
The music of the Beatles is being given another new millennium revival in an upcoming production dubbed “A Walk Down Abbey Road: A Superstar Tribute to the Beatles.” The show will tour the U.S. this summer, and will feature a roster of veteran musicians led by Alan Parsons .
Joining Parsons--who is both performing on keyboards and serving as the outing’s musical director--will be bassist John Entwistle (The Who), singer Ann Wilson (Heart) and singer-guitarist Todd Rundgren . A drummer, as well as an additional guitarist and keyboardist, will be added to the roster, according to a spokesperson for the tour.
The outing--dates for which have only been set in California thus far--will begin in mid-June. Organizers hope to add a second night to an already sold-out show in San Diego, and additional dates throughout the U.S. will be announced soon, the spokesperson said.
The show will be divided into two halves, with Parsons, Entwistle, Wilson and Rundgren each performing three or four songs of their respective solo material before joining to play classic Beatles songs during the performance’s second half.
Parsons--who is best known as the nucleus of the Alan Parsons Project--first rose to prominence for engineering the Beatles’ classic 1969 album “Abbey Road.” He also worked with Paul McCartney on the former Beatle's solo project, Wings.
Rundgren’s musical connection to the Beatles includes covers of two Beatles tracks--“Rain” and “Strawberry Fields”--on his 1976 album “Faithful,” as well as a Beatles pastiche album in 1980 titled “Deface the Music.” In addition, he wrote the music for a late-‘80s, off-Broadway version of what was originally meant to be the Beatles third motion picture.
Entwistle played in an incarnation of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr's All-Starr band, and Wilson has noted the Beatles as a primary musical influence.
The present-day marketability of the Beatles’ music was recently confirmed when last November’s “1” (Capitol), a compilation of 27 of the Liverpool quartet’s No. 1 hits, debuted at the top of the album chart and stayed there for a total of 8 weeks. The album was certified multi-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in February for shipping 7 million copies.