The Silver Beats are not making this easy on me. Here I am, all ready to defend them as serious musicians, and I can clearly hear them on the phone laughing.
Maybe it’s the jetlag of their arrival from Tokyo yesterday, or maybe it’s a legitimate response to interview questions that ask, in so many words, if they are for real. But there’s no getting around it. When you’re talking about a Japanese Beatles cover band, the kitsch factor has to be addressed, and the answer is yes: the Beats are having a laugh. But it’s the innocent laugh of a child acting out Han Solo on the playground, or doing air guitar alone in his bedroom. When they’re in the moment, there’s no room for irony.
Chalk it up to the Japanese work ethic. The Beats met at Tokyo’s version of the Cavern Club, a tribute to the Fab Four landmark that caters exclusively to Beatles fans.
“It’s like a religion over there,” says Tadaaki Naganuma, the band’s Paul McCartney. A year after their first gig in 2002, they were featured in Rolling Stone, and that was their ticket to ride. Three years, a fan club and several interviews later, they were playing the real Cavern Club in Liverpool as part of the city’s International Beatle Week. Last year, they toured with the Killers and made enough waves for their own headlining tour—and a spot on the Virgin Mobile Festival in Baltimore, backing up Chuck Berry.
They’re not sure what they’ll be doing with the rock legend, other than “watching his foot,” according to their American band rep. Berry is notorious for not giving his band a setlist, and the boys were told to follow his riffs, stop playing when he lifts his foot and start when he puts it down.
It should be quite a change from the band’s usual tight-knit style. Listening to the Beats, you might easily mistake their songs for some long-lost bootleg of the original band, whether it be bluesy jams like “Come Together” or head-bobbers like “Taxman.” And the illusion doesn’t get any hazier up close to the stage: Hidemasa “Eric” Mabuchi’s resemblance to John Lennon is eerie, especially considering he was born the same year Lennon was killed. But other than such natural assets, they keep the visuals low-key, dressing in the dapper mod style of the band’s early days. The Beats have neither the desire nor the ego to make themselves into “Yellow Submarine” cartoons.
“It’s not conscious,” translates their rep. “We would just feel really silly wearing wigs and big costumes and such. That style of the Beatles; they didn’t even perform live anymore. The pictures on 'Sgt. Pepper' albums and stuff; that was for show, even for the Beatles. They’re at their core a rock and roll band.”
