Not zombies, they’re Rubber Soul

By Garth Paulson

The Beatles are the best band of all time.


That’s not an opinion, it’s a well known fact. To be truthful there really isn’t much you can say about them without sounding cliched. Every morsel of praise, devotion and awe has already been trundled out so many times by so many sources that even talking about how you can’t talk about The Beatles is tiring. Being the greatest band of all time, they rank right up there with the sky being blue and electricity not mixing with water–it’s simply assured. They may not be everyone’s favorite band and apparently it is possible to dislike them, but anyone who dares is uniformed, purposefully obnoxious or simply not all there.


But what about their live performances? Though life changing to many people the Beatles’ concerts were, in a word, terrible. What is often overlooked amid the hysteria and jellybean throwing is bad sound, bad enough the band didn’t know what they were playing most of the time. Eventually they became bad enough to cause the band to quit performing altogether.


With Rubber Soul: The Beatles Experience fans are finally being treated to an authentic yet tolerable production of John, George, Paul and Ringo’s minus one important detail–the jellybeans the band was peppered with after George Harrison inadvertently mentioned his like for them in an interview.


“We haven’t had any of those,” remarks Gary Boylan, perhaps better known as his alter-ego Sir Paul McCartney. “We have had panties, we don’t mind those.”


Yes it seems as if Rubber Soul comes not only with a note-perfect rendition of The Beatles but with all the hysteria as well.


“Yeah believe it or not, a lot of it is people enjoying the evening. They aren’t worshipping us, it’s part of the spirit, half of what we’re doing is acting, the audience gets into it and ends up adding their own element” says Boylan who describes the Rubber Soul show as “The way The Beatles would have liked it to sound.”


More than just a cover band Rubber Soul can also be seen as a Beatles extrapolation. The stage show includes songs from the entire Beatles discography, including songs that were recorded after they had abandoned the stage.


“The first hour is us doing the Mop Top thing, from Please Please Me through 1966, we come back more into the regalia of the later period,” Boylan explains. “We have to take liberties, the show is basically a bio of their history.”


That biography will be on display twice Saturday June 12 as Rubber Soul brings their own brand of Beatlemania to the Engineered Air Theatre.


Boylan sums the hole thing up perfectly: “If you like The Beatles and have ever wondered what it would be like to see them live this is the way to do it.”


Just leave the jellybeans at home.