‘Fab Four’ return for Sgt Pepper reunion
THE last time The Beatles played the Royal Albert Hall in 1963 hundreds of screaming girls tried to storm the stage and the venue’s bosses considered banning the Fab Four.
But in last night’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of the release of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the audience behaved with more decorum.
The Bootleg Beatles – the world’s longest-running tribute act – played the iconic 1967 album in full.
The performance topped a blizzard of activity including a festival in the band’s home city of Liverpool, TV documentaries and exhibitions.
They also added two of their best-loved tracks, Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields, which were written for the album by John Lennon and Sir Paul McCartney but were dropped.
The songs had previously been released as a double A-side single and The Beatles did not want to rip off their fans by including “old” material.
The Bootleg Beatles have been through various line-ups since they were formed in 1980 and the current Paul is played by Steve White, who taught himself to play guitar left-handed to be more authentic.
He joined the other members – Adam Hastings as John Lennon, Stephen Hill as George Harrison and Gordon Elmore, who dons a prosthetic nose to play drums as Ringo Starr. They even had John Lennon’s psychedelic Rolls-Royce parked outside the London concert hall.
Steve White revealed that it takes an hour-and-a-half in make-up to become Sir Paul with the trademark wig as the final part of the transformation.
None of the current line-up have ever met the two surviving Beatles, but The Bootleg Beatles are respected by them.
When they played at the Queen’s Jubilee in 2002, Sir Paul was set to follow them for the finale.
Before they went on he sent the band a note saying: “Please can I do Hey Jude? Thanks.”
JEREMY CORBYN was in full sanctimonious claptrap mode in Wednesday’s TV debate, desperately trying to cover up for his botched radio interview over how much money his policies would cost. But the fact is his pie-in-the-sky economic plans would ruin this country and impoverish many more people.
He was widely quoted for his gibe attacking plucky Amber Rudd by saying: “Have you been to a food bank?” But, excuse me, it was under Labour prime minister Gordon Brown that the number of food banks rose by 10 times and that was intended to fill a gap in benefit payments thanks to poor Labour management of the welfare system. Under the Tories the amount of benefits paid on time has risen from 88 per cent to 97 per cent, cutting the need for food banks. As Rudd said to Left-wing audience jeers: “Judge us on our record.” She’s right.
The use of food banks rocketed after the financial crisis of 2008, presided over by New Labour, which ushered in a period of austerity. This was necessary because of the then government’s reckless spending and borrowing. Still, Gordon Brown seems a genius in comparison with Corbyn and his socialist side-kick, shadow chancellor John McDonnell.
Early on McDonnell committed Labour to “eliminating the deficit and creating an economy in which we live within our means”. But in Corbyn’s manifesto Labour has pledged to spend £93billion, that’s close to £4,000 per family in the UK. That includes £10billion to cover the expense of abolishing student fees and £15billion to build at least 100,000 council houses a year.
THEN of course there’s the cost of his promised free childcare, which he just forgot on the day he was launching the policy because, hey, it’s just a few more billion – £5.3billion to be precise. This reckless approach should send a chill through Labour’s traditional voters because, make no mistake about it, they will bear the brunt of his economic chaos if he was ever allowed into Number 10. But that’s just the start of Labour’s planned spending spree.
Then there’s the cost of