Beatles Tribute Band "The Return" Performs Energetic Show at Quad Cities' Convention Center

The Beatles Tribute Band "The Return" (www.TheReturnOnline.com) played the Bettendorf Quad City Waterfront Convention Center on Saturday, November 27th, 2010, a 1,700-seat venue that was nearly full to capacity. This youngest of the Beatles Tribute bands asked audience members to rise and dance with them -- if they could get up at all, that is.

The group was quite good, sounded much like the original band, and did their best to foster that illusion. I've seen two other Beatles tribute bands and the Beatles, themselves, in concert, but this was among the best of the tribute bands, because of their attention to detail of all things Beatles and their musicality.
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Organized by Michael Fulop 15 years ago in Griffin, Georgia, the band The Return makes every effort to be authentic in dress, speech, right-or-left-handedness, vintage instruments, haircuts, clothing, head-bobs of the Beatles era variety, etc. Founding member Fulop (the other 3 originals eventually quit) plays George, while the others who comprise the group (all fairly young, with Fulton at 33) are Richard Stelling as John, Shane Landers as Paul and Adam Thurston as Ringo. The band also travels with David Kaufman and Dennis Bradley as Stage Manager and FOH Engineer. Over the years, others have filled the Beatles parts, like Richard Young, who left the band in 2002 and was replaced by Young Hines.

One thing the band got right was the irreverent humor the Beatles always displayed. There were remarks like this one introducing a solo by the band's Ringo Starr, "He doesn't get much of a chance to sing, and now you;ll find out why." Later, the introduction to another Ringo solo would rib him for standing there looking "nervous and out of confidence." They also ran in a joke about a 1981 car in the parking lot with a bumper sticker on it that (supposedly) said: "Bringing Prosperity Home. Vote for Dukakis."

The band members chat up the audience in thick Liverpool brogues, which is a difficult task in itself, considering that they hail from Georgia. Fulop told Quad City Times reporter David Burke for the "Go & Do" section of that November 25th paper, "Most of the country already thinks we talk funny. I do admit that's one of the harder parts for us because it's so unnatural." What is also unnatural are the Beatles wigs that 3 of the 4 band members wear (the Paul member's is real) in an effort to appear even more authentic.

The group sings tight harmony and they all can definitely sing. The group members also attempt to involve the audience in the act (clapping, singing along, encouraging them to dance) and to generate the kind of energy onstage that the real Beatles did, back in the day. That, of course, is impossible to do, but good tribute bands like this one are about as close as today's generation is going to get to "the real deal."

It's difficult to describe the excitement that pervaded the audience at a real Beatles concert.. Some may remember the excitement when the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. Multiply that one-thousand-fold and you'll be close. The Beatles were a phenomenon of the time and went on to become one of the most influential musical forces in history, another fact that this group used as the basis for a joke, saying at the beginning of the show, "We're a tribute band dedicated to one of the most influential bands of the British Invasion---the Rolling Stones."

The closest live show I've seen recently, in terms of audience hysteria, would be Taylor Swift's avid young fans screaming and crying and carrying on before even a single note has been sung. But Swift;s fans are mostly very young girls; the Beatles cut a wider swath. The Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, U2, Pink Floyd: they all have an eager fan base, but the Beatles were and are in a class by themselves.

One fan of The Return, Tony Perkins, a "Good Morning America" weatherman invited the band to appear on the show, saying, "It was quite fun to watch them and imagine what it must have been like at an actual Beatles concert all those years ago."

Some of us don't have to imagine; we were there and we know.

The Hard Rock Cafe; on the occasion of its 30th anniversary also selected the Returns as their official Beatles Tribute band in the spring of 2001. The group toured on a psychedelically decorated Magic Bus, hitting cities on the Eastern seaboard. Jim Weiss, also a fan, and Vice President of public relations for Turner Broadcasting System said, "It's the next best thing to having been there, which many of us were not."

Well, for the "many" who were not, here's a trip down Memory Lane.

I saw the Beatles "live" at the San Francisco Cow Palace (7th row, $7) in the summer of 1965. "A Hard Day's Night" (1964) and "Help!" (1965) had just been released and fans were extremely eager for the group to begin the concert, which started very late. I had cut my college classes at the University of California at Berkeley and ridden to the venue on the back of a purple Czechoslovakian motorcycle driven by my then-boyfriend William Hopkins (aka, "Colgate") from Philadelphia. (We had no tickets and we were supposed to be in class.)

We ended up in the 7th row, trying to stand on folding chairs (along with everyone else), chairs that collapsed like dominoes. King Curtiss'; (saxophone player) band played the National Anthem after what seemed like an interminable delay (the Beatles were very late). The tardy entry caused the spectators to begin stomping on the risers, making a huge noise and signaling that we had waited long enough. ("Where ARE they?" we screamed in unison.)

Also on the bill with the Beatles that day were Cannibal and the Headhunters, (who got down on the floor and did a choo choo train number on their butts), Shirley Bassey (who sang her then-new theme song from the movie "Goldfinger", and the Astronauts from Denver, who never showed up at all. The security at the Cow Palace was horrible: chicken wire up about 6 feet high and one person guarding it. Therefore, It was no surprise that a young man streaked across the stage, stealing John's Navy blue billed boy-cap from his head and grabbing Ringo's drumsticks. This caused a delay while new drumsticks were located for Ringo to use during the show. It's a wonder the Beatles weren';t mobbed right then. [After the show, the group was taken out in an armored car.] The rest of us had to risk life and limb being channeled through a narrow concrete exit that could easily have become a disaster zone
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The Beatles were THE show, and the anticipation leading up to their appearance onstage is hard to duplicate for a tribute band, no matter how good they are -- and, giving credit where credit is due, "The Return" is good. As we were entering the Quad City Convention Center, we saw the young men entering an elevator on the lobby level, attired in wigs and collarless black suits, a la the early Beatles. However, there wasn't the feeling of unbridled youthful energy and over-the-top enthusiasm that pervaded a "real" Beatles show of 1965. How could there be, when the average age of spectators had to be 55 or older? After the show, the mop-topped imposters posed obligingly with a multitude of fans and stopped at the merchandise table to sign autographs.
The band played all the great hits from the early Beatles "live" shows, songs like "Please, Please Me", (which can be heard at www.MySpace.com/BeatlesTributeBand), "All My Lovin';," "A Hard Day';s Night," "If I Fell in Love With You," "I Shoulda'; Known Better," "Can't Buy Me Love" (I remember thinking, "But it can buy a reasonable facsimile), "Rock;n Roll Music," "Ticket to Ride," "Paperback Writer," "Eight Days a Week" "We Can Work It Out; "You're Gonna'; Lose That Girl," and ---as an encore--- "Long Tall Sally." There were few upbeat numbers, including "Twist and Shout," that the tribute band did not revisit.

That is "The Return's" claim to fame: they play the music that was played live in concert, from the Cavern Club days in Liverpool through the Beatles last 1966 tour of America. The tribute band has played onstage with such rock icons as Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Monkees," Peter Noone, Chubby Checker, Tommy James, B.J. Thomas, the Association and Johnny Rivers.
Michal Fulop is a much cheerier and more mobile George Harrison, since the real George stood there pretty much scowling throughout the entire show in California. The head bobbing that the Paul stand-in used was, however, right on target; the Ringo doppelganger should do more of it at intervals. Fulop told the Arts & Entertainment editor of the local paper in Davenport, Iowa (David Burke, Quad City Times) prior to the group's 7:30 p.m. performance on November 27th in the Quad Cities, "We really try to focus on what made The Beatles stand out when Beatlemania hit and to focus on the energy and the excitement of that era. I've seen a lot of great tribute bands, but a lot of them lack energy, the energy in the early stuff."

Fulop also admitted, "It was around the year 2000 when we realized we were starting to do pretty well with this, and the original stuff we had written was going nowhere. We can still write songs, but not dump all of our effort in the making-it-big dream, the dream everyone has. Reality kicked in, and we realized we had to do something for a living."

Given the band's busy schedule (check for it at www.TheReturnBlog.com), including a recent trip to play Mexico, a living is being made. If you figure(d) $10 to $20 a pop for 1,700 seats (most were full), the band';s take this night could have been anywhere from $1700 to $3400, plus lodging at the casino';s digs.

I';ve seen two other Beatles Tribute bands. One of them (which was playing "Dick's Last Resort" in Chicago) had a young Indian guitarist portraying one of the Beatles. I don';t want to quibble, but, while the Beatles were "in" to the music of Ravi Shankar, none of them were Indian.
As I mentioned I had seen the REAL Beatles (back in the day) to the couple leaving the show ahead of me, the woman (who was with her husband and a boy---no doubt their son--- of about 8) said, "Oh, wow!" and then began relating to me how she had just read the book entitled Ticket to Ride, written by Larry Kane who traveled with the band in 1964 and 1965, and confirmed the lax security that always existed at the venue known as the Cow Palace, near San Francisco.

Then she shouted at her 8-year-old son, "Lennon-McCartney, come back here."

For me, that says it all.