BY GRACE MCQUADE
If you never saw the Beatles live in concert back in the day, you can experience the next best thing when The Fab Faux takes the stage at The Space at Westbury on Saturday, May 19 at 8 p.m. to perform “The Beatles in Love & The Beatles in Rock.”
A name that’s a twist on the Beatles’ famous moniker, the Fab Four, The Fab Faux is comprised of five seasoned musicians and vocalists including Grammy award-winning Will Lee, bassist for more than two decades on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” music director and guitarist for “Conan,” Jimmy Vivino, drummer Rich Pagano, guitarist Frank Agnello, and keyboardist and guitarist Jack Petruzzelli.
While other Beatles tribute bands put on a good show by imitating John, Paul, George and Ringo with costumes, props, and British accents, The Fab Faux skips the pageantry and focuses on the music, bringing their passion and precision to perform these cherished songs from yesterday that still resonate today.
Petruzzelli discussed what led the group to come together to tackle the Beatles’ extensive songbook during a recent interview, saying, “In 1998, Will and Rich were on a gig with Hiram Bullock… and they started messing around at soundcheck, playing Beatles’ songs. Hiram said, ‘Hey guys, I love the Beatles, but that’s enough. Why don’t you start your own Beatles band?’ The lightbulb went off and they started thinking who they could ask to do it.”
Petruzzelli said he knew Pagano from various jobs. They also happened to live in the same part of the West Village, where they would see each other while alternate side parking their cars. “We’d have to sit in our cars for like an hour just to reserve a spot,” he recalls. “We always had these conversations about Beatles’ music so he recommended me.” Pagano then approached Agnello, who he knew for years was a Beatles’ fan.
Coincidence — or fate — played a role once again given that Lee and Vivino lived in the same apartment building. According to Petruzzelli, Lee would bring up his idea of forming a Beatles’ cover band when he’d run into Vivino in the elevator when they each got home from their respective late-night talk shows. Vivino went from calling him crazy to eventually agreeing to join the group.
So with a little help from his music friends, Lee christened The Fab Faux that year.
“We got together at Will’s place the five of us and we sang ‘Because’ just to see how it sounded and it went on from there,” Petruzzelli said, calling the band a labor of love.
Since then it’s been a long and successful road for the group that went from playing six shows in their first year to now celebrating 20 years as a headline act, drawing large audiences at concert venues including Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theatre, as well as the attention of Rolling Stone magazine, which called The Fab Faux “the greatest Beatles cover band… without the wigs.”
While one would think that by now the group has the Beatles’ repertoire down cold, performing the music of one of the greatest bands of all time isn’t necessarily an easy ticket to ride.
“Yes, it’s probably one of the most fun jobs you can have in the world to get paid to play Beatles’ music, but it’s also a responsibility,” Petruzzelli says. “It gets easier to some extent, but we don’t take it for granted.”
Petruzzelli used their recent concert marking the 50th anniversary of “The White Album” as an example, saying, “When we first started doing “The White Album” some ten odd years ago, we would need one day to rehearse just for “Revolution 9,'” an intricate composition. The group managed to work it out, but Petruzzelli says there are songs that are still challenging to play, one in particular that may surprise fans.
“When we first put this band together 20 years ago, I was 33, Will was in his early 40s… so it was difficult being grown men to think that we could pull off ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’ It’s still the hardest song to bring that freshness and that youthfulness to the stage,” he says.
“I Want to Hold Your Hand” was the Beatles’ first No. 1 hit in America, launching Beatlemania here in the U.S. and a string of other chart toppers about love — from “All My Loving” and “She Loves You,” to later tracks like “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “All You Need is Love” — providing The Fab Faux with much material to draw from for their upcoming Westbury concert.
“This is the first time we’ve done this show,” Petruzzelli said, noting that the “The Beatles in Love” portion will feature a setlist that includes classics such as “Something,” “Michelle,” and “I Will.”
“With this theme, we will have songs romanticizing love and songs about loss… No matter what was going on in your life, whether you were celebrating love… (or) going through heartache, you had songs to go to,” he said, like the heartbreaking “Yesterday,” the popular wedding song, “In My Life,” and the tender “Here, There and Everywhere.”
To balance these heartfelt moments, Petruzzelli says they will get back to the Beatles’ heavy rock songs that will be a mixed bag of everything from “Helter Skelter” to “Roll Over Beethoven” in one of The Fab Faux’s signature concerts that typically involve 30 guitars, two drum sets, a horn section known as the Hogshead Horns, and a string set called the Crème Tangerine Strings, that turn their stage into “a museum of instruments,” he says, giving the audience an authentic-sounding and memorable concert experience.
As for his favorite part of the show and what inspired his musical career, Petruzzelli said that he likes to perform “Hey Jude” and that he gravitates towards McCartney songs. At the age of four, he heard his first Beatles song, “Hello, Goodbye” off the Magical Mystery Tour album, and was hooked. When he was seven, he made his mother take him to the documentary film, “Let It Be,” three times in one week.
Petruzzelli went on to music school, played in bands in his New Jersey hometown, and performed with a rhythm and blues act in New York City, where he met and started working with Joan Osborne, a collaboration that continues today. It was a performance with Osborne at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett in the early ‘90s when Petruzzelli had an amazing, chance encounter.
“We were just finishing soundcheck and a fellow walked into the club and said, ‘I just saw Paul McCartney, he’s down at the pizza parlor.’” Petruzzelli didn’t need any help to make his move. He went right over to the pizzeria, where he saw McCartney sitting there with his wife Linda and two daughters.
“I walk in and because I’m expecting to see them my jaw doesn’t hit the floor. I’m just very casual and I order a slice… and they’re looking at me like, ‘OK, you know who we are,’ so I introduced myself and said I was playing at the Talkhouse… Paul asked me what instrument I played and I told him and then I said, ‘You know, you guys turned me on to Fats Waller.’” McCartney then talked about how his father got him into Waller and he sang a few bars of the Waller tune, “My Very Good Friend the Milkman.”
Petruzzelli hasn’t met McCartney since, but his memory of those five minutes talking shop with his music idol in a pizza parlor in the Hamptons is crystal clear. Little did he know back then that one day he would have a career playing Beatles’ music. “I’ll be on stage and just start laughing at myself sometimes when I realize what I’m doing, that I get to play this music… (by) the best writers in the world.”
His years with The Fab Faux also gave him and the band the opportunity to perform several times in the annual Beatles Week festival in Liverpool, England and record at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London, which Petruzzelli called “a lifetime experience (and) a dream come true.”
The Fab Faux continues to tour and play on Long Island. In addition to the Westbury concert this month, the group will perform at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on July 28. Petruzzelli will join Joan Osborne again at the Stephen Talkhouse on July 13.
For tickets to the show at The Space at Westbury, located at 250 Post Ave. in Westbury, go to www.thespaceatwestbury.com.
