THE SHOW

Liverpool, a tribute to the Beatles, will perform at 8:30 p.m. Saturday at Oktoberfest on the Wasserfront at Richard L. Berkley Riverfront Park just west of I-35 and the Front Street exit. Admission is $5 (or three canned goods for Harvesters); children 12 and younger get in free. For more information, call (816) 691-2140.

Liverpool

Jordan Smith had no clue who the Beatles were until he witnessed his first Liverpool concert at age 9.

That's all it took to make the budding rock musician a major Beatles fan, as well as a big believer in Liverpool, the Beatles tribute band from Kansas City with a national reputation for making John, Paul, George and Ringo come alive in concert.

"I saw all these people loving it, and I was just freaking out because I thought it was so amazing," recalled Jordan, now 15. His own band, the Supernauts, was definitely influenced by seeing the faux Fab Four.

"We started playing Beatles -- that's all we did -- for a whole year," Jordan said. "And that inspired us to write our own music. It took us in a poppy, melodic direction."

Currently shopping for a record deal, the Supernauts "wouldn't be where we are right now if it wasn't for Liverpool," Jordan said. "That's the truth."

The truth about Liverpool? They idolize the Beatles as much as any four male musicians pushing 50 possibly could, and they get to portray their heroes at least two or three times a month onstage. Maybe winning the lottery would be better. Maybe.

"We're fulfilling a fantasy," said Gary Butler, who plays drummer Ringo Starr down to the huge ruby-red "Help" ring on his right hand.

"The music and us have a certain chemistry," added guitarist Steve Davis, who as George Harrison gets to solo like the real Quiet Beatle did on a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar. "That's what makes it easy for us."

That accessible alchemy is what audiences have come to expect from Liverpool, including the 12,000 folks who came on July 19 to see the band's third consecutive summer concert at Frontier Park in Olathe.

"They've attained quite a status here," said Rick Dryden, special-events coordinator for the city of Olathe. "People want to come out and see them because their show is phenomenal. They've re-created the whole sensation of the Beatles."

Happy just to dance

The Beatles, for the record, burst on the American scene in early 1964, gaining instant fame with their first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." The lads from Liverpool, England, fascinated the media, flabbergasted authority figures and offered teen-agers more reasons to feel good than can be remotely estimated. More than 30 years after calling it quits, the Beatles' continuing appeal is trumped only by the group's colossal musical imagination. In a sense, the two are inseparable.

"The Beatles were four-dimensional compared to the rest," said Liverpool's Jimmy Bond, who plays his bass guitar naturally left-handed like Paul McCartney. "Every time you turned around the Beatles changed, but it was still the Beatles."

That diverse familiarity is reflected in Liverpool's two-hour, 40-song shows, which run the stylistic gamut from 1963's fun-loving "Please Please Me" to 1970's wistful "Let It Be."

"Early on, we used to do the whole second side of the `Abbey Road' album, and it was great," said Larry Kips, whose portrayal of John Lennon can include eye-squinting, gum-chewing and quips gleaned from Beatles press conferences. "And then it became a thing where people would go: `We can't dance to this. C'mon, play some dance music.' The pressure created a little bit of a panic in the band, so we couldn't do that anymore.

"There is a point where you've got to make the people happy, even playing Beatles songs," Kips said. "There's a lot of songs that I'd like to do that are my personal favorites. But do you cut out `Twist and Shout' and `She Loves You' to play something off the `Rubber Soul' album, just because it's your favorite?"

In their life

Liverpool downplays any such compromises. Since coming together 13 years ago out of the lineups of two classic Kansas City party bands -- the Crayons and Plain Jane -- the band's mission has been to savor every Beatles-inspired moment first and foremost as friends.

"When we put this whole thing together, we said, `We don't look like the Beatles, so what are we going to do to make this enjoyable?' " Butler said. "We did the research to find the authentic guitars and the drums and the costumes and wigs and to study the individual mannerisms."

What's it like still going "yeah, yeah, yeah" after all these years, years, years?

"It's a sickness!" all four shouted, just as the Beatles might have done in a patently silly moment.

"We can deceive ourselves to no end, let me tell you," Butler said.

"Smoke and mirrors," Davis said.

"This is going to sound really bad," Bond said, "but if you keep the lights low, don't focus on our faces and stand 30 feet away from us, we don't look as old as we are."

"And we don't smell as bad, either," Kips said.

The Liverpool spectacle includes 14 or more guitars lined up on stage.

"It's cool for the fans to look at everything," Davis said. "They go, `There's the guitar that George played on "Revolver"! There's the one John played on "A Hard Day's Night"!' They know that stuff."

"We want to create an atmosphere," Bond said. "But the main thing is getting the sound as close as possible. More than anything, it's about what I should be doing as a musician."

Still, sometimes it's hard to concentrate on the music. Like the time a table of 20 wanted their money back in the middle of a Liverpool club show in Arkansas.

"They were saying that the sound they were hearing was part of the video they were watching on the wall," Kips said. "It was actually a live camera pointed at the stage."

When Liverpool invited several disbelievers on stage to prove it was really the band singing, the naysayers still didn't buy it.

"Maybe they were pulling our leg," Davis said.

"Maybe," Kips said.

"It was Arkansas," Bond said.

Then there are those occasions when the sense of absurdity is almost overwhelming.

"There have been times when I felt like Anthony Quinn in `Requiem for a Heavyweight' -- `I don't want to dress up like an Indian anymore,' " Bond said. "There have been times when we've played jobs, and the little kids are eating corn on the cob with butter dripping down their chins 5 feet away from me while I'm trying to sing."

Can they tell when things are heading south?

"If there's hay bales, we've got a pretty good idea," Kips said with a laugh."If Jimmy finishes off a fifth of Jack before we even hit the tarmac, you know it ain't going to be magical."

Worst gig ever?

"I've had shock therapy to black that out," Davis said.

But Kips has an answer: Mission Hills Country Club.

"We finished the night, and on our last song, I think there was one guy left clapping as he was walking down the hall," Kips painfully recalled. "It was a mismatch. It was people who go to sleep at 9 o'clock, and the thing starts at 9 o'clock. Our egos are just getting crushed, and we're thinking, `We suck. We're going to have to give this up and find some other thing to do.'

"Even in Liverpool, with all we've accomplished, our egos can be fragile sometimes. We can be shook, doubting what we are and what we have to offer."

Coming to take you away

Despite bumps in the road -- from Naples, Fla., to Dana Point, Calif.; Waco, Texas, to Detroit -- Liverpool's magical mystery tour keeps rolling here, there and everywhere.

Rolls of fat, included. At least that's what Thomas Hartnett II, Liverpool's longtime roadie, suggests when he jokingly refers to the band as the "Flab Four." That's OK, because they call him the "village idiot."

"We're not getting any younger," Hartnett said. "Gary's had back surgeries. I popped a disc in my back three or four years ago. We've got all the various ailments. So, physically, it is taking a big toll on everybody."

Regrets? They've had very few.

"My biggest regret for this band is not being able to do it full time," Davis said. "Financially it would have been much better."

"We should have done it 13 years ago," Kips said. "We can't do it now, because of age and what have you."

The "what have you" includes family responsibilities and full-time jobs. Kips works at a music store co-owned by Butler. Bond clocks in at a sportswear manufacturing business. Davis works for an audiovisual company, when he's not casting his reel as a professional bass fisherman or co-managing the up-and-coming Supernauts.

How long can Liverpool last? As long as the fans keep coming, they say.

"There are individuals that thoroughly enjoy following the group," Butler said. "We're talking about unbelievably young girls to..."

"Grandmas," Kips interrupted. "And, by the way, we have to mention our sponsors: Polident and Depends....The important thing for anybody who's going to go see a Liverpool show is that they first check the obituary page."

And so the laughter comes. As does the realization that these aging baby boomers really don't want to let go of their Beatles dream.

"I saw the Beatles on `Ed Sullivan' in '64," Bond said. "That's what made me want to be a musician. And the same goes for all these guys."

"I'm sure we'll always get together to play Beatles songs," Davis said. "We're all really close friends. Obviously that's why we've stayed together so long."

As long as his pals are around him, Kips said he doesn't feel scared going on stage.

"If I was in another Beatle band, I wouldn't want to follow Liverpool, I'll tell you that," Kips said. "It's a combination of the music and the interaction of the guys in the band. Liverpool has an identity all by itself. If we were playing all original music, we'd be a damn good band."

That gets no argument from young Liverpool follower Jason Smith of the Supernauts.

"I'll never get tired of them," he said. "They may be older men. But no matter how old they get, they'll never lose their youth."