Beatles look-a-likes took the stage Sunday night at The State Theatre for a journey back in time, showing people in a few hours what The Beatles did over multiple decades.
The Beatlemania NOW! tribute concert consists of four men who look and sound like The Beatles. The show incorporates multimedia to take the audience on a ride through time to show not only the band's style and music trends, but also political historical moments such as John F. Kennedy's assassination, the Vietnam War and the hippie movement.
The audience included a mix of people of all ages -- from elementary school students to senior citizens -- and several people were dressed in Beatles T-shirts and baseball caps.
Donald Schwartz, of State College, has attended five Beatlemania NOW! tribute concerts. Schwartz's 11-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter attended the show with him. He added that he has been playing Beatles music for his children since they were babies.
The performers had the audience interacting with the show by clapping, stomping and singing at certain moments throughout the tribute.
Television commercials from the 1960s were played to show the crowd what was advertised around the time the Beatles first took the stage on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.
"The multimedia was really cool. It drops me in the environment of the time," James Lestrange (junior-communications arts and sciences) said.
The Camel cigarettes commercial made several people laugh. The advertisement shows doctors smoking cigarettes, trying to convince people that smoking is healthy.
Besides the use of the multimedia, the four-man-band strived to look and sound like the original group.
"They do a great job representing the band," Sal Burgio (junior-geographic information science) said. "They aren't around anymore and this is the closest thing to it."
Schwartz said Scot Arch, who plays John Lennon, looks and sounds a lot like the real Lennon.
"The sound is so close, it's unfortunate The Beatles never got back together and John Lennon was killed -- I think they would have eventually gotten back together, but they never got the chance," Schwartz said.
Many guitars were used throughout the performance to help match the sound of the different styles of music the Beatles performed over the years.
Burgio said the music and looks of the performers were amazing but he wished the show had more musicians on stage for certain songs -- such as having string instruments for songs like Eleanor Rigby.
Multiple costume and hair-do changes and the use of different instruments to re-create the original sound helped make the tribute concert similar to a real Beatles' performance -- and the use of multimedia added even more visual entertainment.
"They got bigger and bigger in the '60s," Schwartz said. "It was a phenomenon that will never be repeated."
