ARC, featuring members of Jet, Spiderbait, You Am I and Powderfinger will perform the iconic Beatles album ‘Abbey Road’ from start to finish across Australia.
ARC is Kram (SPIDERBAIT), Mark Wilson (JET), Davey Lane (YOU AM I) and Darren Middleton (POWDERFINGER). Rounding out the band are Ash Naylor (Paul Kelly, Even and Rockwiz), Linda Bull (The Black Sorrows, Vika and Linda Bull), Brett Wolfenden (The Pictures, Jim Keays) and James Fleming (Eagle and the Worm, Bob Evans).
The Beatles stopped performing live in 1966 and therefore never got to perform anything from Abbey Road live. “It is going to be interesting to do something that they never got to do. That’s amazing,” Kram tells Noise11.com. “They became such a studio band. If we were lucky enough for all of them to still be here as the production techniques improved over the next twenty years they could have done an amazing version of this work that they never got to do”.
As a drummer himself, Kram is particularly interested in the contribution from Ringo Starr. Side Two of AbbeyRoad featured Ringo’s now iconic drum solo. “It is Ringo’s only solo that he had to be really, really encouraged to do,” Kram says. “That is one of the things I loved about Beatles. At school, I discovered two bands at the same time. One was The Beatles and the other Sex Pistols. I am a combination of those two things together. I just love both of those bands so much and they have totally different headspaces. I never rated Ringo that much but when I discovered the band I had a revelation. I have been a big fan of Ringo’s ever since. Any drummer in a band should get to know Ringo’s work because it is all about fitting in and having that great personality and style. It was so different from what was going on in the 60s at the time”.
Abbey Road Live won’t be a simple case of Mark, Darren, Davey and Kram becoming John, Paul, George and Ringo. “There is going to be a bit of cross-pollination and there are other musicians as well,” he says. “These sorts of productions have a bunch of sessions musicians with the singers coming out. We want to approach this as a band and create an organic style of production and create the record as much as we can and get all the sounds down”.
The show won’t end with Abbey Road. “There is a bunch of other Beatles stuff that we know. The idea is to do a retrospective from the end back to the start. This record is about the end of the band’s life when they made the decision to break up at Let It Be. Once that decision was made they got along a lot better and got together to make this last masterpiece. We are interested in looking back from there and going all the way back to the start”.
The Beatles’ Abbey Road Live dates
11 August, Perth, Perth Concert Hall
13 August, Adelaide, Thebarton Theatre
15 August, Melbourne, Palais Theatre
18 August, Brisbane, Fortitude Music Hall
20 August, Sydney, Enmore Theatre
The Beatles’ Abbey Road Live is a Live Nation Production. Tickets for all shows will go on sale at 10 am (local time) this Monday, March 18.
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