Concert Review: Auckland Live Cabaret Season 2021 – Let It Beatles

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“Four local hard-working musos Paul McLaney (Gramsci, The Impending Adorations), Alex Freer (Tiny Ruins, Ladyhawke), Jonathan Burgess (Demons of Noon), and musical director Robin Kelly (Here Lies Love, Valerie) delve deep inside their own musical journeys to answer this question and play their dream gig, recreating the music of The Beatles.

 From the pop bangers that made the fans scream and shout — ‘Eight Days A Week’, ‘Day Tripper’, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ — to tripping out on psychedelic musings ‘Across the Universe’ and ‘I am the Walrus’.”

I sure don’t know about all of you, but I certainly love those last two songs. Enlightening and broadening of my young mind, along with the rest of The Beatles’ musical output, I would say.

Both songs also similar to Let It Be in that sense, the eponymous song of a show I’m about to review that, fair warning, is probably going to get me blacklisted from a handful of gigs for the rest of my life, and which didn’t include either of those three listed above, the quoted section from the show’s programme.

Oh well. Let’s start with the positives.

The venue was gorgeous, with candlelit tables scattered around the Wintergarden of The Civic and the on-stage lighting was exquisite, from the rich reds slowly fading during the opening of the group’s gorgeous performance of Because to the bright neon bars backing Strawberry Fields Forever.

 Paul McLaney held much of the evening together with relaxed ease and musical precision, with a solo acoustic performance of Blackbird as beautiful as you could hope, and Jonathan Burgess was passively perfect in his supporting role. Alex Freer and Robin Kelly did fantastic work together on Day Tripper, and the handful of Beatles knowledge dished out by McLaney added some authentic charm to the evening.

Somewhere between and around all this, after the phenomenal opening of Because and You Never Give Me Your Money, starting shortly after Kelly opened his mouth for the first time to the audience and told us a wonderfully tangential story about what the show was, and wasn’t about, a captivatingly original story about listening to Abbey Road for the first time, that the programme spiel was made up, and that, hilariously, they wouldn’t play Let It Be, so if we came to see that we should leave, somewhere in all that, I started to try and eat my own fist.

I think it was probably the moment where, for the second time that evening, we’d heard that Kelly was nervous about playing Hey Jude, but that was okay because, as with all the other songs, he assured the pathologically polite crowd they would assist in singing along, and there was a line in Hey Jude that encapsulated everything he was talking about.

What was that line? Well, we’ll likely never find out, despite McLaney desperately and professionally trying to throw lyrical lifeline after lifeline across the stage while Kelly reassured us he’d remember the lyrics when he actually performed it.

I could also mention how horrifyingly awful it was to watch Kelly crucify the other three performers on stage by forcing them to talk about their personal projects at the tail-end of another exhaustive verbal intermission, but I think covering the other 20 minutes of interlude chats will have people calling me Hey Judas.

Musically, it would have been great to see Freer push himself further on his solo vocal of We Can Work It Out, where the slightly higher, uncomfortable notes felt entirely possible, but fell off at the last moment, a possibility that Kelly also experienced first in Strawberry Fields, and later in the trimmed and unavoidably disappointing attempt of Hey Jude.

And I don’t say this to be brutal, but it just didn’t feel brave enough. I’ve seen 18-year-olds in a dingy, alcohol-stained bar try harder to be genuine than this, and with four phenomenally accomplished musicians on stage, with access to the musical keys of the soul at their fingertips, it all simply slipped away through fumbles, nerves, and a medley of awkwardness.

What makes it all the more tragic is that, when those moments were fleetingly grasped by everyone on stage, it felt worthy of meeting an impossible challenge; bringing The Beatles back on stage for an hour and making us remember why they changed everything, for everyone, forever.

So, Hey Jude, don’t be afraid,
and anytime you feel the pain,
hey Jude, refrain,
Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders
and I’ll just Let It Be.

Let It Beatles Setlist

Because
You Never Give Me Your Money
Get Back
Blackbird
Back In The USSR
Lady Madonna
Strawberry Fields Forever
Day Tripper
We Can Work It Out
Help!
In My Life
Hey Jude
Eight Days
All My Loving
I Saw Her Standing There

Oxford Lamoureaux
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