Halifax Fab Four fan runs Beatles' marathon
Singer-songwriter Bruce stages event today at St. Antonio's Hall
by Stephen Cooke

It was like a remake of the scene in the documentary Let It Be, when the Beatles’ impromptu rooftop concert at Apple Records gets cut off by the London constabulary. Halifax musician Hal Bruce probably appreciated the irony when a street concert at the annual Beatlesfest in Liverpool, England two summers ago took on a sense of deja vu.

He was in the middle of his marathon 214-song Beatles medley with producer and former Rankins drummer Scott Ferguson on a specially set up stage on a downtown Merseyside street, playing for hardcore Beatles fanatics as well as tourists and passersby. When the crowd got too much for the area to handle, the bobbies took action.

"I was only on song 120," sighs the Halifax Fab Four fan, who is staging his own Maritime Beatle Event on Saturday from noon to midnight at St. Antonio’s Hall (formerly Olympic Gardens) at Cunard and Hunter streets. "The police said we’d just attracted too much of a crowd. It actually made the national papers in Britain.

"We got up to With a Little Help From My Friends, and the police said no more. It started off with about 60 people watching, and that grew to pack a whole block. The show was sponsored by Apple and everything, but it just got too big. The crowd booed when they were asked to disperse, and afterwards we sold a ton of CDs. We got some good press though, and we busked for a while afterwards and a lot of the people stuck around, even though we didn’t have mics."

In recent years, Bruce has played at dozens of Beatles gatherings in Australia, Europe and South and North America. Last year he performed in the Dominican Republic; Louisville, Kentucky for Abbey Road on the River; Adelaide, Australia; Liverpool, England; and Belgium and Luxembourg.

For the first annual Maritimes Beatle Event, Bruce is bringing England and Europe to Halifax, with appearances by John Lennon’s younger sister Julia Baird and Swedish tribute band The Repeatles. It’s thanks to Bruce’s appearances at so many Beatlefests that Bruce has been able to make these kinds of contacts. Over the years he’s met several people connected directly to the legend, like Baird, George Harrison’s sister Louise, former Beatles manager Alan Williams, and original Beatles drummer Pete Best, who still lives in Liverpool.

"He said the next time I’m over to give him a shout and we’ll do tea," chuckles Bruce. "Pete’s a great guy, but almost painfully shy in some ways. He tries not to be, but you can tell that he’s quite shy around people.

"Julia isn’t shy, she’s quite opinionated. When we met I decided I wasn’t going to bombard her with Beatles talk, but she did tell me that at the time, she was more of a Rolling Stones fan than a Beatles fan, and she wasn’t going to pretend otherwise." Spending that much time travelling can have its drawbacks as well as its highlights. Like the time in Australia when Bruce’s guitar and $800 worth of effects pedals went missing, and customs seized his copies of his CDs of acoustic Beatles covers In My Life . . . and I Will. But then there those moments like singing Hey Jude backed by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra or performing his Beatles medley for 5,000 people at Abbey Road on the River in Louisville that make it plain how special this music really is to so many people.

"I’ve learned over the years that you can take a big production like A Day in the Life or Sgt. Pepper, and strip it down to one guitar. And if you do it carefully, with a lot of feeling, it doesn’t matter if you have a band or not. And I know that people will accept it as much as a band.

"Because if the song has a lot of emotion and heart in it, it’s like a nice piece of furniture that comes from a good piece of wood. The rest is candy coating, it beefs up the song, but it was a great song to begin with."

Admission to the Maritime Beatle Event is $35, $20 for children under 15. For info and tickets, call 435-7410 or contact halbruce@halbruce.com. For a complete list of the day’s events, including several performers and a Beatles singing contest, visit http://www.maritimebeatleevent.com on the Internet.

Go Back To AROTR News