Come together: Rain recreates the Beatles

The Beatles stopped playing live in August 1966 - meaning masterwork albums such as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," the so-called "White Album," "Let It Be" and "Abbey Road" were never toured.

Which is part of why there are now more Beatles tribute bands than there are species of insects. People do not get tired of the Beatles.

Arguably the best of these Fab Four acts is Rain, who perform Sunday at the Garde Arts Center in New London. With over 200 songs in their catalog, Rain plays a five-part concert that spans the Beatles' career in chronological fashion - complete with costumes, visuals, and a who-knows-what-you-might-hear acoustic set.

Last week, from the Rain tour bus in Illinois, Steve Landes - "John Lennon" - spoke with knowledgeable enthusiasm about what he describes as "the best gig in the world." Landes, who has been in the 20-plus-year-old band since 1998, says living inside the stage persona of John Lennon has been revelatory.

"You can't help but pick up on what sort of person (Lennon) was and maybe what he meant by certain songs," Landes says. "It always amazes me what a down-to-earth guy John was. We think of the out-there lyrics and double meanings of 'I Am the Walrus' or 'Strawberry Fields,' but at the end of the day, he was a three-chord rock 'n' roller at heart."

Along with Landes, Rain is comprised of Joey Curatolo (Paul), Joe Bithorn (George), Ralph Castelli (Ringo) and fifth musician Mark Lewis.

One of the pleasures of being in a Beatles tribute band is that it's sort of hard to go wrong with your set list. Landes says virtually any combination of songs work because there are so many good ones.

"It's basically a can't-lose situation," Landes says. "I mean, if we strictly did just their number one hits, we wouldn't have stage time to do even that. And that doesn't count dozens of instantly familiar songs that weren't number one."

Landes says Rain changes set lists for each tour, to keep things fresh, but does note one perhaps unexpected exception to the "can't lose" rule.

In terms of learning Beatles material for concert recitation, probably the ultimate achievement would be to perform the entire Side Two medley from "Abbey Road."

"We worked on that and worked on it and thought how cool it was going to be to pull it off in front of people," Landes says. Then he laughs. "It sort of went over people's heads. I mean, we play for serious Beatles fans, but we also have a lot of more casual fans who might just own a hits collection or whatever - and they just didn't get it. So that was an interesting experiment."

Rain - A Tribute to the Beatles, 3 p.m. Sunday, Garde Arts Center, 325 State St., New London; sold out; (860) 444-7373, gardearts.org.