Chattanooga Times Free Press - ChattanoogaNow
‘COME TOGETHER’ FOR FIREFIGHTERS BENEFIT
Beatles tribute band 1964 playing benefit concert
“We had no idea when we first started this band that it would lead to us performing at so many of the venues the Beatles played, like Carnegie Hall, Red Rocks Amphitheater, The Deauville Hotel, Shea Stadium and The Cavern in Liverpool, England.” MARK BENSON
Experience a Beatles concert like it was 50 years ago.
Beatles tribute band 1964 will play for the Chattanooga Fire Fighters Association’s fundraiser on Sunday, June 3, at 6:30 p.m. in Memorial Auditiorium, 399 McCallie Ave.
Founder Mark Benson says, “1964 shows the audience what it was like to attend a Beatles concert in the early ’60s and generates the same feeling of happiness that is still generated by the music of the Beatles. We get so much positive energy back from our audiences, it reassures us that for now, we are where we are supposed to be.”
This Fab Four is made up of Mark Benson as John Lennon, Mac Ruffing as Paul McCartney, Tom Work as George Harrison and Robert Potter as Ringo Starr.
Benson was introduced to music playing drums and piano at age 8. At 17, he started playing guitar and became fascinated by the sounds that different guitars made. He started servicing, repairing and building guitars. He made guitars for Eddie Van Halen and Jackson Browne.
In 1984, Benson and Gary Grimes started 1964.
“We had no idea when we first started this band that it would lead to us performing at so many of the venues the Beatles played, like Carnegie Hall, Red Rocks Amphitheater, The Deauville Hotel, Shea Stadium and The Cavern in Liverpool, England,” Benson says.
Work is also a co-founder of 1964, and is the act’s first George.
He began playing guitar at age 7, and studied music at the University of Akron.
Since the late 1960s, Work has played and sung in a variety of ensembles. He has worked in well over a dozen cover bands, and even sang lead for eight years in a barbershop quartet. He also worked in more than 20 musical theater productions, onstage in leading roles and behind the scenes as producer and music director.
In 2006, he returned to 1964, ending a 12-year sabbatical.
Potter started taking snare drum lessons in the fifth grade and got his first set of drums in the seventh. When the Beatles arrived on the music scene, he made it a personal goal to be like Ringo.
After moving to Los Angeles, where he helped form two bands and played nightclubs for 10 years, he moved to Las Vegas and played the Nevada casino circuit. Still wanting to achieve his personal “Ringo” goal, he joined two Beatles tributes and spent eight years playing in them.
Ruffing listened to his older sisters’ Beatle records, and the first album he bought was “The Beatles 1962-66,” which is exactly what 1964 does.
He started playing drums at 15. At 17, he bought a Kingston violin bass at a local music store and unknowingly started his role as Paul McCartney.
He played in several Southern California original, Top 40 and Beatles cover groups while working full-time as a land surveyor.
Not a natural southpaw, he spent the better part of a year training to play the bass left-handed like McCartney. In 1993, he joined the Beatles tribute “Beatlemania Live,” which led to joining the 2009 touring cast of the Beatles show “Rain.”
Tickets for the benefit are $ 30. For more information: 423-757-5580.