McCartney Times

VAN WERT – Fifty years ago The Beatles released “The Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and on Monday Van Wert will be able to celebrate with Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles which will be making its way to the Niswonger Performing Arts Center.Rain was created by Mark Lewis, in 1975, who originally started the band as an original. The band was comprised of members who happened to be huge Beatles fans. The original music wasn’t working as well as planned so the band decided to play sets of music they all loved together.“Rather than just including Beatles songs in the set we decided to separate it, and do some exclusively Beatles ‘sets’,” said Lewis. “Eventually, we separated it into an early Beatles set, Sgt. Pepper, and late Beatles segment. Mind you, at this time, there was no such thing as a ‘tribute’ band, nor had there been any other show such as ‘Beatlemania’ for us to copy.”From there the band had approached a local club in Los Angeles and asked to play on their dead nights. The club agreed and the night of the show the club was packed. After that, the club owner asked them to return and eventually the men met agents that booked them.“I knew I had created something very unique and special from the very beginning,” said Lewis. “I also knew that Rain brought a lot of joy to a lot of people. So in that I felt satisfied. I had a lot of doubt as to where this was going until we started to pack major Broadway type theaters about eight years ago. That was when we started to reap the reward of all of our hard work, and get some recognition for what we had created.”The band doesn’t just play the music of The Beatles, they also dedicate their time looking, sounding and playing like each member, which Lewis notes is a difficult thing to do.

Source: Rain to pay tribute to The Beatles at the NPAC – Times Bulletin