Studio Two and the Art of the Beatles Tribute
The Kids Make a Request, The Band Delivers
There’s this moment in Hampstead at the common where all the children have gathered off on stage right, huddled there watching the Beatles tribute band Studio Two. The kids bounce and clap, their faces lit up by the stage lights as evening approaches.
Myself and the girls, Little Bean and Morgie, have packed snacks, bought ice cream and laid out our blanket for front row (front grass?) seats to see our favorite tribute band. This will be my daughter’s fourth time seeing Studio Two!
When the band finishes up ‘Love Me Do’ or ‘Taxman,’ the kids all scream, and I feel like if I squint at just the right angle, it will be 1964 and we’re in the Paramount Theater in New York City and the Beatles are just finishing up their first tour of North America.
(Fun fact: The Paramount crowd that saw the Beatles that day on Sept. 20 was less than 4,000. They weren’t all stadiums.)
Anyway, the band finishes a song and my daughter and her friend shout ‘Yellow Submarine!’ A bunch of the kids begin to shout for the song. And to the band’s very great credit, John says to the large crowd, “Well, it looks like Ringo is going to sing one more song, is everyone ok with that?”
A roar goes up, and Ringo leans into his mic and begins, “In the town, where I was born…”
And the kids clap and dance and do somersaults and cartwheels and when the chorus comes, that whole park full of lawn chair Beatles fans shouts that they all live in a yellow submarine. There we are, on a late summer day with the kids laughing and singing and the Beatles taking requests and whole bag of caramel popcorn left to devour and thermoses filled with lemonade.
This all happens for two reasons: First, Studio Two’s been doing this long enough and skillfully enough that they know what the Beatles meant and how to give a crowd like this, even 55 years later, what they hunger for.
And second, because this music is universal and evergreen, as much a part of the very psyche of music lovers as art can be. Young children, middle aged rock and roll heads and old women in wheelchairs are singing. I bet in 50 more years, the same will be true.
The girls take a break and run over to our blanket, sweaty, out of breathe, cheeks red. The band is beginning to wind down, thanking the crowd. And as they crash into ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ Little Bean says, “Can we stay after to meet them?”
Of course we can, I tell her. Of course we can meet the Beatles.
The same Paramount theatre which hosted the screaming fans of the Beatles in 1964 had previously hosted the equally, if not more, obsessed fans of the young Frank Sinatra in the 1940s, so the walls had heard a lot of shouts of delight.