Classic Albums Live ventures down ‘Abbey Road’

Toronto’s Classic Albums Live is not a tribute show. There are no costumes, wigs, makeup or bad acting. Although the music is familiar, the musicians onstage aren’t pretending to be somebody else.

“We don’t talk to the audience, we just stand there and play like an orchestra,” says company founder Craig Martin. “And that’s enough.”

Classic Albums Live reproduces classic rock albums onstage, in their entirety, with professional touring musicians and singers. Martin coined the phrase “Note For Note, Cut For Cut” as a marketing tool.

Sometimes, there are more than a dozen people on the stage. If the group is “playing” a Beatles or Pink Floyd album, say, there will be live violins and cellos to handle the orchestral score. If Indian music is on the menu (see Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), someone will be playing a sitar, another a pair of tabla drums.

Now in its 23^rd year, Classic Albums Live returns to the Capitol Theatre Friday for a performance of the Beatles’ Abbey Road.

Craig Martin.

A singer, guitar and piano player, the 63-year-old Martin once growled and crooned like “Mick Jagger in the 1970s” as part of a Rolling Stones tribute band. “I just got to the point where I said “Let’s don’t f—in’ dress up,” he recalls. “Let’s go onstage in our jeans and play ‘Stray Cat Blues.’ So we started doing deep cuts, and not caring about anything else – just standing there and playing.”

Since the magic is inherently there in the music, and not necessarily in the play-acting, the gimmick-free Stones act caught on. Particularly when they began playing beloved albums, deep cuts and all, the way the fans knew them.

“I grew up as a musician,” Martin explains. “I’ve never had a straight gig. So you kind of got to know the players, and the people you came up with. By the time you’re in your 30s, if you’re still in the game you’re probably a professional musician.

“I saw a lot of guys just drop off: ‘Look man, I can’t go on the road, I got a wife, got a kid, got a job, I’m losing my hair …’ So what was left were some really, really great musicians. And when I started the company, I called just about every one of them.”

In his phone contact list Martin has top-drawer musicians from all over Canada, and the United States, at the ready.

“Note for Note, Cut for Cut” became, he says, a “beacon” for great players.

“When they found out, ‘I don’t have to look like Brian May?’ ‘I don’t have to act like Jimmy Page?’ ‘I don’t have to put on a wig or anything like that?’ they started approaching me.”

Martin keeps several editions of Classic Albums Live on the road simultaneously. With 230 dates per year on the calendar, in three countries, he’s keeping dozens of musicians gainfully employed.

Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac are the company’s “tried and true,” he reveals, although the roster of availability includes iconic records by David Bowie, the Stones, AC/DC, Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, Queen, Bob Marley and others.

Sometimes, experiments just don’t sell the tickets. He could play Jethro Tull’s Aqualung or Thick as a Brick, he explains, but it would be a commercial gamble. Would those shows attract an audience?

“Wouldn’t I be serving my musicians, and my community, and the company better if I put Abbey Road in there, and it sold out?”

The difference between tribute acts and Classic Albums Live, as Martin sees it, is like night and day. “We don’t use screens, or big flashy lights. We don’t wear costumes. People are just thrilled to see a perfect execution of the solo in ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ or the vocals in ‘Ziggy Stardust.’ Performed perfectly, without all the crap. That’s all you need.”

Not to particularly diss costume-wearing tribute acts, mind you.

“All the power to anybody that gets on a stage and tries to feed their family,” Martin says. “To make a living as a musician. I used to be a lot more biting about that, in the beginning, but I’ve softened over the years. If you’re going to play, play.

“I hated them. And I was in one!”

Find tickets to Friday’s Capitol Theatre performance at this link.