The Bootleg Beatles: 'We have to have an armed guard with a blacked-out van'

You’ve heard of Beatlemania, but what about Bootleg Beatlemania? It can happen. “When we go to the Philippines, we have to have an armed guard with a blacked-out van,” says Stephen Hill, who is George Harrison in the tribute band The Bootleg Beatles. “You can’t go anywhere. We say, ‘I’m starving – I need to go and get some food,’ and he gets his gun out because people will mob you. You go to the airport, and you can’t move two steps without somebody wanting a wacky face on a selfie. It’s madness. We’re not even dressed up. I’m walking out with my grey hair.”

“A girl went viral on TikTok, because she made a video with the caption ‘I was so drunk I thought this was the Beatles,’” says Miles Frizzell, the band’s Paul McCartney. “And she’s just at our show screaming at the top of her lungs at all the songs. It’s cool that they’re getting that much into it.”

There are thousands of Beatles cover bands all over the world, but The Bootleg Beatles remain the premier Fab Four tribute. Formed in in 1980 by four cast members of the West End musical Beatlemania, The Bootleg Beatles have since performed over 4,500 concerts in every corner of the globe, from the Royal Albert Hall to the State Theatre in Sydney.

Over the years the band have supported Rod Stewart, Tom Jones and David Bowie; in 1996 they opened Oasis’s huge Knebworth shows and in 1997 played at the Hillsborough Justice Concert at Anfield headlined by The Lightning Seeds; the band have established an annual Glastonbury slot at the Acoustic Tent (I saw them last year – it was tremendous fun and stylishly constructed).

In 2002, they performed at the Queen’s Jubilee at Buckingham Palace, headlined by a certain Paul McCartney; they met Macca, who jokingly said he’d go to watch them and heckle from the stalls. It’s not their only encounter with a real-life Beatle: the band played at the 50th birthday party of Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour in 1996, and unbeknown to them George Harrison was in attendance. When they met, Harrison showed them the correct chords to the newly released Anthology track “Free as a Bird” and asked them: “Who’s the Bootleg Brian Epstein? Cos he’s got all the money!”

The Bootleg Beatles have had 10 previous members, and none of the current line-up was in the band when it began – though three long-standing founding members, Neil Harrison, Andre Barreau, David Catlin-Birch – were in the band well into the 2010s (Neil now manages the group).

Nowadays, the band comprises Hill, Frizzell, Paul Canning (John Lennon) and George Elsemore (Ringo Starr). The Wolverhampton-born Hill, a jobbing musician who got the gig after his stint in the West End musical Let it Be, is currently the longest-serving member, having joined in 2014, while Frizzell, a 22-year-old from Nashville, Tennessee, is the newcomer, having joined last year.

Frizzell had a baptism of fire – his first gig was in Liverpool. “No pressure,” he smiles. Did he have the accent down? “Well I’ve been doing it for a while,” Frizzell says, as he’d played in Beatles bands in the US. “But it’s especially hard being an American. I’ve got a general sense of how he sounds, but the others have been helpful at fine-tuning things with certain vowels. But yeah, it’s pretty daunting.”

They were inundated with applications to be Macca; you must get some pretty bad ones? “I mean, yeah, of course you do,” Hill says. “I don’t want to be nasty about it, but it’s a very funny process to have to go through. You know within five seconds which way it’s going.”

Hill says Frizzell was the outstanding candidate for the job: they already knew him and were hoping he would apply. “In this business of Beatles bands, we know all the established bands over the world and we’re aware of who’s good,” Hill says. Is there competition between all the Beatles bands? “I think some bands would like to think so,” Hill says. “I guess you could say I’m a bit biased but The Bootleg Beatles have just been a step above everybody else,” Frizzell says. “I remember watching videos and going like, ‘Holy shit, they have the right amps. Nobody else does that.’ The little details like that are the things that really got me into this.”

A lot of work goes in to the members transforming into The Beatles every night. There are several costume changes all throughout the set as the band perform songs from different eras; their current tour sees them perform a selection of tracks from The Beatles’ five best-selling albums (Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles and Abbey Road). “I’ve got four wigs, three mustaches and a beard,” Hill says.

Pre-gig, it takes a while to get their costumes perfect, particularly poor Elsemore as Ringo. “George has to put on a prosthetic nose,” Hill says. “We take about an hour to get ready. He takes quite a bit longer. It’s all smoke and mirrors. It’s shading. I’ve got blue eyes so I wear brown contact lenses. And the wigs are real hair. They cost a lot of money, and they look real. So it takes a long time to get them into position.”

It has to be as accurate as possible. “Anybody can put a wig on,” Hill says. “You don’t want those curtains to come down and people go, ‘Oh for God’s sake.’ Everyone knows what the Beatles look like. So you better look good when it’s time to sing.”

Do things ever go wrong? “Oh yeah,” Hill smiles. “Sometimes we only get two minutes to change – it can get stressful,” Frizzell adds. “My moustache half-hanging off or sticking to the microphone by accident with the glue,” Hill says. “Split trousers. Wigs being knocked. When you change your guitar, you have to watch that wig.” “Sometimes I get a bit of a mohawk,” Frizzell smiles.

What about the psychology of becoming a Beatle? “It isn’t acting,” Hill says. “I’m not an actor. I call it mimicry. I’m more like a mimic. You have to give people enough things to make you think they’re watching George Harrison. When you’re not speaking or singing, you have to do little things to give the impression that you’re that you’re that character. As long as you look good, you feel good, you can pull that off. I wouldn’t walk around pretending I’m George Harrison.”

“The moment when you put the wig on, you get it brushed and it looks good, that’s the moment I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m in it, I’m no longer Miles,’” says Frizzell. “Because you do have to get on stage and for a two-and-a-half-hour show, there can’t be a moment where you forget, ‘Oh, I’m Paul McCartney on stage.’ You have to be living through: what would Paul do here?”

The nostalgic recent spate of Beatles activity – from Peter Jackson’s Get Back to McCartney’s recent documentary Man on the Run to the forthcoming Sam Mendes biopics – must be good for business? “Yeah, I think it is,” Hill says. “People will always come out to watch Beatles stuff.” Are they looking forward to the biopics?

“I’m just praying these films are going to be good,” Hill says. “You know, we do it for a living. They’ve got X amount of time to get it right for filming, and then it’s finished and it’s there for ever. So they must be doing the same thing we’ve been doing all our lives, just getting it right, listening, playing it back, recording yourself.”

What does Frizzell think about Paul Mescal as McCartney? “I do have hope for him. Everybody’s got their own interpretation of it, so we’ve just got to hope and pray that – especially people like us that have delved so deep into this – that it does it justice.” On Joseph Quinn as Harrison, Hill says: “I was looking last week. He’s got the George lips. He’s got the eyes. Again, it’s all smoke and mirrors. They can do these little things to make them look how they need to, but it’s the acting chops that we want to see. I can’t wait to see it.”

The Bootleg Beatles have a typically packed touring schedule playing to fans young and old. “You can’t rest on your laurels,” Hill says. “We change the show every year – it’s got to be that good every night.” This summer, alongside a Henley Festival appearance, the band will perform the Blue album with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. “I’m going to play one of my favourite songs, ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’, with a 70-piece orchestra,” Frizzell smiles. “Stuff like that, I’ve been pinching myself.”

Hill feels similarly lucky at being a Bootleg Beatle. “Some other musicians would never want to do this, because they want to be doing their own thing, and that’s fair enough,” Hill says. “But for me, this is the best job on the planet.”