Make-believe Beatlemania: The Bootleg Beatles at the London Palladium
In front of me, there’s an old man fist pumping. Next to me, on my left, a girl is celebrating her eighth birthday. She blushes in a fit of shyness when the singer on stage shouts her out. Behind me, there’s a couple all dressed up like they’ve stepped out of a 1960s time machine. And then there’s me and my housemate, all dolled up and letting out a genuine scream of excitement when The Beatles step on stage. Really, it’s just four guys dressed up as the Fab Four. But as the whole of the London Palladium gives in to a few hours of mutual make-believe, The Bootleg Beatles may as well be the real thing.
The story started a few weeks before that when my housemate sent me a meme: “Born to pass out at a Beatles concert, forced to be born too late.” I sent one back of a sad-looking cartoon ant that read, “Me showing up to the Beatles fandom 60 years too late.” This is far from trite housemate chat, either. Well, it might be, but it’s undercut by a seismic cultural phenomenon all the same.
There’s just something about The Beatles. Today, just as it was back when they began, people are obsessed. Or, at the very least, it feels impossible not to like them, as the sheer variety of their sound provides something for anyone who cares to do a little digging. But the problem is exactly that: we’re all showing up too late. Sure, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are still gigging, but all of us left listening to the albums on streaming platforms arrived too late to see the band in action.
Because really, it was the Beatles’ live performances that made them stars. In a time before the internet, that was all a band could ride on as they played gigs and hoped the right person was in the crowd. The Fab Four were found on the Cavern Club stage and then spent years travelling around as the size of the crowd of screaming girls following them grew and grew.
Until they decided to eventually retire from the road and started making increasingly adventurous albums, now production didn’t need to allow for a live adaptation; their records were almost beside the point. The point was the live shows where the band’s presence birthed a fan phenomenon that had never been seen before. Along with Elvis Presley, The Beatles’ crowd could be credited for the birth of the teenage girl as there’s arguably no better display of that wild and weird time than the image of an adolescent absolutely losing her mind over an unattainable celebrity.
I know for me, showing up decades too late, looking at those images of the well-dressed mod girls with their perfect makeup and streaming tears as they screamed “I love you” at Paul McCartney, I only had one thought; “I wish that was me”. As both a lover of music and of fan culture, I wish I could have been there at a Beatles show, getting involved in what David Lynch dubbed “a screaming event”.
Then I saw a TikTok (how very fitting): “Went to a Beatles tribute show and forgot they weren’t the real thing” the screen read over a hazy video of four guys in wings with a blood-curdling scream behind the camera from a girl freaking out. Suddenly, my dream felt attainable. When I saw the Bootleg Beatles, the number one tribute act, were coming to town, it was in my grasp.
So I did my hair, perfected my 1960s cut crease, pinned an “I love Paul” badge to my top and pulled on my go-go boots. Across town, that aforementioned couple clearly primed themselves in the same way, dressing to impress. That eight-year-old girl probably specifically requested this show as her birthday party and put on her Beatles T-shirt for the occasion. My housemate came into the kitchen, asking for advice on which dress and whether she should be a mod or a rocker. We giggled all the way over, talking about which band member we fancied most and which songs we wanted to hear.
And then, when the intro film reached its finale, the spotlights flicked on, and the introduction of ‘It Won’t Be Long’ began, we screamed. We screamed like it was the most natural, animalistic thing in the world, as if our girlish brains were designed to do so. The kid next to me screamed, too. The old man in front flung his hands in the air. The couple behind yelled, “Yes!” And finally, we were all right on time.
The Bootleg Beatles sound exactly like the real band. As they tour through the different eras and as the drinks flow in the theatre, they become more and more convincing. Musically, they’re perfect as a genuinely tight band able to carry off the early ‘60s harmonies just as well as the more intricate tracks like ‘A Day In The Life’. In between, they banter with the crowd, half in character and half out of it, as they poke fun at themselves in a way that allows their audience to keep up the act for them. Even as they joke about the situation, we’re locked in as everyone gets to their feet, twists and shouts, and the occasional yell echoes around the theatre of “I love you, George!”
Every single person I could see in the dark was smiling. Turning round and looking up during ‘Revolution’; it’s a sea of arms in the air, stretching up to the rafters with peace signs waving as fake Ringo instructed us. Even during the classics like ‘Hey Jude’ or ‘All You Need Is Love’, which feel like songs that have been overplayed or ruined by the UK’s obsessive need to play them at every sporting match or event, somehow sound fresh and real, as if we’re an actual crowd and the actual Beatles are playing their new track live for the first time.
The show is everything I wanted it to be: a chance to hear my favourite Beatles song live, to sing along and act like one of those girls struck by the epidemic of Beatlemania. As I clocked my fading voice and sore throat on the way home, I knew I got my wish.
