four
to audiences in a precise re-creation of both sound and vision, calling for authentic detailing
in musical instruments, clothes and Beatle ‘attitude.’

The research was massive, Raider says.
He was assisted by Beatle hounds around the world, including several cast members
of the play ‘Beatlemania.’ The vintage instruments are authentic, down to the screws
that hold together the pickups of ‘John’s’ trademark black jet glo Rickenbacker,
George’s vintage 1960s Gretsch Country Gentleman guitar and Paul’s left-handed
Hofner bass and Vox-100 amp.

There are 15 guitars in all, capturing the Beatles’ sound in all stages of their career.
Even the clothes are custom made, from the grey collarless suits of the early Beatle days
of ‘Love Me Do,’ ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and ‘She Loves You’ to the black
‘Ed Sullivan’ suits of ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ the black pants and turtleneck look of the
‘Help’ era and the colorful psychedelia of ‘Yellow Submarine.’ ‘

I wanted to have a level of quality that people would appreciate going to see and hear,’
says Raider, who cashed in his mail-order business and used his own money to finance
the group. The investment, so far, has been in excess of $40,000.

Putting together the right combination of musicians was equally difficult, but two years ago, Raider knew he was on the right track.

‘When ‘George Harrison’ (guitarist Alex Wozniuk) came to audition, it just jelled,’
Raider says. The guitarist’s brother, Tim Wozniuk, is the Brits’ Ringo, and Paul is played
by John Hepburn.

‘We all had the same idea and figured instead of just playing some Beatles tunes wearing
blue jeans and T-shirts, we said ‘let’s really go for it.’ The band was born the day ‘George Harrison’ joined in February 2001 and, by August, we were doing our first gigs,’ Raider says.

There have been high-profile appearances at the Albany Institute of History & Art -
introducing the institute’s Beatles photo exhibition in 2002 - as well as performances at universities, music festivals and places like Turning Stone Casino.

For Raider, the Beatles are a timeless entity.
‘The rhythm and the melody have to be there for the younger audiences,’ Raider says.
‘For the fans who remember the Beatles, you need to have accuracy in clothing, equipment
and mannerisms - right down to the musicians’ movements and how the band is positioned
on the stage.’
He thinks the emotional payoff is well worth the preparation.

‘I consider it a privilege and an honor to do what I do,’ says The Brits' Raider.
‘Especially when we’re playing and you can really feel the music triggering such happy
feelings in people.’

by Thomas Dimopoulos
published in The Saratogian, Nov. 2003