The New Orleans Beatles Festival gathers many staple New Orleans bands on one night to honor the British superband, The Beatles.
The 13 years running Beatles Festival would not have been possible without Elvis Presley. Creator, producer and music director of Beatles Fest Chuck Credo said that back in his early days of playing instruments with his band The Mixed Nuts which used to open for the Top Cats, the bands used to play at the original Rock N’ Bowl as they were starting out. The owner of the bowling alley was a huge fan of Elvis Presley so he hired the two bands to do Elvis tribute concerts.
“We would play tons of Elvis songs and have special guests. It was really popular,” Credo said. “But then when we asked to play a similar tribute night to the Beatles, he said no.”
Due to the nature of the bands’ music catalogues and the dance music and top 40 songs they played, they struggled to work Beatles music into their setlists.
“I went to the Top Cats and said, ‘Look. We are going to try a Beatles night. We will play a few songs, and if it works, great. But if not, we can work our way back into our usual sets,’” Credo said.
When the day of the tribute concert arrived, the band had was not prepared for how big of a hit the event would be.
“We were only expecting around a hundred people or so at our first Beatles night. Almost 600 people ended showing up without any kind of advertising besides Rock N’ Bowl’s normal marketing,” Credo said. “We had people dancing in the bowling lanes and just going crazy for the Beatles.”
Year after year, the Top Cats with Credo on second guitar were playing the Beatles set at Rock N’ Bowl until the turnout became so big that they had to find a new venue at its current home the House of Blues in New Orleans. This will be the eighth year that Beatles Fest will take place at the House of Blues.
Avid fans of The Beatles can expect the music to stay true to The Beatles’ recordings of their music.
“You will not be listening to guys on stage jamming to songs that do not need to be jammed to. An example would be ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ a song that needs to be presented the way The Beatles presented it. We play the solos the same way The Beatles did, and we go into great detail to recreate how The Beatles played their music. We dove into the details to make sure that we play the music as accurately as we can,” Credo said.
With some of the songs, however, some nuances that the band played with will be altered and the band Bonerama will be performing their own rendition of a few different songs from The White Album.
Another big act partaking in the festival is Irma Thomas who will be playing her first ever Beatles song at this year’s concert.
“We sought her out because we wanted someone classic that represents New Orleans. She usually goes on stage and sings her own hits so she has never played a Beatles song in her 50-year career,” Credo said.
There will also be a video component to accent the music as the bands play them live. The Beatles’ music videos will play behind the bands as they play to keep the audience in a mindset of when the music was recorded in the extensive career of the Beatles.
“We do not look like The Beatles very much so we do not try to make ourselves look like The Beatles. We add the videos component to the concert to really show the tribute we are giving to the band,” Credo said.
Credo hopes to bring the Beatles Festival to other cities across the nation including Baton Rouge, and through that, hopes to bring local acts from the respective areas to play the tribute.
Credo’s love for The Beatles started when he was 14-years old when the anthology of The Beatles was released. The three part series made Credo pick up the guitar that he had put down before and sparked a new love for rock n’ roll music.
“Getting to hear how the music was made and why different sounds were the way they were in The Beatles’ own words just had me enthralled. It made me need to go out and start my own band,” Credo said. “I just became obsessed with these guys and wanted to know as much as I could about them.”
The 13th New Orleans Beatles Festival takes place Saturday, July 25 at the House of Blues in New Orleans. Tickets to the show are $22.