The most famous rooftop performance in the world will get The Honey Sliders treatment at HOTA on 9 April.
On a freezing mid winter’s day in London, 1969, The Beatles gave their last ever live performance upon the rooftop of their Apple business headquarters in downtown Saville Row.
With a make shift rooftop stage, portable recording equipment, a bewildered crowd, the addition of Billy Preston on keys, and John and Ringo adorned in borrowed jackets, The Beatles’ Rooftop Concert became one of the most iconic live performances of all time.
Now South East Queensland band The Honey Sliders will be bringing this treasured, and well-documented performance back to life at The Gold Coast’s most prestigious music venue Home of the Arts on 9 April 2022.
Performing each of the songs The Beatles’ played on that historic day, plus a long set of tunes they have selected from The Beatles’ late period after they retired from giving live performances.
You may know by now that The Honey Sliders bring one of their favourite albums back to life every year, and have performed homages to Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and of course, The Beatles, to much audience acclaim.
It takes great musicians to do these legends justice, and The Honey Sliders are nothing if not great musicians.
Danny Widdicombe chatted to us ahead of this historic recreation.
We love this concept! Have you done it before, and how did the arrangement with HOTA come about?
We love this concept too! This is our tenth year of putting on these concept shows and we’ve been celebrating the anniversary in style. We’ve toured this show in Brisbane (2 x sold out shows), Sunny Coast, Northlakes, Currumbin, and Toowoomba.
I first pitched the idea to HOTA for this show in 2019 - which was the 50th anniversary of this iconic final Beatles’ live performance, but complications from a long history of leukaemia sidelined me for a while. I was busy releasing albums after I recovered, but then 2020 brought COVID after the fires and everything ground to a halt.
HOTA invited us down to perform the Easy Rider Soundtrack when things started opening up, and then we played at the massive amphitheatre as part of the Beatles vs Stones concert, which is when we started talking about reviving the idea of performing The Rooftop Concert.
Originally intended to be played on a rooftop, we racked our brains trying to come up with the right venue, only to have La Nina rain down upon us. We’re not ones to give up, so we created a film backdrop of the actual building the Fab Four played upon, which is projected behind us, creating the feeling of being there on that cold winter’s day in London 1969.
The movie has actually become a huge part of the show and was designed by our bass player Bos. Our long second set of Beatle tunes is accompanied by a psychedelic movie menagerie which has left our audiences spellbound. We’ve made the best of some trying situations and in doing so, have created our most captivating show to date.
You seem to always sell out these tribute shows. What kind of audience reactions do you get when you take on the Beatles, and how does it make you feel?
We work hard to make a living playing music - like the great Tom Petty once said - “Do something you really love and if it pays the rent, that’s success”.
When we first started playing these concept shows in 2013, we had small audiences, but we gave the shows our all, and I think music fans appreciate that. People can tell when musicians are for real, and I think that’s why they keep coming back - and bringing their friends.
The big theatre at HOTA is the biggest show we’ve put on ourselves, so it already feels like an achievement to have the backing of the supportive team at HOTA. Hopefully we can share our show with a full crowd!
So far the crowd reactions on this tour have been overwhelmingly positive - we don’t dress up like the Beatles, or put on accents or change the way we move or talk on stage - we perform as ourselves, paying homage to the prolific songwriting prowess that made the Beatles such a dynamic force in popular culture.
When we see the delight in the audience’s faces, it’s reassuring to know that we’ve managed to articulate our love of this music by performing it respectfully and with the skill that we’ve built from all the years of playing.
There’s a buzz that is created when a band and an audience form a connection and share something special - it's a form of real-life magic.
Is there anything you want people to know before the show?
We want people to know that we’re such tragic Beatle fans, that we’re as keen as they are to see these songs performed with the same sense of passion and desperation that made those recordings so vital and well-loved in the first place.
Our first set is the Rooftop Concert, as they played it. If you’ve seen the Peter Jackson film ‘Get Back’, or even the shortened Rooftop Concert at the cinema, you can feel the joy they were experiencing while they played these songs live. They were trying to get back to the source of what made them such a great band in the first place.
Our second set is a chronological trip through their catalogue - it’s a mix of hits and rarities that we’ve handpicked. There’ll be songs you’ve heard a million times that you can sing along to, but there’ll also be some deep cuts that we’ve never seen anyone else perform live, and it’s such a pleasant surprise for people when they witness us taking on these tracks.
Mostly, we want people to know that this is a celebration of the Beatles’ genius. There are two types of people in the world - those who love The Beatles - and those who don’t know it yet. We’re really looking forward to coming back to play for the music fans on the Gold Coast.
---
The Honey Sliders will perform The Beatles’ rooftop concert at HOTA on Saturday 9 April. Visit hota.com.au for tickets (these will sell out, so be quick!
