When Harrison met McCartney

When he was a teenager, Neil Harrison sang with Paul McCartney. When he grew up, he turned into John Lennon. Ian Harvey talks to one quarter of the Bootleg Beatles.

For a man who spends two hours a night being John Lennon, Neil Harrison has one overriding regret . . . he never got to see The Beatles perform in the flesh.

Harrison has spent the past 30 years performing as John Lennon, first in the West End show Beatlemania, and since then in its spin-off creation The Bootleg Beatles, widely regarded not only as the first tribute band in the world but also as the best Beatles tribute band full stop.

He's met Paul McCartney a couple of times and spent a happy two hours at a party with George Harrison once, but still his voice falters when I ask if he ever saw the Beatles in action during his childhood in Liverpool.

"I could have seen them but I didn't. I was living with my parents. I wouldn't have gone on my own but I could have seen them at the Liverpool Empire. But my parents . . .

"I was up in boarding school when they were playing one time. So I didn't actually see them live. I would absolutely love to have seen them."

His girlfriend, however did see The Beatles. "She saw them in Denmark. She's Danish and she saw them when she was very, very young, 12 I think. But she said it was all screaming. She wanted everybody to shut up, she couldn't hear the songs."

Hearing the songs is not a problem these days as fans young and old will discover when The Bootleg Beatles stop off at Birmingham NIA on Wednesday, December 16, on their annual Christmas tour.

In the past 30 years the show has grown into a two-hour, multi-media experience, with the band, supported by a small orchestra and a plethora of video screens telling the Beatles story from the Cavern, via Sergeant Pepper and on to the famous rooftop mini-concert on the roof of the Apple building in London.

It's had the critics falling over themselves to heap praise on the fake four, with the Liverpool Echo insisting "this is make-believe land where four characters actually become The Beatles".

It's a feeling that, even after 30 years, Harrison can sometimes share.

"If you've got good monitoring and you can hear everything then you feel like you're almost in the record. You've got this scene in front of you with all the other Beatles playing, you can get this almost . . . suspension of disbelief. Suspend your disbelief for a minute and you could almost be there.

"What's brilliant for me is that by the end of it everybody's kind of let go and they're all on their feet and they're singing these songs, Hey Jude or something, and it's party time. You'd think that after 30 years you must be used to it, but actually no."

Interest in The Beatles just doesn't seem to dissipate, with the media hoo-ha over the recent re-release of the band's entire catalogue in new digitally-remastered form and the launch of The Beatles Rock Band game, bringing the band's music to a whole new audience.

"I don't think we ever thought the Beatles would still be this popular," admits Harrison. "I don't think The Beatles maybe would even have thought that. But they're as popular as ever and every year there's new material, with the box sets and the Beatles video game."

In a classic British understatement he says: "It doesn't harm the Bootleg Beatles at all because it brings this stuff to a young audience. You completely see that at the concerts. So I see fifty percent, probably, under 30, which is fantastic because when we started it we'd just be playing to the people who grew up with The Beatles and went for the nostalgia. But in fact people are now coming to actually see how it was."

But while he never saw the Beatles perform, he did once sing with one Beatle and perform for another.

"I met Paul back in '68," he says. "I was about 17 and I went and sang carols outside his Dad's place in the Wirral, which is where I'm from, and we knew Paul was staying there. Paul came out with his guitar and he invited everybody in and we sang Beatles songs in his hallway for about 45 minutes.

"And then he showed me the chords for a Beatles song called I've Got A Feeling which he'd just written, which obviously wasn't even recorded. So I was party to this Beatles song before the world, which was absolutely fantastic for me.

"I went back and told all my mates that I'd met Paul McCartney and he'd taught me this song and, of course, nobody believed me. And then I've Got A Feeling came out on record and that was my vindication.

"But do you know what? I didn't even ask for his autograph."

He crossed paths with McCartney again when The Bootleg Beatles played the Queen's Jubilee in 2002.

"Paul was there because he was on last, we were on first, and we got a note saying 'Don't play Hey Jude'! And then I met him with Andre who is George Harrison in the Bootleg Beatles, and I was relating this story about having met him when I was a kid. And he's nodding away and Andre said 'You don't remember any of this, do you?' and he went 'Nope'!"

The Bootleg Beatles were also hired to play at the 50th birthday party of Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, where George Harrison was a guest.

"George was at the party. He was very natural, very normal, no airs and graces about being a rock star. Actually he was interested in us. That was remarkable to have a guy like George interested in us as people.

"We spent a couple of hours on and off chatting to him. And he came up with some very funny lines, like 'Which one is the Bootleg Brian Epstein because he's got all the money?' and 'You probably know the chords better than I do, I only played them once'."

And what about being the first tribute band and the flood of copycats who have followed?

"It was totally a fluke," insists Harrison. "We never thought of it being an industry like it is. You go 'Oh my God, what did we start?'

"It was only when we got this influx of Australian bands like Bjorn Again and The Australian Pink Floyd coming in that it started turning into a whole new genre. I think it's partly because it's so difficult to make a living as a musician with your own music and so if you want to do it, it's kind of the only avenue that's open."

Harrison has touched on the whole tributes industry in a project outside the Bootleg Beatles, a musical which is showing at the Upstairs at The Gatehouse venue in London until November 15.

"We are creatively stifled in a way," he explains. "I know you've got 250 songs to choose from but still it's never really going to be your own. I try and do other stuff. I've got a musical called Great Pretenders I've put on in a small fringe place in Highgate and it's six lookalikes in a dressing room all auditioning for a big legends-style tribute show that's come over from Las Vegas.

"There's an Elvis, a Marylin Monroe and a John Lennon and a Beyonce and there's a couple of others and it deals with this a bit, this whole idea that being a tribute is a bit of an eternal groundhog day. But you do make money out of it, you can make a living out of it. My hope is that a producer will like it and there'll be a national tour."

• The Bootleg Beatles appear at Birmingham NIA on Wednesday, December 16, 2009. Tickets are £22.50 plus booking fees

• For more information about Neil Harrison's musical, Great Pretenders, visit www.upstairsatthegatehouse.com