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Blog post Friday 20th May 2022

Hi All,

Summer is upon us (hoorah!) and I am gearing up for a busy time including two shows, The Two of Us with the RTE Orchestra at the Helix in Dublin on Saturday 18th June, and then a rock concert at the Philharmonic Hall with guitarist Earl Slick, bassist Tony Levin and drummer Andy Newmark on Friday 26th August. For those who live on a different planet, Earl is a guitar behemoth of the music industry who has played/recorded with numerous icons including Bowie, Lennon and Ono, Robert Smith etc... Tony Levin is as prolific a bassist as you will find having played with so many icons we can't list them all here but to mention a few, Lennon, Lou Reed, Bowie,Pink Floyd, Paul Simon, Stevie Nicks, Tom Waits, Bryan Ferry. Andy Newmark was a member of Sly and the Family Stone as well as playing with Lennon, Bowie, The Floyd and Roxy. I'd better start rehearsing!

The Dublin show The Two of Us is something I wrote in 2012 with Bob Eaton, the artistic director at the Everyman in 1981/82 when I was a member of the acting company there. I was approached by Paul McCartney via conductor John Wilson to write a show following the success of The John Lennon Songbook, which John Wilson and I performed with Claire Martin and Curtis Stigers in Liverpool, Birmingham, Dublin, Lahti Finland, Shanghai and Beijing with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Birmingham Symphony, RTE Orchestra Ireland and Sibelius Orchestra Finland from 2008 to 2015. As no Paul songs featured in this show, the new commission was intended to address this, so we came up with the idea for The Two of Us, which covers the years from 1957 when the boys meet at Woolton Parish Church Garden Fete where John's band The Quarrymen were playing, and takes us right through to the end of the Beatles in 1970.

Because we have the privilege of a full orchestra on stage for the show, we even include a Abbey Rd sequence were the orchestra become involved in the scene as John and Paul's relationship starts to break down. Anyway, it's an absolute gas (not least singing A Day in the Life with the orchestra building to that famous crescendo behind me - yikes!!) and I'm really looking forward to revisiting it in Dublin with the wonderful RTE National Orchestra with David Brophy conducting. I'll be joined for this by the wonderful Joe Stilgoe (who achieves a more than convincing Paul) and the extremely talented polymath Gwyneth Herbert.

http://www.joestilgoe.com

http://gwynethherbert.com

https://thehelix.ie/what-s-on/all-events/the-rte-concert-orchestra-presents-the-beatles%E2%80%AF–-t/

Earl Slick

with David Bowie

• David Live (1974)

• Young Americans (1975)

• Station To Station (1976)

• Heathen (2002)

• Reality (2003)

• A Reality Tour (2004)

• The Next Day (2013)

• Cracked Actor (Live Los Angeles '74) (RSD 2017 release, concert from 1974 tour) (2017)

• Serious Moonlight (Live 1983) (Double Live album from 1983 tour released on Loving the Alien Boxset and as a stand alone CD (only) set in 2019)

• Glastonbury 2000 (3LP Live/2 Cd - 1 DVD) (2018)

with John Lennon & Yoko Ono

• Double Fantasy (1980)

• Milk and Honey (1984)

Tony Levin

Too many to mention...

https://tonylevin.com

Andy Newmark

ditto

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Newmark#External_links

https://www.internationalbeatleweek.com

That's it for now Beatle Nuts...