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Fake Beatles No. 9: The Kaisers vs. Wilhelm Wimbledom

Of all the Fake Beatles to come down the pike in recent years, one of the most remarkable was the Kaisers. From 1993 to 2002, this Edinburgh quartet released five studio and one live LP of the purest beat-group sounds this side of Hamburg's Star-Club. Clad in skintight trousers and sporting mile-high quiffs, they were essentially the Fab Four before that group started combing their hair over their foreheads in emulation of German art students.

The band applied its verisimilitude to the 1962-63 aesthetic not just to appearance but to song selection -- a mixture of note-perfect originals and the prevailing R&B cover tunes (recorded in glorious mono) that were in the repertoire of every beat combo of the era, from the Big Three to the Swingin' Blue Jeans. The Kaisers' exactitude also extended to the painstakingly created artwork: from the type style to the period-evoking black-and-white photos -- and especially to the liner notes, the main focus of this post.

Those of you who are fans of rock 'n' roll of the British early-to-mid-'60s variety may be familiar with the condescending sleeve notes on the back of those LPs. Seemingly written under duress by some put-upon NME or Melody Maker scribe who makes no bones about the fact that he would much rather be listening to George Shearing than the caterwauling claptrap before him, the term "faint praise" would be too generous. There's something very stiff-upper-lip about carrying a negative review on your band's own album that is utterly charming in this hagiographic age.

As stated earlier, the Kaisers were sticklers, and that's where the esteemed critic Wilhelm Wimbledon enters the picture, for he is the personage trusted to explain the group to the record-buying public. Take the concluding passage from the boys' debut long-player, Squarehead Stomp: "What more can I say about this disc? If unintelligible shouting over a cretinous off-key back beat apparently recorded in five minutes with the minimum of rehearsal is your 'scene,' I dare say this record will be a treasured addition to your popular music collection."

Here are some choice lines from the back of the Kaisers' second album, In Step With the Kaisers: "[I]t was back to work for the tight trousered quartet as they threw themselves blindly into another melody free rhythm and blues workout." Wimbledon's notes reach a particularly frustrated tone on the third LP, Beat It Up!: "I suppose you'd like to read some teen rave type comment on the 'music' lurking within this typically garish sleeve, but it seems that space is at a premium due to the somewhat overlarge photographc study of your favorite foursome below."

The poor fellow clearly must have been driven beat-mad by the time of the Kaisers' fourth album, Wishing Street, as a new, more sympathetic liner-note writer, one Joseph Budge, offers up an almost positive statement: "[It] features a clutch of brand new numbers...recorded with an unprecedented clarity of sound that facilitates almost complete audibility of both words and music." Not standing for such mollycoddling of rich, pampered pop stars like the Kaisers, Wimbledon gives that softie Budge the sack and reclaims his position behind the Underwood for the band's fifth release, Shake Me! After expending a paragraph or four comparing them unfavorably to Elvis and Cliff, he terms the group lazy and spoiled by success, finally getting around to summing up the entire 14-song album with these words: "They call this the 'new sound.' I thought someone had stepped on the cat's tail for a moment." Reminder: All these words appear on the Kaisers various albums and singles.

You can keep your Lester Bangs and his so-called iconoclastic ilk. True gonzo rock journalism begins and ends with Wilhelm Wimbledon!

Mach Schau: A Kaisers Bouquet (all songs MP3)

Hipshake Shimmy Kitten (an uptempo shaker from Squarehead Stomp)

Like I Do (a tender ballad from Beat It Up!)

Time to Go (a harmonica-propelled rocker from Wishing Street)

No Other Guy (any title similarity between this Shake Me! song and the beat-group standard "Some Other Guy" is surely happenstance)

What You Gonna Say (the lower-fi 45 version)

Shake and Scream (this live version of the Kenny Lynch tune is Fake Beatles twice removed)

Cry for a Shadow (this B-side is technically not Fake Beatles, as this is originally a Real Beatles song, but it qualifies, being Real Beatles doing Fake Shadows)

Fake Beatles No. 8: Jerseybeat

It took the eighth installment of Fake Beatles to finally get to one of the most heralded (and most successful) Beatles soundalike discs, namely "Lies," by the Knickerbockers, of Bergenfield, N.J. Before fronting this combo, Knickerbockers lead singer Buddy Randell (under real name Bill Crandall) was the sax player on the Royal Teens' 1958 novelty smash "Short Shorts" alongside Bob Gaudio, who later became a founding member of the ultimate Jersey boy band, the Four Seasons.

The band, which took its name from Knickerbocker Avenue, Bergenfield's main drag, initially based its sound on an R&B/dance formula, as found on the group's first LP, Jerk & Twine. However, it was their one Top 20 hit, "Lies," written by Randell with bandmate Beau Charles and released at the end of 1965, that earned the band's placement in the Beatles Hall of Fake. With its Merseybeat on overdrive sound coupled with Randell's uncannily Lennonesque vocals (including falsetto octave leaps), the song fooled many a Fabs fan, who, to a person, were gladly hoodwinked. "Lies" was more than just a Beatles-sounding disc, it was a truly great rock 'n' roll record that also sounded like the Moptops.

The Knicks subsequently issued a catalog of songs of varying fake Beatletude, including the more than credible "One Track Mind" and "Just One Girl," but alchemy was fleeting for the boys from Bergen County.

The Knickerbockers: "Lies"
The Knickerbockers: "One Track Mind"
The Knickerbockers: "Just One Girl"
The Knickerbockers: "Stick With Me"
The Knickerbockers: "I Love"

While the Knickerbockers were the toast of North Jersey, they had a doppelganger of sorts patrolling the southern tip of the Garden State. As cited in Fake Beatles No. 7, the Redcoats, from the Wildwood/Cape May area, were blazing up and down the lower Jersey Shore with their own brand of bogus Beatling. The parallels between the Redcoats and the Knickerbockers are plentiful: Both had colonial-evoking band monikers, both had a member who had a pre-Beatles novelty hit single (Redcoats leader John Spirt was in the Ran-Dells of "Martian Hop" infamy, a fact that also illuminates the "Randell"/"Ran-Dells" name coincidence), and both had singers who could almost out-Lennon John Lennon himself.

Like many of their Fake Beatles brethren, the Redcoats delivered songs that hearkened to specific Beatles songs and styles, as heard on "You Had No Right," "Love Unreturned," "Another Took Her Place" and "Back to His Door," all strangely unreleased until the 2001 compilation Meet the Redcoats! Finally. This 12-song disc also shows the Redcoats delving into a variety of mid-period and later-Beatles pastiches, such as "Man," which is half of "Taxman" in both title and tune, as well as their foray into the Herman's Hermits-isms of "The Dum Dum Song," which did find release in 1965 on Laurie.

Perhaps feeling guilty for their Tory-refencing band name, the members of the Redcoats issued a 45 on the teensy Providence label under the name the Statesiders. "Patterned the Same," backed with "She Belonged to Another," re-create their Beatles love, with lower fi than to be found in the group's next incarnation, as the better-produced Sidekicks, who released an LP on RCA in 1967.

The Redcoats: "You Have No Right"
The Redcoats: "Another Took Her Place"
The Redcoats: "Love Unreturned"
The Redcoats: "Back to His Door"
The Statesiders: "She Belonged to Another"

Fake Beatles No. 7: Fake Other Bands of the British Invasion

So far in the Fake Beatles series, we've explored combos who have siphoned off enough of the Fab Four high-octane formula that they have been able to synthesize the Beatles sound passably enough to fool Ringo's granny. But let it be told that the Mersey Moptops were not the only British beat group given the copycat treatment. Many bands of the time, when not adding a little Beatles bop to their songs, instead gave them a Searchers jangle, that Dave Clark Five stomp or some Hollies harmonies. Here are a fab four examples of groups that have created uncanny simulations of several non-Beatles bands of the British Invasion. [All songs MP3]

Mr. Lucky and the Gamblers: "I Told You Once Before" In the mid-'60s, a surprising number of American bands went in for the moody, organ-drenched minor key musings and whispery Colin Blunstone vocals as found on The Zombies' singles "She's Not There" and "Leave Me Be," including Phoenix's Phil and the Frantics, Wilmington, Del. quintet The Enfields, and The Live Five, out of Salem, Ore. One of the best ersatz Zombies cuts is also a product of the Pacific Northwest, courtesy of Mr. Lucky and the Gamblers, from outside Portland. Just one listen to 1966's "I Told You Once Before," the B-side of the garage raver "Take a Look at Me," and it's clear that Mr. Lucky and the Gamblers came up with a winning hand on this song that bears a not-quite-litigious similarity to "Tell Her No."

The Redcoats: "The Dum Dum Song" One more entry in the longstanding tradition of Yank combos with Brit-evoking names, these bogus blokes, from Wildwood, N.J., were led by John Spirt, who had a 1963 novelty hit with the Ran-Dells' "Martian Hop." Around 1965, Spirt recruited brothers Zach and Randy Bocelle into his new Beatles-inspired group, to which they contributed an uncanny simulation of the John-and-Paul vocal style. This went hand-in-hand with a plethora of Fabs-formula songs written by their leader with bandmate Mike Burke, most of which went unreleased until 2001's Meet the Redcoats! Finally collection. One track that actually did see the light of day in '65 was a release on Laurie Records of "The Dum Dum Song." And unlike most of the Redcoats' musical output, this one is a Herman's Hermits meets Herman Munster frankensong that manages to out-Herman Peter Noone himself, for what that's worth.

Randy and the Radiants: "A Love of the Past" It's a shame these Memphis boys with a mean British fetish never made it big. They may have been hampered by being signed to their hometown Sun Records label in its waning days, which was more suited to promoting the likes of pompadoured '50s rockabilly cats than this group's inspired Anglophilia. "A Love of the Past," like all but four of the tracks on the collection Memphis Beat: The Sun Recordings 1964-66, never saw the light of day till 2007. It's a crying shame, as this tender beat ballad takes the listener on a Gerry and the Pacemakers ferry cross the, well, Mississippi, in this case.

Peter Berry and the Shake Set: "In Lonelier Days" This perfect re-creation of a Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas record, even down to the "Bad to Me" spoken introduction and George Martin-esque piano solo, also only saw release in 2007. But at least this Norwegian beat group has an excuse: Despite every little thing indicating that they're from 1964, Berry and the boys are actually a modern-day combo. This particular tune, as well as the rest of the tracks on these Norsemen's second LP, ...For Goodness Shake!, was recorded in glorious monophonic sound on the vintage equipment at Liam Watson's Toe Rag Studios in London.

Fake Beatles No. 6: Roots of the Rutles

Almost exactly 30 years ago, on March 22, 1978, long before TiVo — heck, even predating the VCR — i held my cassette recorder up to the single speaker on my television set to capture in perpetuity (at least aurally) the Rutles mockumentary All You Need Is Cash. For a teenage fan of both the Beatles and Monty Python/Saturday Night Live such as myself, this was some sort of convergence of the gods, who until then had never put aside their petty differences to create a paradise on Earth.

The fact that there were numerous Beatles connections between the Rutles and their object of parody was soon made evident — George Harrison makes a wry cameo in the film; former Fabs publicist Derek Taylor worked the soundtrack album. Most important is that Python cohort Neil Innes, who portrayed the John Lennonesque Ron Nasty and wrote all the splendid spoofs of every style in Beatledom, was a key member of the Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah) Band. Not only did this 1960s Dada-jazz-rock-psych-pop combo appear in the Beatles' weirdie Magical Mystery Tour film, Paul McCartney, calling himself Apollo C. Vermouth, produced the Bonzos' "I'm the Urban Spaceman," an Innes composition.

Suffice to say that Innes' skills at Beatle mimickry both in song and in voice showed up long before he was pressed into service as the chief Rutle. On the final Bonzo Dog Band LP, 1972's Let's Make Up and Be Friendly, the song "Fresh Wound" shows his gift for parroting the Lennon style before going slightly overlong. "Give Booze a Chance," another Lennon-referencing Bonzos track, was in this instance written and sung by the group's other main creative force, the appropriately perpetually soused Vivian Stanshall, and is found in this BBC Radio session take.

A post-Bonzos Innes collaborated with a post-Python Eric Idle on the BBC Television series Rutland Weekend Television, where the Rutles proper made their debut in a sketch that was also shown on a Saturday Night Live episode, shaking their mocktops to an early version of "I Must Be in Love." (Interestingly, Innes also performs "Cheese and Onions" on SNL a year before All You Need Is Cash's creation.) An abbreviated version of the Rutles' "Good Times Roll," then named "The Children of Rock and Roll," also has its origin in an RWT sketch.

This past couple of weeks, the Rutles have been going meta, with Beatles tribute band the Fab Four portraying Nasty, Dirk, Stig and Barry in an official 30th anniversary celebration in Los Angeles and New York. But the concept of Rutlemania-mania predates this dubious milestone. In 1990, Shimmy-Disc issued a tribute album titled Rutles Highway Revisited, and, currently plying their trade in Austin, Texas, is Ouch! — yes, a Rutles tribute band. Below find some Rutles-related curiosities and rarities, and be thankful you don't have to hold up your cassette player to this computer in order to possess them for posterity.

Bonzo Dog Band: Fresh Wound (MP3)
Bonzo Dog Band: Give Booze a Chance [BBC session] (MP3)
The Rutles: I Must Be in Love [Rutland Weekend Television version] (MP3)
Ron Lennon: The Children of Rock and Roll [Rutland Weekend Television version] (MP3)
The Pussywillows: Hold My Hand (MP3)

Fake Beatles No. 5: Czerwone Gitary, the Fab Five From Gdańsk

In the mid-1980s, thanks to an Argentinian contact, i was able to acquire most of the collected works of Uruguay's musically brilliant answer to the Fab Four — Los Shakers. That coup subsequently put me on a bit of a global quest: Whenever i would visit a foreign land, my goal was to purchase recordings by that nation's equivalent of the Beatles.

That meant every trip to Montreal secured me armloads of Les Sultans records, excursions to Spain landed me several Los Brincos discs, i helped myself to a smorgasbord of Tages music in Sweden, even my visit to Istanbul entailed smuggling back, Midnight Express style, recordings by Mavi Işıklar (OK, it wasn't quite like that, but let me have my fantasies). Yet it was in the faraway and exotic locale of Greenpoint, a Polish enclave in Brooklyn, that i first came face to face with Czerwone Gitary — Gdańsk's finest purveyors of beat, as exemplified by the band's slogan: "We play and sing the loudest in Poland."

Czerwone Gitary — their name translates as "The Red Guitars" — formed in that seaport city in 1965. Like their Liverpool musical counterparts receiving American R&B from seamen during their formative years, for Czerwone Gitary being located dockside meant exposure to music otherwise unavailable to other Soviet Bloc musicians. One listen to the five-piece combo's debut LP, 1966's To właśnie my, makes it evident whose records the Polish sailors were slipping to the band members. Recording exclusively original numbers that ranged from bouncy rockers to keenly harmonized ballads, every Moptop move is represented in spades. But unlike most foreign Fabs, they seemed to be only one year behind their role models' sonic innovations. And though the band's name alludes to their status as a rock group based behind the Iron Curtain, Czerwone Gitary's lyrics aren't exactly the Communist Manifesto. In fact, judging by the titles, their songs don't seem to be about much at all.

Imagine Jerzy, Krzysztof, Bernard, Seweryn and the other Jerzy shaking their mopheads while serenading us with "Pięciu nas jest" ("There are five of us") or the title track ("Here we are"), and you realize that not having anything to sing about is no reason to clam up. And when the words do mean something, it's still a head-scratcher. While by 1966, the Beatles themselves were learning how to spell THC and LSD, the Czerwone crew evidently broke into the local vodka distillery to achieve the same effects. The recorded proof is their song "Bo ty się boisz myszy" ("Because you are afraid of mice"), a silly romp that they giggle their way through.

Suffice to say they became Beatles big in Poland, touring all the spots the Beatles couldn't, such as Czechoslovakia, East Germany and the Soviet Union. Czerwone Gitary have carried on for 43 years and more than 80 albums, later adopting a folk-pop direction in the '70s. They still perform today, with three original members: guitarist Jerzy Kossela, drummer Jerzy Skrzypczyk and founding member Henryk Zomerski on bass.

Czerwone Gitary: To właśnie my (MP3)
Czerwone Gitary: Nie zadzieraj nosa (MP3)
Czerwone Gitary: Kto winien jest (MP3)
Czerwone Gitary: Pięciu nas jest (MP3)
Czerwone Gitary: Dlaczego pada deszcz (MP3)
Czerwone Gitary: Bo ty się boisz myszy (MP3)

Fake Beatles No. 4: Deception on 45

As we've learned from the previous two Fake Beatles posts in this series, it's very easy to design an album cover calculated to hoodwink consumers into purchasing what they think is a genuine Fab Four long-player but is in actuality a Beatles deception disc. Here's what you need to feature in your artwork:

• The word Beetle or Beat in top-of-the-eyechart-size type, or
• A prominent display of bowl haircuts (can be disembodied), or
• Three to five guys photographed in half-shadow or leaping joyously, or
• The songs "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" prominently billed, or
• Any combination of the above (the more, the deceptive-ier).

But what can a  label exec do if he has flim-flam on his mind but has to set his sights a bit more modestly, say, in the 45 rpm sphere, and thus doesn't have the luxury of a picture sleeve to perpetrate his Beatle bamboozle? The answer lies in the three i's: imply, infer and insinuate. Take the following misleading Moptop tactics employed on the following three singles as a lesson in how to circumvent the limitations of the 7-inch format:

Guess Who? Yes, that Guess Who: Later appending an initial The and dumping the question mark, Canada's finest rock combo of the late '60s and early '70s got its interrogative name by attempting to fool folks into believing its admittedly fine 1965 version of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates' "Shakin' All Over" was secretly perpetrated by a disguised Beatles. In actuality, Chad Allan and the Expressions, as they were known at the time, tried to drum up a little publicity by intimating that their beat-style wax offering was Liverpool-spawned rather than Winnipeg-crafted. To add to the confusion, the B-side of that release by the hosing hosers is a Beatled-up version of Fab fave artist Arthur Alexander's "Where Have You Been All My Life." But in for a penny, in for a Canadian Tire dollar, they figured, as they retitled the song "Till We Kissed" and swapped its Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil songwriting credit for then–Guess Who frontman Chad Allan's defrauding little name.

The "You Know Who" Group! During the height of Beatlemania, New York producer Bob Gallo wanted a piece of that sweet Beatle dosh, so he released several 45 (as well as a full LP on which four musicians appear on the cover sporting Zorro masks) under the name The "You Know Who" Group! [exclamation theirs] Once again, you were supposed to surmise that the band's conundrum of a moniker pointed to a certain Merseybeat combo traveling incognito — and you'd be wrong, of course. But wait just a mop-headed minute: The twist is that The "You Know Who" Group! was a certain Liverpool beat band famous for its later releases on Apple Records: The Undertakers were a Merseyside group that relocated stateside in 1965, and whom Gallo employed to record several "You Know Who" Group! sessions. To further connect Fake Fabs to Actual Beatles, 'Takers lead singer Jackie Lomax was one of the first signings on Apple, recording the George Harrison composition "Sour Milk Sea" and the LP Is This What You Want? on the Beatles' imprint in 1968.

John & Paul: The artists' names on this 45 illustrate a more unsubtle form of hornswoggle, which the cigar chompers at Hollywood-based Tip Records foisted on a seemingly gullible record-buying public in that magic year of the Beatles Deception Single known as 1965. If anyone thought the sides "People Say" (not the Chiffons hit), backed with "I'm Walkin'" (not the Fats Domino/Ricky Nelson smash), were actually by the John & Paul, well, what's the harm? Nothing is known about the two fellas who perhaps not so coincidentally share their given names with the dominant duo of the Fab Four, yet while a quick listen loudly screams Not The Beatles, it's a catchy couple of tunes nonetheless. Accordingly, we salute John Fonebone and Paul Cowznofski, wherever they are, for their lasting contribution to the field of Beatles deception.

Guess Who?: Till We Kissed (MP3)

The "You Know Who" Group!: (Roses Are Red) My Love (MP3)

John & Paul: People Say (MP3)

Fake Beatles No. 3: Battle of the Bogus Beatle Bands' Second Album

In a previous Fake Beatles post in this series, this writer pitted two Beatles exploitation records on the same budget label against each other in a battle for Mocktop supremacy. At this point you may ask, "Who won that contest: the Fake Beatles, or the Fake Chipmunks doing the same Fake Beatles songs that those Fake Beatles did?" The answer is obvious and evident — the winner was you, esteemed reader!

We have a second skirmish prepared, in which, once again, you can listen and choose between two related Fab Four deception records tooled to cash in on that whole British Invasion "fad," this time released on the cheapjack Diplomat label. (You may be familiar with what these rip-off albums look like: The cover either sports four — or sometimes three or five [!] — disenscalped wigs, or else a similar number of guys imitating the iconic Robert Freeman Meet the Beatles! half-shadow cover pic.)

This second Fake Fabs Fight, unlike the preceding one, draws its combatants exclusively from the human species, yet with a Battle of the Sexes twist: The featured clash is between the Manchesters and the Beatle Buddies; in other words, Fake Beatles vs. Fake Lady Beatles! (Note: "Fake Lady Beatles" is meant to convey the questionable veracity of the Beatle Buddies' Beatle-ness, not of their perceived gender — but if you've clicked on the album cover and taken a gander at the mugs on a couple of those Buddies, the confusion is understood.)

Just as last time, as both these albums were recorded on the quick and dirty by the same label, they have several "original" Fake Beatles songs in common as well as the same backing tracks from each, naturally. That serves to make this a fair contest without the need to resort to patronizing handicapping. May the better bogus Beatle (or Beatle-ette) win!

Round 1: Listen and decide who's more truly fake — the boys or the girls:
Manchesters: Wearying, Worrying Blues (MP3)
Beatle Buddies: Wearying, Worrying Blues (MP3)

Round 2: Suss which lot you fancy, luv — the copy chaps or the mocking birds:
Manchesters: I Waited (MP3)
Beatle Buddies: I Waited (MP3)

Round 3: Here's what happens when each side dips into the same public-domain bag as the real Beatles:
Manchesters: My Bonnie (MP3)
Beatle Buddies: My (Bonnie) Buddy (MP3)

Fake Beatles No. 2: Battle of the Bogus Beatle Bands

On February 9, 1964, Beatlemania officially took hold in the USA, marked by the Fab Four's triumphant appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. On February 10, record executives nationwide simultaneously sprang up from their beds itching for a piece of that action. The relatively scrupulous ones signed up any four blokes with an English accent and longish locks. The more ethically suspect execs taught some local kids how to talk like Limeys and instructed them to start combing their hair over their foreheads.

And then there were the budget-label moguls: Why bother signing a band at all when you can just cajole some cronies to record shoddily sung and hastily arranged versions of "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand," cook up a few unoriginal originals (or, easier still, just pad the disc with a few non-Beatles-sounding moldy rockers lying around somewhere), slap it in a sleeve brazenly sporting prominent moptop wigs and some permutation of the word Beat or Beetle in "Japanese Bomb Pearl Harbor"-size type, and watch the dumber kids or their myopic gift-giving grannies snatch 'em off the shelves! And thus began Mocktop Mania!

With that in mind, we introduce our first False Fabs Fight, in which we pit one of these Beatsploitation records against another. Today's Bogus Beatle Battle is a face-off between an imitator of the biggest group of the era (the Beatles, of course) and an imitator of the second-biggest group of that time. No, not the Rolling Stones, who wouldn't become huge stateside for another year or so. And not the Dave Clark Five, either, who never quite gave the Fab Four a run for their money. (There exist no Stones or DC5 lookalike album releases, after all.) Rather, it's the only other band worthy of this superstar level of record deception — Alvin and the Chipmunks!

That leads us to our combatants: The Liverpools vs. the Four Chipmunks (later known as the Wyncote Squirrels, thanks to David Seville's lawyer). With both albums being issued by the Wyncote budget division of Philadelphia's pop powerhouse Cameo-Parkway Records, we have a fair method by which to compare and contrast our two adversaries. (It also helps that both "groups" use the same backing tracks, of course.) All the non-Beatles songs on each album are not only the very same titles, they're also pretty good approximations of the Merseybeat sound, as these fly-by-night discs go — some just have sped-up trick vocals.

So, who comes out on top: fake Beatles, or fake Chipmunks doing fake Beatles? Without any further buildup, let the battle commence! (Liverpools tracks are in mono; Four Chipmunks are in stereo, which, it is hoped, gives no clear advantage to one side or another.)

Round 1: Here's how each side handles a bouncy, Moptops-worthy number:
Liverpools: Be My Girl (MP3)
Four Chipmunks aka Wyncote Squirrels: Be My Girl (MP3)

Round 2: Who has the advantage when it comes to a novelty tune? You decide:
Liverpools: Hey, Quiet Down There (MP3)
Four Chipmunks aka Wyncote Squirrels: Hey, Quiet Down There (MP3)

Round 3: Sensitive and heartfelt beat ballad? Here we go:
Liverpools: Did You Ever Get My Letter (MP3)
Four Chipmunks aka Wyncote Squirrels: Did You Ever Get My Letter (MP3)

Fake Beatles No. 1: A Blotto Bee Gee and His Pals "Fut" Around With the Fab Four

The Bee Gees have received a lot of guff, and rightfully so, for their early-career Beatles soundalike songs. In response, the Anglo-Australian threesome have invariably held up their early childhood in Manchester to explain away the suspicious similarity they share with their fab and gear neighbors from the North of England. That doesn't really answer why certain tunes by the Brothers Gibb sound like specific Beatles numbers, even in some instances like a stitch-up of several different Fab Four faves. Take, for example, "In My Own Time" [listen to it here on Three Chord Monte (RealAudio archive)], which could be the musical result of Dr. Robert meeting the Taxman in the Rain.

Yet the most remarkable Beatles impersonation related to the Bee Gees involved a pisstake (better described as a pissed-take, in the British alcoholic sense of the term) involving Maurice Gibb, his friends Steve Groves and Steve Kipner, and an in-law, Billie Lawrie, the brother of Gibb's then-wife, Lulu. (The two Steves, who comprised the Aussie musical duo Tin Tin  — not the '80s Stephen Duffy group, natch — had a Top 20 U.S. hit with "Toast and Marmalade for Tea" in 1971.) In 1969, the pair had convened in a London studio, with Gibb as producer, to record tracks for a proper Tin Tin session. However, thanks to some uncredited production assistance from John Barleycorn, the assembled musicians began futzing around with a song called "Have You Heard the Word," written by Groves and Kipner. With the stewed Steves playing all the instruments and, along with the liquored-up Lawrie, contributing the backup chorus, the gassed Gibb delivered his lead vocals in the most uncanny Lennon impersonation this side of Ron Nasty. The boozily Beatlesque result somehow found release, evidently without the permission of the principals, in 1970 as a single on the tiny U.K. label Beacon Records, with this one-off congregation identified as The Fut.

Did they do a good job? Just ask the bootleggers, who have placed the track on countless Beatles boots, hoodwinking many a rabid Fab Four obsessive.

Again, did they do a good job? Just ask Yoko Ono, who in 1985 attempted to register "Have You Heard the Word" as a John Lennon composition.

Have You Heard the Word (MP3)