If you do a Google search for American English, you will read that they are the undisputed best Beatles tribute band in the land. I have to agree with that. If I were to compare them to the musicians playing the Beatles in the touring musical Rain, I would definitely give my vote to American English!
The recent American English concert at Theatre at the Center, a fundraiser for the Cancer Resource Center, was a treat for Beatles fans. Everywhere I looked people were singing along – and they knew all of the words to all of their songs!
The band members are: Jim Irizarry – John Lennon, Eric Michaels – Paul McCartney, James Paul Lynch – George Harrison, Tony Giangreco – Ringo Starr and Richard Sladek – George Martin. They have the sound, they have the look, and each has perfected the mannerisms of his Beatle.
In the first act, they wore black suits and white shirts with narrow black ties, duplicating the look from the Beatles first performance on the Ed Sullivan Show. They opened the show with the Beatles first hit song, She Loves You. They followed that up with all of their early hits – All My Loving, Happy Just to Dance, A Hard Day’s Night, I Should’ve Known Better, Can’t Buy Me Love, Help and many more. They ended the first act by inviting the audience to stand up and dance to Twist & Shout.
They opened the second act wearing their Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band uniforms in yellow, orange, blue and purple, and of course they led off with Sgt. Pepper. That era included songs like With A Little Help, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, When I’m 64, and Yellow Submarine.
About this time in the concert, James Paul Lynch aka George Harrison came back on stage wearing long-haired wig and a black jacket over red and black striped bell bottoms. He said that George was always his favorite Beatle so he was delighted to play a medley of George’s hit songs including Here Comes the Sun.
When the others came back on stage to play Revolution and more, they too were wearing more mod clothes. After a standing ovation, they returned to the stage for an encore, an acoustic version of Hey Jude. It was a fabulous show!
