Location: Bistrica pri Tržiču / Gorenjska plaža (amphitheater) / Slovenia
Date: 11.10.2014
HELP! A Beatles Tribute Band has been a fixture on the Slovenian music scene for years. They gig constantly, which is hardly surprising given that they play the legacy of probably the most important rock band in human history. Even though the guys are always on stage, a string of circumstances always kept this writer from catching HELP! play the Beatles classics live, despite his long career of attending (far too) many concerts. Then that “fateful” free Saturday night finally arrived. Along with a free concert at the renovated Tržič swimming pool complex, in the heart of Gorenjska. This new venue is now called Gorenjska plaža and has a gorgeous amphitheater that, stage included, is ideal for frequent gigs by bands of every genre under the sun.
HELP! A Beatles Tribute Band is a quartet (what else could it be!) of an American-Slovenian alliance that has been working and living in Slovenia for years. Bandleader Ernie Mendillo (Paul McCartney in HELP!) teamed up with fellow American Robert McKenzie (John Lennon in HELP!) and brought in two excellent Slovenian musicians: Žiga Stanonik on guitar (George Harrison in HELP!) and drummer Gašper Oblak (Ringo Star in HELP!). The band hit the stage around nine in the evening! They were instantly met with a storm of emotional reactions from the crowd. Heaps of young moms and dads with playfully rowdy kids chasing each other down in the pit, from young families to “local elders,” to youngsters and teenagers armed with spliffs of “ceremonially shared leaves of sweet substance,” and all the other (inter)generational souls. HELP! A Beatles Tribute brings absolutely everyone under one roof! All generations. That’s just the evergreen nature of The Beatles’ legacy for you.
In the first half, the band mostly played material from The Beatles’ early “pre-psychedelic” era, and in the second, once they’d changed into gray jackets, the classics from the more “mature” compositional era of the one-of-a-kind, inimitable Liverpudlians rang out too. If we do a quick comparison of the original and the “knockoff,” here are a few observations. The band has studied the backing harmonies very nicely, and it’s interesting that McKenzie (the man doing the Lennon job) gets closer to McCartney with his basic vocal color than Mendillo does, strapped into his “violin” Hofner bass (in the McCartney role). The overall vocal pitch is lower than on the originals. You just have to live with that, so in the highest registers the harmonies occasionally “creaked.” Mendillo also isn’t left-handed like McCartney, or rather like a guy who could play bass both right-handed and/or left-handed, which is a minor quibble. At a passing glance it’s also clear that at least both Americans are wearing Beatles wigs, maybe Oblak too, which is the only right move if there’s no other way. As for the performance itself, the band comes across as very convincing. Tight, polished. They play great! The real magnet for the ears in the quartet is the work of Žiga Stanonik, who has an exceptional degree of finesse and subtlety in how he controls his string-bending. His organically clean sound, contrasted with reverb, delivered top-notch replicas of the original solos, and really an absolute upgrade on them, which the blessed George Harrison would surely have applauded had he still been alive. The solos on the originals are no joke, after all! Žiga is definitely HELP!’s number one attraction, especially when he takes on the vocals for Here Comes the Sun and Something in Blackbird while playing guitar, getting incredibly close to the vocal character of George Harrison.
Running through the evening’s setlist, we were treated to the following Beatles songs (a few definitely slipped my mind): Please Please Me, Eight Days A Week, Slow Down, Please Mr. Postman, All My Loving, It Won’t Be Long, A Hard Day’s Night, Drive My Car, Day Tripper, I Want To Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, Obladi Oblada, Twist And Shout, I Need You, Help!, With A Little Help From My Friends, Come Together, Get Back, Here Comes The Sun, We Can Work It Out, Let It Be, Hey Jude, Yellow Submarine, Revolution, Norwegian Wood (The Bird Has Flown), Can’t Buy Me Love, Nowhere Man, Back in the USSR, Yesterday, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, and in the first encore a touching Something, plus the surprise and treat of the night: Blackbird in Harrison’s rendition. Three covers of other artists that The Beatles played on stage during their career didn’t get left out either: Rock ‘N’ Roll Music, Long Tall Sally and Roll Over Beethoven. With the instruments and the rest of the basic PA logistics, the band also got a sound that stays close to the original. Special praise goes to the famed, seasoned and experienced sound engineer, who was none other than Yoldi.
All of this begs a rhetorical question. We know that The Beatles Revival, yet another “tribute to Beatles” outfit from the Czech Republic, has been visiting the Slovenian metropolis Ljubljana for a few years now with concerts at Cvetličarna. They are no better and no higher in quality at imitating The Beatles than “HELP! A Beatles Tribute.” So why not have HELP! on the stages of the Slovenian capital every year instead? I’m sure they’re cheaper, and the travel costs are way lower too!
The hearty fun and sunny mood of this evening in Bistrica pri Tržiču just wouldn’t quit. HELP! literally won the crowd over, and even when it was definitely over, the audience still refused to leave the amphitheater. The show ran over two and a half hours in total, and the band surely played around 35 songs. A worthy, sinfully good approximation of the original. Leaving aside the demands of the highest quality standards that any Beatles replica should meet, as set by His Holiness “Dr ProgRock,” who missed a sitar, a Leslie amp and a Hammond organ on stage during the concert, and very likely also performances of songs like Tomorrow Never Knows, The Fool on the Hill or A Day in the Life, HELP! A Beatles Tribute Band is a band tailor-made for nicely satisfying what most Beatles fans want, and they do their job convincingly and with plenty of commitment!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
