'Let It Be' a Broadway Tribute to the Beatles (and they use Axe-Fx)

OddManOut

OddManOut

Inspired
I just came home from seeing the traveling version of the Broadway show 'Let It Be'.
Landmark Theatre to host 'Let It Be,' a Broadway tribute to the Beatles | syracuse.com

I'm a big time Beatles fan so I wouldn't miss it. I wasn't disappointed as the show was really first-rate. I've seen many, many Beatles tribute shows e.g. Beatlemania (on Broadway), Rain, etc. This show was among the very best. But what really put me over the top was seeing that the guitarist who played George's part (it sounded like his name was "M. J. Curtis" - not sure if I heard it right) was using an Axe-Fx. Though the unit wasn't visible anywhere, the MFC101 was plain as day. I grabbed my iPhone and tried to snap a picture. But just to be sure at the end of the show I went up to the edge of the stage and verified that it was indeed an MFC101. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal but to those of us who think so much of our little black boxes as well as the Beatles, it was, well, kinda nice.
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Sweet. The pic is fuzzy, but they totally look like the Beatles, right down to the body language.

Of course the big question is: what amp model was he using?? ;-)
 
He probably is using an AxeFX but the the MFC can be used to control other devices as well, so need to see that green screen in the background somewhere before we can say for sure.
 
I was head of backline on let it be for 15 months, whilst it was at the savoy theatre in London's west end.

The George character does indeed use an axefxII- the John character uses a real ac30 with an offstage speaker can in order to keep the stage level down. We used a grey surround in order to hide our mfc, but it's quite a big thing to hide on such a bare stage!

Each song has its own specific patch, last time I worked on the show we had around 45 patches to account for different setlists (many patches are duplicates). This meant that we could shuffle around the setlist at will,and simply rearrange in axe manage accordingly, so the george character only ever needs to use the up/down buttons on the mfc.The patches are owned by the show so I'm not going to give away too specific, but in terms of the amps used. as you would expect, the earlier sets are all ac30 sims sometimes with a bit of slap back delay, sgt pepper adds a drive pedal and various rotary effects etc.

After the interval things start getting more fendery as you would expect with the exception of the 'weeps' solo which is a more modern boutique Marshall flavoured higher gain amp... Revolution is an overdriven amp direct to get that abrasive ratty fuzzy sound.

There's a couple of surprises with amp choices later on in the show, especially for the lead guitar work.
 
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Hmm well lets see twins with jensens and fuzz faces & id bet voxes with bulldogs.

We can work it out
45 patches hmm lets see..

Can we see the set list ?
45 patches 45 songs
some are duplicates so they must work just fine for
more then one song.

No hints on delay times even ?

Who needs sleep ive been up for two days working on Led Zeppelin
no where near finished either. a Whole lotta love

They must have even these Beatles under non disclosure contracts too.
nowhere man again
now ill to be on a mystery tour to find those sounds..
I can try with a little help from me friends.
here comes the sun though. Its alright.
 
Tex Axe said:
Hmm well lets see twins with jensens and fuzz faces & id bet voxes with bulldogs.

We can work it out
45 patches hmm lets see..

Can we see the set list ?
45 patches 45 songs
some are duplicates so they must work just fine for
more then one song.

No hints on delay times even ?

Who needs sleep ive been up for two days working on Led Zeppelin
no where near finished either. a Whole lotta love

They must have even these Beatles under non disclosure contracts too.
nowhere man again
now ill to be on a mystery tour to find those sounds..
I can try with a little help from me friends.
here comes the sun though. Its alright.
Click to expand...

You are not at all far off with the gear you mentioned.

There are a couple of amps that you really wouldn't be able to take a sensible guess at- but for the most part it's fairly simple (but carefully tweaked) drive>amp>cab>reverb stuff.

45 patches include some extra songs which work on a rotation, songs which have been dropped and one song which didn't make it into the UK version of the show.

Delay times on the earlier stuff is literally just to achieve a slap-back effect, so it's a fast delay time, a relatively high wet level and only a single repeat. We used room reverb on a lot of the older songs too, to push what is actually quite a bright guitar tone further back in the mix and make it, well, roomier!

A couple of the songs were stereo biamped- panned hard left/right respectively to simulate and doubles george did on the records with different guitars.

Some songs have a couple of patches... For example 'Nowhere Man' has an extra patch which is used for approximately 1-bar at the end of the song, to fill in the tail of a rotary effect which is present on the recordings.

It's all in the details!
 
I remember one of the guitar mags had a feature on this show some months ago. The pic of the axe fx had the caption "you've got to hide George's axe fx away". Loved that one:)
 
Yeah- we mounted the 2 axefx's (one was a spare) in the back of the McCartney vox bass cab- which was a hollow prop.

I do know what you mean- I spent a great deal of time disguising the mfc as something else. In the end it looked like a raised section of the show floor. Infact from the auditorium it ended up looking more like an autocue than anything else... So I guess in order to hide the unhidable, I inadvertently used the technique of 'disguising it as something from someone else's department'.

Works for me. ;)

A selection of pictures! One of which is the axefxs in the bass cab.


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Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I especially liked that each song utilized a period correct guitar to get just the right sound. That's a laudable attention to detail and it paid off in the overall sound. Being the detail person that I am I couldn't help notice little things like the "rosewood tele" that George uses for some tunes had a Maple neck with rosewood fretboard and what appeared to be more of a walnut colored stain on ash or basswood when in reality George Harrison used a rosewood tele whose entire neck was rosewood with a separate rosewood fretboard and a rosewood-maple-rosewood sandwich body.
 
I was also impressed by the musician who played Paul's part. He played bass left-handed but you could tell he's a 'righty' because he played Paul's acoustic stuff (including Yesterday and Black Bird) on a right handed Texan acoustic. To have learned to play bass left handed when you're a righty AND to do such a good job at both has to take an enormous effort and no small amount of natural talent.
 
Yes- we had three full sets of the backline whilst I was there (maybe more now)- one set for each territory, so unfortunately it was difficult to get EXACTLY the same guitars each time over- and sometimes in a hurry- so I guess the Broadway guys are indeed using the maple necked tele we used..

We somehow managed to find a REAL fender bass VI (before the reissue was released) which, as is often the case with hen's teeth, was difficult to triplicate... Until of course fender reissued them. I am eternally grateful to fender for that.

In terms of detail, we probably went a bit far on the London show- for example we went to the trouble of machining some burns reproduction control knobs for John's 'cavern' era Ric 325. Thing is you couldn't even see them from the first row without binoculars, but dammit, they were there!
 
tommyco10 said:
Yes- we had three full sets of the backline whilst I was there (maybe more now)- one set for each territory, so unfortunately it was difficult to get EXACTLY the same guitars each time over- and sometimes in a hurry- so I guess the Broadway guys are indeed using the maple necked tele we used..

We somehow managed to find a REAL fender bass VI (before the reissue was released) which, as is often the case with hen's teeth, was difficult to triplicate... Until of course fender reissued them. I am eternally grateful to fender for that.

In terms of detail, we probably went a bit far on the London show- for example we went to the trouble of machining some burns reproduction control knobs for John's 'cavern' era Ric 325. Thing is you couldn't even see them from the first row without binoculars, but dammit, they were there!
Click to expand...
I do those type of details for my Beatles tribute band, the audience can't tell, but it's for my sick obsession!
 
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