Doubling up: The Queen Extravaganza's Jeff Scott Soto, left, and Marc Martel take on Freddie Mercury's vocals, with Brian Gresh and Tristan Avakian on Brian May's guitar part, at San Francisco's Regency Ballroom. (Credit: By Martin E. Klimek, for USA TODAY)
All goes quiet and dark inside the old Regency Ballroom, where, in the '60s, the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin once ruled the night. A spotlight suddenly illuminates four faces onstage. As one, they sing a cappella: "Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?"
These are the opening lines to the Queen classic Bohemian Rhapsody, and indeed, this is all just fantasy.
Onstage aren't the surviving members of that still-touring British quartet, but rather the nine members of Queen Extravaganza, perhaps one of the most rigorously drilled tribute bands to ever hit the circuit. Its existence is due to none other than Queen drummer Roger Taylor.
The Extravaganza may not be the real thing, but you can't tell from the way Jessica Garcia stares straight ahead, slack-jawed. "Imitator groups can be cheesy, but some manage to take things to another level," says Garcia, 29, of Oakland, flashing a Queen tattoo. "I guess the bottom line is this is probably the closest I'll ever get to seeing the real band."
Legions of tribute acts on the road this summer are banking on that very sentiment. Their pitch is simple: Come see us, and we'll conjure up the past in a small venue and at a fraction of the cost of our A-list alter egos.
Tribute bands seem to be booming as the groups they emulate succumb to frayed vocal cords, blown eardrums and the Grim Reaper. An online search pulls up a staggering array of groups that sound — and often look — like every classic rock act, from Air Supply to Frank Zappa.
If you've always pined for the return of hair-metal rockers Cinderella, there's always Gypsy Rose to soothe your soul. If The Monkees were your thing, try the look-alike band The Missing Links. Or maybe you miss those renegade Dixie Chicks? Check out the Dixie Chicklets or, ahem, the transvestite group Chicks With Dixie.
"It's gotten to the point where if there isn't a clone band out there of you, you really aren't successful," says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, which tracks the concert industry. He says the first Elvis impersonators were catalysts of the tribute band phenomenon, as were pop-culture sensations such as the late '70s musical Beatlemania, which lives on as the show Rain: A Tribute to The Beatles.
"Some of these tribute bands do a very good job of re-creating what that original band used to be," Bongiovanni says, adding that for many fans, the powerful tug of nostalgia is tough to resist. "If you're going out to a bar, often it's simply more fun to see a tribute group than some band you've never heard of."
And while legally, tribute bands tread that thin line between fair use and infringement (and legal skirmishes have occasionally flared up), generally the stars are big enough, and the bands small enough, to coexist peacefully. Such bands say they help keep the music alive and add that the originals have from time to time been spotted in the audience at their tributes.
Reviving the glory days
Aside from huge successes such as the "Australian Pink Floyd," which since 1988 has sold 3 million tickets in 35 countries, typically there isn't huge money to be made by the average tribute band. But at least there is a guarantee of a built-in audience, says Lenny Mann, founder of TributeCity.com, a compendium of tribute-act gigs.
"Go to any populated city in the country tonight, and you'll find a tribute band of some kind playing," Mann says. Make that any city in almost any country; Mann says Italy is surpassing England as the fastest-growing hub of tribute bands. "With concert prices going up, there's a great appeal to paying a lot less to hear the music you love."
Mann would know. For years now, he has morphed into Jimmy Page for the band Led Zepplica, a labor of Led Zeppelin love that at one point saw him playing hockey arenas in Canada. These days, business is slower, but he perseveres.
"The economy has taken its toll," says Mann, whose current dates take him to places such as the Trading Post in remote Hayfork, Calif. "But being in this band has provided me with some of the most rewarding gigs. I've traveled the world. We went to India five times and played to 10,000 people. We live and breathe Led Zeppelin."
Not just any Led Zeppelin. Mann's band is laser-focused on re-creating the British band in its mid-'70s glory. "We go for their look and their mannerisms, as well as the sound," he says. "What I'm really proud of is that we know their music so well that we can improvise and still sound like they did then."
But beyond the accurate sound, Mann says Led Zepplica's look — all big hair, mustaches and glowering expressions — keeps fans enthralled. Tribute-band success tends to bank on such visual appeal, says Kim Kuperschmid, a onetime Pat Benatar tribute rocker who, along with husband Peter, started the listings site Tribute-Band.com. "It makes for so much more of a show if you try for the look."
Kuperschmid believes that tribute bands are more popular than ever thanks to the prevalence of classic rock-era tunes in everything from commercials to Guitar Hero video games. "A lot of this music is being passed down from generation to generation, and going to hear a tribute band is a way to say, 'This is what this music was like.' "
The singer (whose has a bar band, Steel Horse) still considers reprising her role as Benatar and hitting the road, though she's also told she does a mean Robert Plant impression.
She likes the fact that "the money is usually better than going out with your own band, because you have that original act's built-in following and can go for bigger venues." But the mother in her points out a big negative: "You can't stay in the same town, because once people have heard you there, you're done. So you have to travel a lot. And that can be a grind."
Sanctioned by Queen
Taalib York is still living that larger-than-life fantasy, courtesy of his impression of the King of Pop in Who's Bad, which describes itself as "The Ultimate Michael Jackson Tribute Band." He starts giggling when asked to list the countries he has visited of late, including Romania, China, Brazil and Colombia.
"There's a lot of pressure filling those shoes, but I've been doing this 10 years now, and as a fan of Michael's, I'm all about accuracy," says York, whose passion for the Gloved One is so intense that he "prefers not to think about Michael being gone. For me, he's actually still here."
Jackson in some way still is around, judging from the shrieks that greet York's spinning, hat-tipping, crotch-grabbing rendition of Billie Jean on YouTube. With the clip just grainy enough to blur his facial details, you could be convinced he was the genuine article.
Which prompts the question: Just what is a tribute band? Is it a group of people determined to serve up a spot-on copy of a once-great act? Or is it a group of inveterate musicians who, looks aside, are trying to reproduce more the spirit of the performers they're celebrating?
For Queen's actual drummer, it's a bit of both. "Queen Extravaganza's musicians had to look onstage like they do normally, but I wanted to be sure they were working to cover our band's depth and range," says Taylor, who recently played to 250,000 Queen fans in Kiev, Ukraine, with Adam Lambert handling the late Freddie Mercury's inimitable vocals. "This project wasn't about doing a pantomime."
Taylor was driven to the idea after seeing two bands roll through the small English town he calls home. They purported to offer "Queen 'live' … it was a little much," he says. "They produced barely acceptable versions of the music we created."
Taking matters into his own hands, he partnered with Los Angeles talent giant Creative Artists Agency and put out the word online that he was looking for video auditions to fill nine slots for the tribute band.
Why nine? It allows for four different Mercurys and two Brian Mays on guitar, which in turn makes it easier to replicate live songs that benefited from studio magic. What's more, the tribute band's musical director and keyboard whiz, Brandon Ethridge, has access to Queen master recordings that allow him "to really break down what was recorded, voice by voice and note by note, so we can reproduce it as perfectly as possible."
A limit to the tribute
The wisdom of that decision is apparent as Queen Extravaganza rips through the layered, symphonic Bohemian Rhapsody.
Backstage, singer Mark Martel, who looks uncannily like Mercury with his jutting jaw and haunting eyes, reveals that being in a tribute band wasn't exactly a life-long dream. "I've been doing my own music for some time, though I've gotten the Freddie Mercury comparison thing for years," says the Nashville resident, whose Christian-rock band, Downhere, is a fixture there. "But when I heard Roger was sanctioning this, I thought this could be cool."
When asked about Martel, Taylor goes silent for a moment. "Mark's resemblance to Freddie is almost mystical," he says.
So what about a Queen tour with Martel on vocals, the real band raiding its imitators to help keep it alive — as Journey did in 2007 with Filipino tribute-band singer Arnel Pineda replacing vocalist Steve Perry?
Taylor demurs. "I don't think it would look quite right for Brian or myself to do that. It might seem like we're trying to replace Freddie with Mark."
Say what you will, but for a performer in an ersatz band, that's the greatest tribute of all.
Source : Tribute bands: An amazing simulation - Metromix New York
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