As the ultimate Beatles fan, Upper Darby’s Todd Rundgren is a great place to start where any Fab Four tribute tour is concerned.
Before I get into the tour itself and the Todd-ness of it all, let me just mention that its title – “It Was Fifty Years Ago Today” – is, and not to sound like a fanboy, both wrong and weird. The album this show represents, The Beatles’ 2 LP, four-sided “White Album,” is from 1968. Beyond even that, the title itself is borrowed from the title tune of 1967’s “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” A mess, right?
Then again, the messiness of the tour’s title reflects the schizophrenic (or, rather quadrophonic) nature of “The White Album” itself and the fractured manner in which it was devised.
Pretty much made as four solo albums squeezed into one package – a practice they were prepared to continue if the recently found tapes of a 1969 Beatles conversation about life beyond “Abbey Road” were put into use (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/beatles-audio-abbey-road-final-album-882988/) – The Fab Four expressed the wildest dreams, coolest heads and sweetest/sourest moments, going from the avant-tape loop experimentalism of “Revolution #9” to the tender balladry of “Blackbird” to the raw-cous rock out of “Helter Skelter.”
As the ultimate Beatles fan, Upper Darby’s Todd Rundgren is a great place to start where any Fab Four tribute tour is concerned. The guitarist-singer-composer-wizard-true-star kinda-sorta worked with George Harrison on a Badfinger album for The Beatles; label, Apple Records in 1970. Runt wrote and recorded “Up Against It!”, a 1997 album by Todd Rundgren consisting of his demos for the musical theater adaptation of a stage shows originally written in 1967 by Joe Orton for the Beatles. Rundgren even wrote songs with Ringo Starr and appeared as part of the drummer’s All Starr Band.
As part of The White Album’s Tribute Tour, Rundgren will cover a majority of Harrison and John Lennon tracks, while crooner Christopher Cross does Paul McCartney’s smoother sounds. After that, it’s all down to the Monkees’ Mickey Dolenz (who hung out with McCartney during the making of “The White Album”) and Badfinger’s Joey Molland to carry the weight… Also the name of another song from another Beatles album. Dag.
The tour starts on September 21 in Atlantic City at the Golden Nugget Atlantic City Hotel, Casino and Marina, heads to the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, PA on October 15, and, on October 19 at the Sands Bethlehem Casino in Bethlehem, PA.
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