THEATER REVIEW
'Rain' brings Beatles bug to Tucson
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"Rain: A Tribute to The Beatles"
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 2 & 8 p.m. Saturday; 1 & 6:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave.
Price: $25-$65
Info: 321-1000, broadwayintucson.com
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How much can music change the world, really? As much as TV coverage of the war in Vietnam? As much as great stereo gear with extra-large speakers? Or a good anti-war book damning government ideology?
This week in the Tucson Music Hall, such questions are relevant as pop culture history is peeled back in layers, like an aural archeological dig, in the touring rock 'n' roll show "Rain: A Tribute to The Beatles."
More than just a song list performed by four guys with English schoolboy haircuts, "Rain" helps its audience along the nostalgia trail by turning the show's news and video clips into timely footnotes projected on large screens placed at each side of the stage and on a huge screen behind the band.
With such detailed encouragement, it is strictly an individual choice how deeply one wants to remember the Sixties. Some memories really are easier to retrieve than others.
Rain, the band, is going for the easy memories that haven't been buried under scar tissue and jail time for political dissent. This is, after all, a good-natured show that emphasizes the positive qualities of that turbulent era.
The television footage of long-haired people with happy smiles and little clothing looks so innocent. These are folks just running around in the park to have fun. They aren't living in sin, burning draft cards or burning holes in their brains with illicit recreational drugs.
Right from the beginning when a look-alike comic impersonating Ed Sullivan welcomed The Beatles onto his show, it was understood this trip would only go to nice places. Even if The Beatles did attract controversy like a lightning rod on a golf course, these audiences wouldn't fret the confrontational. Mostly they got happy songs such as "All My Loving" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand."
There wasn't much of the more intense psychedelic stuff after "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," or of John Lennon's anti-war posturing or George Harrison's spiritual quests to India.
Toward the end of this sunny two-hour celebration, there was a place for Lennon's "Imagine." But more popular was the chance to "Twist and Shout."
On opening night, a near-capacity crowd of some 2,000 mostly boomer-aged fans couldn't have been more supportive of getting their memories fluffed up. By the fourth song, "I Saw Her Standing There," they were on their feet clapping.
No further encouragement was necessary a few songs later for the entire Music Hall to be singing along on the poignant "Yesterday."
Audience energy in the second half actually calmed a bit as the music became more psychedelic and more complicated. When the band went into "Get Back," though, virtually everyone was singing "Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona."
For that, the band laid out completely and the fans came through with flying colors. Encores included "Let It Be" and my favorite Beatles' anthem, "Hey Jude."
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