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 Photo Courtesy photo Clockwise from top left Horst Hartung, Rich Fazzi, John Heyworth and Gary Byars of Revolver. |
Tribute to Talent
Thursday, August 19, 2004 8:15 AM PDT
By Tom Paulu
Printable version
E-mail this articleRock legend tribute mania will peak this weekend, with an Elvis impersonator, a group that does Pink Floyd and not one, but two Beatles bands coming to Longview.
Revolver (Beatles)
6 p.m.-8 p.m. today, Lake Sacajawea. Last of this summer's free Concerts at the Lake.
Plenty of bands around the nation can twist and shout like the Fab Four used to.
Steve Kelsey, manager of Revolver, said he's heard plenty such groups. What makes Revolver special? "They're better," Kelsey said. "They have better voices and do more songs."
One hundred and twenty-five, to be exact, alphabetically from "Act Naturally" to "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away."
Revolver plays casinos and "a lot of corporate parties," Kelsey said.
For its first set, the group dresses as the Beatles when they played at Shea Stadium in 1965. And they perform another number dressed in the Magical Mystery Tour garb of two years later.
Revolver, based in the Hillsboro, Ore., area, has been together four years, but members have been playing much longer than that.
John Heyworth, who portrays George Harrison, is from Manchester, England. He once played for a band that opened for the Beatles in England.
"While we were shaking our crew cuts to 'Louie Louie,' John was hanging out with the elite of what would become the British Invasion -- The Hollies, The Animals, The Moody Blues," Revolver's publicity material states. Heyworth is a body and fender man by day.
Playing John Lennon is Horst Hartung, a native of Germany. Hartung, a carpenter, has an authentic Lennonesque set of vocal cords, according to Kelsey.
Computer programmer Gary Byars plays a replica of Ringo Starr's 1964 Ludwig drums and does the Ringo vocals for Revolver.
Though the other three members of the band live in Oregon, Rich Fazzi flies up from Sacramento for gigs. Fazzi, who's a radiologist, plays a left-handed bass guitar just like Paul McCartney, and used to have his own Beatles band called "Yesterday."
Sons of Nothing (Pink Floyd)
8 p.m. today, Cadillac Ranch. $7 cover.
The Sons of Nothing "weave note-perfect versions of some 60 Pink Floyd tunes, nailing the warm, alienated guitar tone and vocal nuances and including all the ambience (cash registers, ticking clocks, light show et al.)" So said a reviewer for the Salt Lake City Weekly last year.
The Sons, who are based in the Salt Lake City area, do their own original songs in some shows, along with being able to recreate the entire "Dark Side of the Moon," Floyd's epic 1973 album that never seems to go out of air play.
Hard Days Knights (Beatles)
9 p.m. Friday, Cadillac Ranch. $7 cover.
No information on this Portland-based band was available.
Justin Shandor (Elvis)
9 p.m. Saturday, Cadillac Ranch. $7 cover.
Justin Shandor is just 19, but he's already a regular at the Elvis-A-Rama Museum in Las Vegas, according to its Web site. The museum has more than 2,000 personal Elvis items.
Shandor, who moved to Las Vegas from Detroit earlier this year, performs in the museum's "All Shook Up" show. He's noted for his "youthful, innocent Elvis of the 1950s," the Web site says.
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