Paul Fitzpatrick: December 2023

There’s a lot to love about tribute bands.
Granted they may not all move like Jagger sing like Plant or solo like Joe Walsh but there’s more than a few positives….

Firstly, they know their audience, they play all the songs you want to hear. There’s no ‘here’s a track from our new album’, nonsense, and not only do they play all the hits, they play them just the way you remember them.

Secondly, you’re likely to attend these gigs in a smaller venue where you can actually see the act in person not on a big screen in a different postcode. You should also be able to partake of a reasonably priced beer or tumbler of wine without waiting 30 mins to get served, because let’s face it, as good as the Bootleg Beatles are, they’re not selling out Wembley Stadium, although they have played the acoustic stage at Glastonbury and supported Oasis at Knebworth, who to be fair are a decent Beatles/Slade/T-Rex tribute act themselves.

Finally, going to see a tribute band like The Australian Pink Floyd, is the only chance you’re going to get to hear a classic like Dark Side of The Moon as Pink Floyd intended.

The Floyd haven’t toured for 30 years and the prospects of them touring again are grim.

I get the stigma and negativity around ‘Tribute Acts’, and it’s fair to say that there’s a huge disparity between the best and the rest. For every ‘Illegal Eagles’ there are a dozen Rod Stewart tribute acts who could easily be mistaken for one of the Chuckle Brothers.

To be fair the disparity is not just down to talent.
A bloke with a feather cut and a backing track loaded with Rod’s greatest hits isn’t going to be able to compete with a 10 piece band of professional musicians like ‘Leonid and Friends’, Russian musicians dedicated to playing the songs of Chicago, and who probably sound better than the original these days.

Interestingly some of the tribute bands are so good that there have been several examples of life imitating art, where musicians who were part of a tribute act have actually joined the band they were tributing.

Step forward Benoît David who was the lead vocalist in a Yes tribute band, ‘Close to the Edge’. He had to put his repair business on hold for a couple of years when Steve Howe and Yes asked him to step in for an incapacitated Jon Anderson and tour with the band.
Similarly, Tommy Thayer gave up his role as Ace Frehley in a Kiss tribute band to take over from yep you’ve guessed it, Ace Frehley… he ended up touring and recording with Kiss for twelve years.

There are artists who have done it the other way around too.
Rick Buckler and Bruce Foxton two thirds of the original Jam formed a tribute band called ‘From The Jam’ and the recently and very sadly departed Denny Laine played in ‘Turkuaz’, a Wings tribute band.

Similarly, Jason Bonham (son of legendary Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham) who has sat in with the three remaining members of Led Zeppelin on the rare occasions they’ve played live since his father passed away, keeps himself busy with ‘Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening’.

There are numerous Led Zeppelin tribute bands on the circuit – ‘Dread Zeppelin’ who play Zep reggae style with an Elvis impersonator on lead vocals and ‘Lez Zeppelin’ a butch all-girl tribute, but my favourite is a Japanese gentleman by the name of Jimmy Sakurai who has devoted his life to being Jimmy Page and tours as MR JIMMY… watch him, it’s bizarre how similar he is to Page on stage.

You may also be forgiven for thinking that a lot of the 70s bands that are still touring today are nothing more than tribute bands anyway.
I love 10cc and their 1976 gig at the Glasgow Apollo was a personal highlight but if you buy tickets for next years official 10cc tour you’ll only see one of the original four members on stage, Graham Gouldman.
I’m sure it will still be a great show and they’ll play all the hits but is it fair to call it a 10cc tour when 75% of the band are missing?
By the way, don’t worry, the other three members of 10cc are still with us but like a lot of 70s bands they just don’t communicate anymore.

I would imagine Leonid & Friends, The Bootleg Beatles, Australian Pink Floyd, the Illegal Eagles and MR JIMMY all make a decent living from touring and performing and fair play to them they’re great at what they do.

Personally, I’m a fan of tribute bands like Nearly Dan who I’ve seen a few times and Stanley Dee who my son went to see recently. Talented amateur musicians with day jobs who gig in their spare time but who take the music seriously. I’m no musician but if you’re going to be in a tribute band then there must be easier gigs than trying to cover Steely Dan’s intricate chord sequences.

Bands like these just about cover their expenses and if they’re lucky will have a few quid left over for a couple of beers, however, their love for the original artists is infectious and if they weren’t up on stage entertaining us they’d be down in the audience enjoying a cold beer, playing air guitar and singing along too…