A SONG WITH McCARTNEY?
Tribute star has big dream
Perhaps it came to him in the midst of some Golden Slumbers one summer evening. Or perhaps it was triggered when he caught late-night TV host James Corden doing a super-sized Carpool Karaoke with the ex-Beatle along the streets of Liverpool.
But as he celebrated his 60th birthday, Montreal musician John Oriettas decided it was time to act on his No. 1 bucketlist item: to join Paul McCartney onstage for one song when the latter hits the Bell Centre on Sept. 20.
To that end, Oriettas has put out a YouTube video that he hopes will catch the attention of McCartney or one of his cronies and allow him to live A Day in the Life. Or at least A Night in the Life. Some kind of Magical Mystery Tour this would be. OK, that’s it with the Beatles clichés.
McCartney can rest assured that Oriettas wouldn’t embarrass him onstage. Oriettas has spent much of his professional life pretending to be McCartney in one of this continent’s top Beatles tribute bands, Replay.
With the help of a few choice period wigs and a solid swagger, Oriettas has had his share of fans swooning over him in concert. He also has the pipes and could almost pass for McCartney while crooning Let It Be, Lady Madonna or Back in the U.S.S.R. And like McCartney, Oriettas (who is also Replay’s manager) is more than proficient on bass and piano.
“I know this is a total shot in the dark, but nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Oriettas says.
Oriettas has bombarded every social media platform possible with his YouTube wish. He has also passed on the message to McCartney’s son James and a couple of McCartney band members, guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, all of whom Oriettas has met.
“I have no idea if the message has gotten through at all, but by some miracle, I’m hopeful this will happen. It won’t be for a lack of trying. Playing a song with Paul in front of 20,000 people at the Bell Centre … this would be the cherry on top of my career, my life’s dream come true.”
Too young to catch the Beatles when they did their one and only stop in Montreal, at the Forum in 1964, Oriettas recalls being blown away by the group after seeing them on the Ed Sullivan Show around the same time. He has taken in several McCartney solo shows over the years.
Before the legendary American impresario died in 2013, Oriettas also established a friendship with Sid Bernstein, who helped kick-start the British Invasion by bringing the Beatles to America for the first time in the early 1960s.
“Sid regaled me with all these wonderful stories about Paul and the band. They were just kids when they first came over and had never anticipated the sort of fame they were about to achieve.”
A graduate of Concordia’s music faculty, Oriettas spent the early part of his career tinkering with computers. He decided to give in to his passion for music 16 years ago and formed Replay.
“I had always played music on the side, but it just hit me one day that I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing something I really loved. And music is what I really wanted to do.
“But thank God for wigs,” the chrome-domed Oriettas muses. “Otherwise I might not have had a career.”
Replay performs about 50 concerts a year in Montreal, across Canada and the U.S., and even in South America. The group plays St-Jérôme’s Le Tapis Rouge on Saturday before undertaking a mini-tour of Nova Scotia next month. But nothing is booked for the band on Sept. 20.
The irony of it all is that Replay has lasted longer as a group than the Beatles, who disbanded in 1970 after just 10 years.
“In my wildest dreams, I never expected it would turn out this way,” Oriettas says. “Now there’s just one more wild dream for me to fulfil.”
Playing a song with Paul in front of 20,000 people at the Bell Centre … this would be the cherry on top of my career, my life’s dream come true.