Tribute bands may pay special tribute this year
It’s hard to conceive of moments of silence amid all the clamor of the OC Fair this summer.
But when some of the tribute bands take the stage as part of the fair’s annual concert series, the mood may be more reflective than usual.
In a year when the pop music world has bid farewell to a lengthy list of icons, some of the bands that will grace the fair’s stages will take on an added resonance. The Eagles tribute band Hotel California, which is set to perform at the Hangar on July 21, will play a series of tunes that the smooth baritone of Glenn Frey — who died in January — helped lift to the top of the charts.
Likewise, the six-piece band Space Oddity, set to play at the Hangar on Aug. 13, pays homage to the late David Bowie. The Beatles tribute band Fab Four will take the Pacific Amphitheatre stage on Aug. 6 — evoking memories of George Martin, the band’s producer and sometime piano accompanist, who died in March at age 90.
“I think that what we call ‘classic rock’ is the classical music of our day,” said David Brighton, the lead singer of Space Oddity. “Our parents may have grown up on Beethoven or Bach or jazz or maybe musicals, who knows, but the classical music of today is classic rock. It was perhaps the first form of music that had television accompanying it, so it was on TV, it was in movies, and it’s now on the Internet.
“When you think of Elvis Presley or the Beatles or the Who, you don’t just think of a song. You think of Elvis shaking his hips. You think of the Beatles’ hair. You think of Bowie and his outrageous garb. That was a huge part of what they did.”
For many tribute bands, the experience of seeing a classic artist live — even in approximated form — rivals the music itself in importance. Pull up a photo of Jumping Jack Flash, which will hit the Hangar stage Aug. 11, and you’ll see a re-creation of 1960s-vintage Rolling Stones, down to the shaggy hair and pouty-lipped lead singer. For Bee Gees Gold, which re-creates the disco hit makers Aug. 3 at the Hangar, white suits are in.
As the cliché goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and there are few sincerer forms of imitation than basing a band’s entire repertoire and appearance on another artist. Still, some take the reenactment to higher levels than others.
George Dickinson, the manager of Hotel California, said his group decided against assigning members to impersonate the individual Eagles — a common practice for tribute acts. Likewise, Hotel California doesn’t try to replicate the original recordings note for note.
“The guys in the band didn’t want to do roles, because we always felt like the Eagles were pretty honest in the presentation of their material, and we should be pretty honest in the presentation of their material as well,” Dickinson said. “We do our renditions of their material.”
Hotel California, which started three decades ago and maintains a year-round schedule, is most concerned with celebrating the songbook that Frey, Don Henley and others compiled. According to Dickinson, the band honors that catalog in another way: Every time it sells a CD, it pays royalties to the songwriters.
Space Oddity, by contrast, does its best to re-create the authentic Bowie — and in Brighton’s case, that hasn’t been hard to do.
The singer and guitarist, who played in a Beatles tribute band before launching Space Oddity, found himself compared repeatedly over the years to the “Suffragette City” artist. Finally, he decided that he might be able to build a livelihoodon that resemblance.
“I was always accused of sounding too much like David Bowie,” Brighton said. “Even when I tried not to, labels would say that. Producers would say that.”
Brighton’s fame as a Bowie impersonator grew to the point where, in 2003, he portrayed many of the rock star’s incarnations from over the years in a TV commercial for the French mineral water Vittel. His co-star in the ad: Bowie himself, whom Brighton says was an ardent fan of his tribute act.
After Bowie’s death in January, Space Oddity’s shows became part concerts and part memorial tributes. At one, according to Brighton, a woman whose father had been a chauffeur and bodyguard for the singer got up and made a speech.
“We would just have this big community of people sort of grieving together and healing together,” he said. “In a way, it was very therapeutic. Of course, it’s part of life. But he was still quite young.”
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What: Hotel California: A Salute to the Eagles
Where: The Hangar, OC Fair & Event Center, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa
When: 8:30 p.m. July 21
Cost: $14.75 to $18.50
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What: Space Oddity: A David Bowie Retrospective
Where: The Hangar, OC Fair & Event Center, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa
When: 8:30 p.m. Aug. 13
Cost: $16.50
Information: (714) 708-1501 or ocfair.com
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Miller is a contributor to Times Community News.
