The Fab Four bring Beatles act to Yountville on April 28

By ANDY WILCOX
Register Staff Writer

When Ron McNeil plays Beatles songs with the Fab Four, he focuses on more than nailing the lyrics, harmonies and chords that get more complex during the course of a show.

He must also sing, act and talk like John Lennon, belting out in that Lennon rasp, scratching his sideburns, blinking with new contact lenses, and making sure to say “album” rather than “CD” when announcing the group’s next song.

McNeil must do all this because he wouldn’t have it any other way, he said in a phone interview from his Southern California home Monday after a series of weekend performances in Las Vegas.

“What’s separated us from other things come and gone is our dedication to it,” he said of playing in a Beatles impersonation band for 13 years. “Our love and respect for it, I think we try to give that back to the audience. If we weren’t on stage, we’d be in the audience. We always feel we need to do a respectful job, as if one or all of the Beatles were the audience.”

The Fab Four — who bring their two-hour show of about 30 Beatles songs to Yountville’s Lincoln Theater on April 28 — have played around the world. On their Web site, www.thefabfour.com, are photos of them posing with Brian Wilson, Tom Hanks, Eric Idle, Dana Carvey and Dave Grohl during their travels. They played three Beatles songs on the soundtrack to the 2000 TV movie, “The Linda McCartney Story.”

Those who haven’t seen their act can see their talent and drive for perfection in bootleg videos on www.youtube.com.

“We’re very proud of our show but (the bootlegs) can show (competing) Beatle bands the lines we use,” he said. “Nowadays you can’t do anything without winding up on Youtube.”

If anything’s worth checking out on Youtube, it’s the Fab Four, especially if you’re a Beatlemaniac. There are versions of the Beatles’ major early hits and songs the Beatles never even performed live, such as “Penny Lane” and “Here Comes the Sun.”

McNeil said the Fab Four knows more than 200 Beatles songs, but can fit in only about 30 during the course of a typical show. They’re more likely to pull out the rare songs when they play night after night in Vegas, he said, just to mix things up.

“It’s always a bit of a drag if people only see us once because we have to stick to the hits,” he said. “But once in a while we’ll pull something from Revolver, my favorite album. You have to do ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and ‘Twist and Shout’ and once you start adding up all the must-dos, you don’t have room for lesser-known songs.

He said the band has performed entire albums onstage before, though, and will likely do so with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band sometime this year, the 40th anniversary of that album’s release.

The Yountville show, he said, will feature three costume changes — from the moptop wigs, collarless suits and pointed boots of early years, to the colorful Sgt. Pepper outfits, to the long hair and beards and casual outfits of the White Album/Let It Be years.

McNeil said he first knew he wanted to do a Beatles act after he saw the original Broadway show “Beatlemania” in Los Angeles in the late 1970s when he was teenager.

“Before that I was learning to play the Beatles’ songs, borrowing my sister’s records and never giving them back,” he recalled. “With each record I got more and more into the Beatles and blocked out everything else. As far as I was concerned, there was no other music.”

Before he would start a Beatles band, McNeil said he had a band that played “Duran Duran-like” originals but petered out after it failed to attract attention from Capitol Records.

Once he met Ardy Sarraf at a Beatles convention, he knew he was on his way.

“One night they had a look-alike/sound-alike contest and he got up there, this little chubby kid with a gigantic bass, and sang (Paul McCartney and Wings’) ‘Coming Up’ and the hair stood up on the back of my neck,” McNeil recalled of Sarraf, who was playing right-handed at the time. “I asked him, ‘Do you want to do this Beatle band thing?’ He said ‘Wear the suits and do the accents? No, I don’t think so.’”

But McNeil eventually persuaded him to try it and Sarraf taught himself to play left-handed like McCartney.

They used a lot of videotaping to get their act down pat.

“It’s hard to watch yourself on video, but we wanted to be the best,” McNeil said. “We had to be honest with ourselves so we could get all the parts right. But it was a labor of love.”

Like the group they impersonated, the Fab Four developed stage chemistry through repetition.

“In the early days we did over 200 shows a year,” McNeil said. “We’ve got that down to about 50 now.”

After landing six-days-a-week gigs in Las Vegas, but finding themselves away from their families too much, the Fab Four decided to form a company that included a second version of themselves based in Las Vegas.

“It took six or seven months to find other guys to do what we do. We had to show them what we say, where we stand, and it was an incredible simulation,” McNeil said. “We’ve had a lot of people say they’re as good or better than we are in some respects. We based the group in Las Vegas around a gentleman we met in Liverpool, Gavin Pring, who plays George. People would talk with him after the show and tell him to stop using the accent and he’d say, ‘I can’t. That’s how I talk.’”

As a company, the Fab Four find it easier to get Beatles clothes.

“We just ordered professionally-made Beatle boots  ... plus for three or four other third-string Beatles,” he said. “Mine are made by a guy in Hollywood who has worked on the Star Trek series.”

McNeil sounds almost apologetic when talking about the compromises the Fab Four have to make when trying to be the Beatles.

“The Beatles only played 20 minutes each show; from ’64 to ’66, that’s all they ever played. We obviously can’t do that,” he said. “And being asked to cover an entire career, you’re taking some liberties because they didn’t perform anything after ’66, but we do all of that, too.”

To liven up their shows, the group even make references to Wal-Mart and CDs, as if it were the Beatles playing today.

McNeil said the Fab Four take pride in performing live every sound that’s heard, even in the more complex songs that involve more than four instruments. The Ringo impersonator, for example, might play something other than drums when they aren’t needed for a part of a song.

“There are hundreds of Beatle groups in the world, but we’re one of the first to play everything as a four-piece. A lot of bands use tapes of parts in their shows. It looks stupid and says something about their musicianship.”

McNeil said he leaves most of his Lennon impersonations on the stage.

“I’ve always been good at imitations; I do Spongebob Squarepants, Popeye, Mickey Mouse and John Lennon around our kids, and they love it,” he said. “But if I walked around all day in Lennon glasses talking like him around my wife, she’d kill me.”

“Playing four of the most famous people who ever walked the planet, it’s nice to be able to take the costumes off because the Beatles couldn’t.”

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