Location: Ljubljana / Plečnik Pub / Slovenia
Date: Thursday, 18.07.2019
Help! are a Slovenian, or more precisely American-Slovenian, team-up of a musical ensemble and a quartet, devoted to playing the legacy of the great Liverpool beetles. The Beatles, that is. The band is led by the charismatic Ernie Mendillo, the man who fills Paul McCartney’s shoes in the lineup, and he and his crew are constantly roaming the concert stages. Not just in Slovenia, but all over Europe. Through hardy years of playing, all the miles on the road, solid faith and sheer stubbornness, Help! have today reached the status of one of the better acts in the “Beatles imitators” category. They’ve become highly respected and in demand! More than ever before! So it’s no surprise that they’re constantly getting booked abroad, which is just proof of how, over the years, Help! have reached a truly superb level of performance when it comes to playing the originals of the forever-evergreen classics of the legendary The Beatles.
We last met Help! at the Aurora casino in Kobarid (a bit past the “infamous” Hiša Franko near Staro Selo, where you turn at the roundabout for Breginj), but photography isn’t allowed there, so we skipped the concert review, which means RockLine’s last report from a Help! show dates back to the very start of January 2017, when Help! played a short symbolic concert at Kolosej in Ljubljana, as a lead-in to the premiere screening of the Beatles documentary “Eight Days A Week”. Plečnik Pub is an ideal venue for a band like Help! The vaulted space, the jutting cellar stones… It all somehow reminds you of Liverpool’s Cavern. The place was seriously well attended. A mixed crowd. Lots of foreign guests. Summer is here, tourism is at its peak,… and the heat, for sure. As is the band’s habit, they split this show into two parts. In the first, which I sadly missed a good chunk of, since the band apparently started playing at nine and not at half past nine as the official PR had announced, Help! focused on the early years of The Beatles’ career and played material up to the album Help!. Not entirely, but most of the numbers were focused on that period. The band’s stage outfits match, too. The band had to take emergency measures that night just to pull off the gig. Standing on stage next to Ernie were, as always, Žiga Stanonik, who plays the Harrison spot, and Matic Pelcel, who plays Lennon, while for Gašper Oblak, Help!’s usual Ringo Starr, who was on vacation, the crew found a stopgap solution in Anže Šemrov from Logatec, with whom they’d played just one “secret” gig at the Navigator pub in Logatec before the Plečnik Pub show, to test how the whole thing worked and how they could get through their already confirmed July gigs. Anže slotted into the Ringo look and feel absolutely fascinatingly, and the band delivered a show at exactly the same level of quality. Anže, a metal soul by trade, did his job with great distinction. The cherry on top would’ve been only the singing of Ringo’s lines in Yellow Submarine and With A Little Help From My Friends (the latter Help! played in the second part), but that would have been too “kitschy”, or rather, too perfect.
The band has polished its performance to the optimum, and the question is whether it can go any deeper into the details from the high level of quality it has already reached. The gear, all the nuances of the sound, the contrast with pedal effects, even the extra overdubbed lines (piano, woodwinds). It all fits perfectly. On top of that you have to add the tightness and cohesion of the stage execution, of course. And this group doesn’t lack it. Not at all. Along with the lead vocals on the Pelcel-Mendillo axis and the vocal harmonies, naturally. As we know, all four Beatles sang lead vocals, with the bulk of the written material coming from Lennon and McCartney. As far as vocal timbres go, Ernie is the closest of the Help! members to the vocal original (McCartney, that is), but there’s no point splitting hairs here. Help! are a compact unit that totally convinces in playing the Beatles originals, and that’s what matters most.
In the first part, Help! played Hard Day’s Night, I Feel Fine, Ticket to Ride, Love Me Do, 8 Days a Week, Please Please Me, It Won’t Be Long, From Me to You, Mr. Postman, Yellow Submarine, Drive My Car, Can’t Buy Me Love, She Loves You, I Wanna Hold Your Hand. I surely missed a few, since I showed up at the venue badly late. Especially in the first part the crowd exploded, dancing the whole time and having a blast. In the second part the atmosphere didn’t let up, even though a few people still left because of the late hour. The band, who changed costumes during the break, opened the second part with Help, and among others came the already mentioned With A Little Help From My Friends, Day Tripper, Paperback Writter, Get Back, Here Comes the Sun, Come Together, Revolution, Back in the USSR, Ob La Di Ob La Da, I Wanna Be Your Man, Let It Be, Hey Jude Don’t Let Me Down, Yesterday, I’m Down, Twist and Shout.
Help! gave the crowd exactly what it came for. To stir it emotionally, serve up a perfect party, a total switch-off! With an excellent copy of the originals that, even with the emergency swap behind the drum kit, didn’t falter in any way whatsoever.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
