Across The Universe The Beatles 66-70 Queen's Hall Edinburgh 3rd November 2024 Review
Across The Universe at the Queen’s Hall Edinburgh tonight was a celebration of The Beatles’ “studio years” 1966-1970 and is the Beatles music tribute show that I have been waiting a long time to see someone do on-stage properly, and this production did just that.
There are a few things to note about this show for clarity. Firstly, despite the show’s name, and the brightly coloured flyers, this show is not focusing on the psychedelic songs from The Beatles, but pretty much everything and anything from their 1966-1970 studio years, and there are some obvious songs in this set-list as well as some not too often heard live gems. Secondly, this is a tribute to the music from this era performed by excellent musicians and not a Beatles look-a-like/sound-a-like tribute band on stage.
This decision not to pretend to be The Beatles and not to put on any fancy dress costumes is an important one for me, as I believe that many people in audiences have simply progressed past wanting to see any sort of tribute band pretending to be their musical heroes on stage and often going as far as calling each other by that band’s name. It is the music that matters, it is the music that has survived down through the years and this show pays respect to the musical legacy of The Beatles both in its musical performances, but also in its approach to the music.
Opening the show with “Strawberry Fields Forever” followed by “Penny Lane” were obvious choices of crowd-pleasers, (after a technical glitch was fixed) but it worked, and this audience were with the band for the rest of this show as “Across The Universe” became a non-stop live performance juke-box recreating the studio sounds of “Lady Madonna”, Let It Be” “Dear Prudence”, “A Day in the Life”, “Sgt Peppers”, “Oh! Darling”, “The Long and Winding Road” and many more classic songs.
The attention to detail in this show production is impressive, and with the core band plus string and brass sections there were 16 people on stage for most of the evening. Across the Universe as a show is not touring lightly, there is a lot of tech on stage, a lot of sound and visuals to get just right on the night, and for anyone into them, a lot of different guitars being constantly switched around to get that specific sound of a song just right.
An interesting part of this show is also in their approach to performing this music to present on-stage as close as possible what the Beatles created in the studio, and to do this they have chosen not to go down the obvious musician/instrument line-up on songs that you normally get in a show like this and this has allowed far more innovation with the music itself. It is always worth remembering that The Beatles had stopped touring now and the vast majority of these songs were never performed live by them. In fact, the technology to perform many of them live was still decades away from their original studio creation. This show has interwoven what on-stage technology now offers with old fashioned musical talent.
The core Across the Universe band line-up for this evening consisted as below
Graeme Quinn - Lead vocals/Guitar
Paul Crawford - Lead vocals/Guitar/Percussion
David Calder - Drums
Paul Adams - Bass
Anthony Smith - Guitar/Percussion
John Hallam - Guitar
Paul Devlin - Keyboard/Percussion/brass
Fraser Cooper - Keyboard
This show is a collaborative production between every musician on stage, but a special note has to go to Graeme Quinn and Paul Crawford for their vocals all evening. Paul Adams was also doing a lot of very good work on bass guitar, and getting that sound, along with drums (David Caulder), is so vital to Beatles songs.
Opening the show tonight was a solo set from Mike Baillie of “The Lonely Together Band” and there was a connection of genuine warmth from Mike and this audience from the very beginning. It is clear that with songs like “Congregation” and “Rebecca Lane” that Mike is a songwriter with a distinctive use of words, and the lines “I’ve been writing you letters, torn up on completion” are good examples of how he can play with a simple theme, but in a few words make it something very different and thought provoking. Also nice to see that for Mike that dream of playing the Queen’s Hall stage himself one day has come true for him.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
There are a few things to note about this show for clarity. Firstly, despite the show’s name, and the brightly coloured flyers, this show is not focusing on the psychedelic songs from The Beatles, but pretty much everything and anything from their 1966-1970 studio years, and there are some obvious songs in this set-list as well as some not too often heard live gems. Secondly, this is a tribute to the music from this era performed by excellent musicians and not a Beatles look-a-like/sound-a-like tribute band on stage.
This decision not to pretend to be The Beatles and not to put on any fancy dress costumes is an important one for me, as I believe that many people in audiences have simply progressed past wanting to see any sort of tribute band pretending to be their musical heroes on stage and often going as far as calling each other by that band’s name. It is the music that matters, it is the music that has survived down through the years and this show pays respect to the musical legacy of The Beatles both in its musical performances, but also in its approach to the music.
Opening the show with “Strawberry Fields Forever” followed by “Penny Lane” were obvious choices of crowd-pleasers, (after a technical glitch was fixed) but it worked, and this audience were with the band for the rest of this show as “Across The Universe” became a non-stop live performance juke-box recreating the studio sounds of “Lady Madonna”, Let It Be” “Dear Prudence”, “A Day in the Life”, “Sgt Peppers”, “Oh! Darling”, “The Long and Winding Road” and many more classic songs.
The attention to detail in this show production is impressive, and with the core band plus string and brass sections there were 16 people on stage for most of the evening. Across the Universe as a show is not touring lightly, there is a lot of tech on stage, a lot of sound and visuals to get just right on the night, and for anyone into them, a lot of different guitars being constantly switched around to get that specific sound of a song just right.
An interesting part of this show is also in their approach to performing this music to present on-stage as close as possible what the Beatles created in the studio, and to do this they have chosen not to go down the obvious musician/instrument line-up on songs that you normally get in a show like this and this has allowed far more innovation with the music itself. It is always worth remembering that The Beatles had stopped touring now and the vast majority of these songs were never performed live by them. In fact, the technology to perform many of them live was still decades away from their original studio creation. This show has interwoven what on-stage technology now offers with old fashioned musical talent.
The core Across the Universe band line-up for this evening consisted as below
Graeme Quinn - Lead vocals/Guitar
Paul Crawford - Lead vocals/Guitar/Percussion
David Calder - Drums
Paul Adams - Bass
Anthony Smith - Guitar/Percussion
John Hallam - Guitar
Paul Devlin - Keyboard/Percussion/brass
Fraser Cooper - Keyboard
This show is a collaborative production between every musician on stage, but a special note has to go to Graeme Quinn and Paul Crawford for their vocals all evening. Paul Adams was also doing a lot of very good work on bass guitar, and getting that sound, along with drums (David Caulder), is so vital to Beatles songs.
Opening the show tonight was a solo set from Mike Baillie of “The Lonely Together Band” and there was a connection of genuine warmth from Mike and this audience from the very beginning. It is clear that with songs like “Congregation” and “Rebecca Lane” that Mike is a songwriter with a distinctive use of words, and the lines “I’ve been writing you letters, torn up on completion” are good examples of how he can play with a simple theme, but in a few words make it something very different and thought provoking. Also nice to see that for Mike that dream of playing the Queen’s Hall stage himself one day has come true for him.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com