The Beatles supported Pink Floyd in concert – sort-of.
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Musical history has not been rewritten, instead, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour used tribute band The Bootleg Beatles to make a room full of rock stars laugh.
Andre Barreau, aka George Harrison in the Bootleg Beatles, remembers being invited to play by Gilmour as part of his elaborate joke.
“I won’t even go into the rock royalty that was there,” Barreau says.
“It was his (Gilmour’s) gag really because he also hired the Australian Pink Floyd and his gag was that The Beatles would support Pink Floyd, which of course never happened in history.”
“And so we did the first part of the evening’s entertainment and then the Australian Pink Floyd performed, with three members of the real Pink Floyd playing with them,” Barreau says.
One of the guests at the party was George Harrison himself.
“That was his joke: The Beatles supported Pink Floyd and it happened in front of George Harrison.”
More notably for Barreau, this was one of two times in his 34 years in The Bootleg Beatles that he got to play for a real Beatle.
The Harrison impersonator says he also performed for Paul McCartney for the Queen’s golden jubilee in 2002 and describes the frontman as “charming”.
However, the time with his alter-ego was particularly special.
“The first thing he (George Harrison) said to us was ‘who’s the bootleg Brian Epstein because he’s got all the money’,” he says.
“We struck up a really good conversation, he was talking about Monty Python and Bob Dylan, all the stuff you would expect him to,” Barreau says.
The Bootleg Beatles formed in 1980.
John Lennon was still alive and punk and New Romantic music was taking off.
Barreau auditioned for a short-lived American musical called Beatlemania and the band formed from there.
The Bootleg Beatles were, as Barreau remembers, one of the first tribute bands on the scene willing to dress up for their parts.
“We knew that The Beatles had so many different looks through their careers... we had the moptops, and then the long hair and moustaches and John Lennon with the little round glasses,” he says.
“Then we expanded and did a Sgt Peppers set and it became this great big thing that it is now.”
In the mid 1990s, the three remaining Beatles, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Ringo Starr, recorded their parts on a demo John Lennon had made called Free As A Bird.
Interest has grown so much, The Bootleg Beatles have performed more than 5000 shows worldwide and will shortly be coming to Australia to mark the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ trip Down Under.
The band will perform the Beatles repertoire in chronological order, something Barreau says “works brilliantly”.
“We start off and it’s very simple, stark. We wear grey suits and there’s simple lighting. Then things get more complex and involved and we bring out an orchestra and play songs The Beatles didn’t play live ever like Strawberry Fields or I am the Walrus,” Barreau says.
At this point The Bootleg Beatles have been going longer than the actual Beatles ever did, “even three times at this stage,” Barreau says.
“It’s a wacky thing to have done and it’s something which I don’t think you could ever plan to do, it just unfolded in front of us.”
The Bootleg Beatles play Wests Leagues Club on Tuesday, June 3.
Alive has three double passes to give away to the show.
For your chance to win simply fill out the coupon in last Thursday's Mercury and return it to our office by noon Wednesday.
