“Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles”, came to the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre for four performance this past weekend, treating audiences to a magical musical tour of the Beatles songbook, beginning with their historic 1964 live appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, all the way down the long an winding road of their career, to the their final legendary ‘Let It Be’ concert on the rooftop of their London Apple recording studios.
Along the way, the tour took in the Beatles record-breaking 1966 Shea Stadium concert in New York city. 55,000 screaming fans on multimedia screens surrounding the stage joined the audience for recreations of such classics as ‘Day Tripper’ and ‘Ticket to Ride’. Additional stops included a visit with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band, the psychedelic era of Revolver and final years of ‘Abbey Road’ and ‘Let it Be’.
Songs on the set list included:
‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’
‘All My Loving’
‘I Saw Her Standing There’
‘Hard Day’s Night’
‘I’m Happy Just to Dance with You’
‘We Can Work It Out’
‘Yesterday’
‘Mother Nature’s Son’
‘This Boy’
‘Eleanor Rigby’
‘I am the Walrus’
‘Revolution’
‘Come Together’
‘The End’
Throughout the evening, multimedia screens showed film clips of historical events that not only influenced the Beatles during their recording careers, but also of historical events and songs that were directly influenced by the music the Beatles created. It would be impossible to overstate the influence the boys from Liverpool had on the music of their generation, and on every generation since. One particularly poignant moment was the audience rising to sing along with ‘John Lennon’s’ performance of ‘Give Peace A Chance”.
The evening concluded with a wonderful rendition of ‘Hey Jude’, complete with the enthusiastic support of the audience’s voices from the opening verse through the final notes of the song.
