Drummer Doug Cox describes the Beatles tribute show Rain — pulling into the Orpheum for a pair of shows this week — as being less like a piece of theater and more like “the concert that never happened.” Unlike Million Dollar Quartet and Jersey Boys, two of Broadway’s bigger rock biographies, Rain dispenses with plot and cuts right to the music and the nostalgia.
“It takes you through the era with a lot of video that shows you just how much things changed in that time,” says Cox in a telephone interview from a Dallas club where he’s loading in for a show with his longtime Texas band A Hard Night’s Day.
Cyllavon Tiedemann
The Beatles tribute show Rain
“That’s who I play with when I’m not with Rain,” says Cox, who’s been keeping time for Beatles tribute bands for more than 20 years.
A Hard Night’s Day wasn’t content to just play the hits. “We played all the Beatles songs that none of the other Beatles bands would play,” Cox says. That love for the Fab Four’s obscure work resulted in a gig backing rockabilly singer Tony Sheridan at the Kaiserkeller in Hamburg, Germany, where, in the early 1960s, the Beatles honed their skills backing none other than Tony Sheridan.
In Rain, Cox sits in for Ringo Starr, whom he describes as “a killer drummer who’s finally getting his due.”
“He kept such great time,” Cox says of Ringo. “Like a human metronome. And he knew when a song needed to pick up and move.”