The Return take audiences back to Beatles' early years

For anyone who has ever wondered what it was like to see the Beatles, tribute band the Return is coming to Cape Girardeau this weekend to recreate the giddy effervescence of the band's early years.

Richard Stelling, Shane Landers, Michael Fulop and Adam Thurston will perform as John, Paul, George and Ringo respectively for back-to-back shows Saturday at Isle Casino Cape Girardeau.

Although the Return play music from the entire Beatles discography, Saturday's shows will be the early Beatles. The skinny-tie-wearing, "Ed Sullivan Show," squeal-till-you-pass-out Beatles.

Their show covers roughly the first half of the band's music, including hits like "From Me To You," "I Feel Fine" and "Twist and Shout."

"This show, we'll be doing songs from 1963 to around early 1966," Fulop said. "At that time everything was just really high energy. It's just bam, bam, bam. It's a lot of fun to play and it's a really fun show."

The meticulously crafted show that audiences get today is the product of years of practice, Fulop explained, but it all started with a gig they thought would be a one-time affair.

"It was a really strange and long process. We sort of started by accident," he said. "I don't think any of us really grew up as a die-hard Beatles fan, but they were so huge for our parents, and then they reissued the anthologies [in the '90s]."

That's when Fulop remembers everything changing. Suddenly, he was buying Beatles albums and couldn't believe his ears.

"They weren't like other albums. It wasn't like there were two or three good songs like the bands I'd been used to. Every song was great," he said. "And out of nowhere, I realized that all of the [musicians] I liked, when they were asked, they always said the Beatles were one of their influences."

The band members bonded over shared musical sensibilities, but were focused on writing and recording original material until a friend asked them to play Beatles songs for a party.

"We wanted to shock people and have fun with it, but we never thought we would do it again," he said.

They bought thrift-store suits and had a friend play Ed Sullivan just for kicks, and, Fulop said, "people went wild for it."

Eventually, they decided to make it official and committed themselves to replicating the Fab Four's idiosyncrasies as closely as possible, and have had the opportunity to play all over the world, including a private show inside the Abbey Road studios in London.

"We're constantly finding ways to hone the craft," Fulop said. "To hear people who were there in the 1960s come up to us and say that we brought them back to an innocent time like that, those are the best compliments."

The shows are at 7 and 9 p.m. Tickets are $15 and are available at the Isle Casino box office and cape-girardeau.isleofcapricasinos.com.

For more information about the Return, find them online at thereturnonline.com.

tgraef@semissourian.com

388-3627