A Day In The Life Of The Paperback Writers ...A Beatles Tribute Band For Hire!

I’m Steve Guest and I play “John Lennon” for tribute act “The Paperback Writers”. We’re playing at a wedding reception in a railway museum in Essex tonight. Weddings count among our favourite events to perform at. Everyone is always so enthusiastic and ready to enjoy themselves and we always love being a part of such a special day.

Preparation

The first step for us on any gig day is to prepare at home. For me, that usually includes a quick run through of the set list on guitar and/or piano (usually as I’m printing the set lists out!) and preparing costumes and wigs. At last count, we have seven different sets of costumes to choose from, and most of our gigs feature at least two of them, so co-ordinating amongst ourselves and making sure we pack the right outfits and wigs is VERY important!

Meeting Up

Tonight’s gig is only 30 miles away, so we can meet up a bit later than usual. We meet at “Ringo’s” house. He looks after and drives our van (he picked a short straw at some point!), so we all meet and travel together from there. We have only a 5 minute drive before we reach our lock-up, where we store all of our gear.

Loading Up

Loading the van takes about 15 minutes and is done with military-like precision. All five of us (we have a sound man called Matt who joins us on just about every gig) bring items from the lock up to the van for loading. We do this in a specific order to make sure we load the van safely, that we don’t forget anything and to make sure it all fits in! On a bright sunny day in summer, this is a quick and painless process. On a wet, cold and muddy winter’s night, this is hell on earth!

Travel

Then we’re on the road and heading to the venue. We’re very glad that we’re living in the age of sat nav as we play at some pretty out of the way places at times! On the way, there is always the obligatory stop at a motorway service station. For this band, on-the-road snacking and browsing the magazine section is commonplace, so cold drinks, nachos, dip, crisps, chocolate bars and, oddly, cheese regularly make it into the van, accompanied by magazines and books of all kinds!

Arrival

We arrive at the venue. First thing to do is to introduce ourselves to the venue manager, talk about the logistics and timetable for the day, and have a look at where we need to set up. Once all the details are known, our next step is to check the amount of space available and whether there is sufficient access to power supplies. No matter what we find on the day, we somehow always find a way of fitting in and powering our equipment, but on this occasion, everything is straightforward.

Set Up

Then it’s time to unload the van, get all of the equipment into the venue and set up. So long as we can park fairly close by, this whole process usually takes less than an hour. The appearance of our equipment and how it all looks on stage is very important to us as it’ll be the first thing the bride, groom and wedding guests see (usually hours before we perform), so it’s important to create the right impression from the start.

Sound Check

Sound check is usually completed in less than 15 minutes (unless we find a problem to solve, of course!) We always agree with the venue when it’s best to do this. On this occasion, the catering staff (who are preparing the tables) are dancing and singing along with us – this is going to be a good gig, I can feel it! Following sound check, we play background 60’s music through our PA to create a bit of ambiance to greet the wedding guests as they arrive, as per the bride and groom’s request.

Waiting Time

Then it’s time to disappear and wait until show time. We make a point of being instantly available if needed, but we try to hide ourselves away and not draw attention to ourselves while we’re out of costume. Most of our time is spent in our dressing room (or just outside it in this case!). If we aren’t disturbing anyone, we usually have a couple of guitars lying around and we try to learn new Beatles songs for possible inclusion in future shows.

Half an hour before show time, it’s time to warm up, make-up, dress up and get into character. We perform as if we are the original Beatles, so as well as warming up our singing voices we slip into our characters too. Getting the wigs, make-up and costumes on really helps the process! Matt makes sure our set lists and bottles of water are on stage while the rest of us wish each other luck and get out on stage to wow the crowd!

First Set

The first set is very much a celebration of the early Beatles years (up to and including 1966), so we’re going for that Hard Day’s Night mop top look tonight, as well as their on-stage banter. We judge our success by how quickly we have people up and dancing and tonight’s very successful – they’re rocking and rolling on the first song!

We run through 45 minutes of Beatles hits to a very responsive crowd. We like to wind up the first half with some classic rock and roll numbers the Beatles played during their Hamburg days, which always goes down well – especially “George’s” “Roll Over Beethoven”. We sign off the first half with our “McCartney” singing “Yesterday” with just his acoustic guitar to accompany him. Nice!

Break

Back to the dressing room for a while. We have a bit of a gap between sets, but it’s soon time to get out of one costume and into the next. We’re in our custom-made Sgt. Pepper costumes for the second set which I absolutely love, and our audiences seem to adore. I had a friend who is a highly experienced costume designer create these for us, and I honestly believe they are the best Pepper costumes in the business.

Second Set

The costumes drew gasps as we walked on to the stage, which is great! Another really strong, up-beat set for this half, which we try to balance between classic later Beatles songs, and some up-beat earlier stuff to make sure we maintain the same energy and party atmosphere. Everyone was up on their feet, dancing and singing, so it looks like we succeeded! We even spotted that some of the crowd were wearing their own Beatles outfits! Fab!

We include some sing-a-long songs like “Yellow Submarine” and “Hey Jude” and the audience all rise to the occasion. We finish off with a couple of encores. “McCartney” gives a fantastic rendition of “I Saw Her Standing There” and I follow it up with “Twist and Shout”, which tears my throat to pieces, but I don’t mind because I love singing it!

After the Show

We always make sure we hang around the stage in costume once the show has finished. We love chatting with people about their Beatles memories and hearing what they thought of our show. Plenty of folk wanted their pictures taken with us, including the bride and groom. Everyone’s very pleased with how it went!

Packing Down

Because of how the timings were arranged, we played almost up to the closing time for the venue, so there wasn’t much waiting around time before we could start packing our equipment up and getting it back in the van. If it’s going to disrupt the occasion, we try not to start packing things away until the end of the night.

Heading home

On the way home, before most of us fall asleep, we usually hold a post-mortem on the gig (what went well, whether there’s anything we could have done better, any new ideas we could use for next time, any song requests we should think about including in our sets) and we generally try to unwind. Then the singing starts. All together now – “We all live in a yellow submarine…”

Postscript

A fortnight later, we receive the following email from the bride and groom:

“You brought our vintage wedding to life! It is true that you are not just another tribute band. It was such an entertaining performance. Thank you so much for getting everyone up and dancing and creating a fantastic atmosphere. We will look back in years to come and remember that we celebrated the beginning of our marriage in true style.”
And in the end, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?!