THE LENNON LEGENDS
This was a special tribute to commemorate the 20th anniversary of John Lennon's death, featuring Paul Moroney (of The Beatles Band) as John Lennon
I sat down not knowing what to expect.
The band came on to play "Come Together" (recreating the Toronto Peace concert way of playing it). Then in strolled the singer with classic army shirt, round shades, sideburns, etc.
At first it did look a bit funny a bloke dressed up as John !! But as soon as he sang "Here Come Old Flat Top" we looked at each other in amazement - it sounded exactly like Lennon .
I'm always critical so I thought he's just doin' the strongest number first. WRONG!
THIS MAN SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE JOHN LENNON.
The set list was all the Poppy
ones like... "Whatever Gets You Thru The Night",
"Starting Over", "Stand
By Me" ( The ones when Lennon hit 40 and stopped Rockin and
started bakin' bread)
BUT!!!!!! I was shocked to hear GREAT tracks from the (lesser known) Plastic
Ono Band LP which included... "God"
and brilliant cover of "Mother"
(complete with screams at the end). Also was "Instant
Karma", "How do you sleep"
and "I found out" . This guy even
had the between patter voice spot on and all the Lennon mannerisms off to a
tee.
This man has spent a lot of time getting this take off SPOT ON! Paul Moroney is the nearest thing there is to Lennon. And I'll happily argue with anyone about this!
Darren, 2001
[Note from Pete Feenstra: Paul Moroney, the regular Beatles Band's John Lennon was stranded in America following the September 11th attacks, so this review is not representative of The Beatles Band when Paul is with them]
Firstly if you're gonna cover The Beatles you have to look right ,sound right, and do the classics.
Well, they looked the part, the 'Paul' of the band has the mannerisms off to a tee! But as for sounding like Macca he wasn't that close in my opinion. The John character sounded like John in the patter in between tracks, and managed to sound like John on some of the numbers. The Ringo was pretty close 'Drum-wise', and George had the 'jangly' guitaring pretty close too!
There were 2 sets. The first was all the pop bubblegum era tracks. They were, roughly, "All my Loving", "Me to You", "Roll Over Beethoven", "Please Please Me", and others. The second set was supposed to go from Rubber Soul to Let It Be, so this was the band's chance to impress the real Beatles fans with some album tracks. We heard stuff like"Obla di", "Yesterday", "Something", "With a Little Help" and "In My Life", but there was no sign of the hard tracks to play, with tough vocals! Like "I Want You", "Oh Darling", "She's So Heavy", "The End", or "Come Together"
Also missing were many good tracks from the White Album like "Helter Skelter", "Yer Blues", "Happiness Is A Warm Gun", "Glass Onion", "Guitar Gently"... Need I go on? This band seemed to play a set of easy to play and strictly poppier numbers.
All in all I think they are fine for people who haven't studied The Beatles' best tracks and want a good old fashioned singalong! Your average punter may disagree with me, but I have studied the band!
Darren, 2001