‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ performed live, 40 years after release

By Joe Brown (contact)

Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Rick Brandt

Todd Rundgren performs "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" as part of his "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" 40th anniversary show.

Where were you when you first heard “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”?

I was 9 years old the night my dad brought the brand-new album home, after seeing the Beatles on the cover of Time magazine. Our small family gathered excitedly around the furniture-sized Magnavox console and listened to both sides, but I can’t remember it being played more than once after that.

A few years later, I was flipping through the stack of albums and came across that fascinatingly colorful album cover, with its psychedelic collage of mysterious characters. I put the needle to the black vinyl (kids, ask your parents), and my 12-year-old mind was blown.

I still have that now unplayable LP, and “Pepper” has always been with me — on cassette, CD and now on my iPod, which contains all the Beatles albums and all the music it opened my young ears to so many years ago.

The Beatles never performed “Sgt. Pepper” in concert, but Friday at Texas Station we’ll get the closest thing. Las Vegas is the last stop on a 10-city tour for a unique tribute event called “It Was Forty Years Ago Today: A Tribute to the Greatest Album of All Time: ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ ” a live presentation of the epochal album, re-created by an unlikely band of veteran American and English rockers.

When I’m Sixty-Four

John, Paul, George and Ringo, meet Todd, Denny, Chris and Lou. And Bo.

The re-Fab Five includes Todd Rundgren, 60, a one-man band and record producer who has recorded faithful solo covers of “Rain” and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” was a consultant on “Beatlemania: The Movie,” and, with his band Utopia, did an album called “Deface the Music” which was like a lost Beatles album. Rundgren has also toured several times with Ringo Starr and his All-Stars.

Lou Gramm, 58, formerly lead singer of Foreigner, set his powerful voice to such ’70s radio staples as “Hot Blooded” and “Juke Box Hero,” and is readying a Christian rock album with his Lou Gramm Band.

Denny Laine, 63, guitarist and singer with the Moody Blues, played in Paul McCartney’s band Wings for 10 years and co-wrote the worldwide hit “Mull of Kintyre.”

Christopher Cross, 57, the smooth-voiced king of “yacht rock,” is the only artist to receive all of the Big Four Grammy Awards (best record, song, album and new artist) in the same year.

Bo Bice, 33, a singer and guitarist, was runner-up to Carrie Underwood on “American Idol” and has gone on to a solo career as a Southern rocker.

“It is kind of a weird group,” Bice says with a laugh. “When they first tapped me for this, I was like, wow, this is a different lineup. It wasn’t like someone was trying to put together the most Beatles-like group of guys. Instead they picked people that were like polar opposites and put them together.”

Bice gets to sing “With a Little Help From My Friends,” “It’s Getting Better” and “Lovely Rita,” though each singer has learned all the songs, in case one of them can’t make a show. “Todd could probably play the whole album all by himself,” Bice says.

With a Little Help From My Friends

Critics have always tagged Rundgren with the term “Beatlesque,” for his pop music sweet tooth and ornate production style. Surprisingly he’s more of a “Revolver” man than a “Pepper” fan.

“I was not one of those people who went crazy over ‘Sgt. Pepper’ when it first came out. Probably because I wasn’t taking acid at the time,” he says on the phone, chuckling, before a preshow sound check in Baltimore. “Whatever else I appreciate about the Beatles, I was most mystified with their ability to craft pop tunes, and I always wanted to have some of that skill. The more you play these songs you realize how sort of whimsical and sometimes silly they are. As a matter of fact, I get to do the most silly songs on the whole record,” says Rundgren, who sings “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” and “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “Good Morning, Good Morning” in the tribute show.

A Day in the Life

The whole Lonely Hearts gang has been riding from gig to gig on a luxurious bus, says Bice, calling from Seven Springs, Pa., where the tour began. Because the veteran rockers have seen and done and survived it all, this road show isn’t marked by much of the debauchery of decades past. Bice, whose wife gave birth to their second son, Caleb, a week before the tour began, says he spends most of his time updating his blog and keeping in touch with his wife and two sons on his Apple iChat camera.

“Everybody knows I’m more of a Southern rock guy, but I grew up in England for five or six years. And their Lynyrd Skynyrd is the Beatles and the Stones,” says Bice, who is perhaps the most unusual choice for a Beatles salute. “When you sit and listen, you really see how ahead of the curve the Beatles were. That was the first concept album. Without that album we might not have had ‘The Wall’ or ‘Dark Side of the Moon.’ ”

It’s Getting Better

Rundgren who is about to release “Arena,” his first full-length record of original studio material in four years, says the one-off group’s approach to the “Sgt. Pepper” songs will be “pretty faithful” to the original recordings.

“All the headliners take turns singing the songs, and we have a five-piece band, plus a symphonette, which is a seven-piece string quartet and a harp player and two reed players,” Rundgren says. Leading the band is guitarist Jesse Gress, who dreamed up the tribute; with ex-Tubes and New Cars drummer Prairie Prince, the Cars’ keyboardist Greg Hawke and John Ferenzik, a guitarist in Rundgren’s band. “So we can pretty much reproduce anything that was done on the record. I think we make up for the literalness with a little bit of theatricality. I do all of my songs in some sort of costume. I’m something of a ringmaster in ‘Mr. Kite,’ and I actually dress up like a flower in ‘Lucy in the Sky,’ he says, laughing.

“Sgt. Pepper” was released June 1, 1967, so it was really 41 years ago this summer that the mind-blowing album debuted. Still, “It Was Forty Years Ago Today” sounds like an event that shouldn’t be missed by any Beatles fan.

Having been some days in preparation, a splendid time is guaranteed for all.