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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Clonin' Jack flash
There are now 10,000 tribute bands in the country, but sitting proudly at the top of the tree are the Counterfeit Stones
Tom Cox
Sunday April 3, 2005
The Observer
Nick Dagger will never forget the time that he first saw the Rolling Stones. He was 13, the Sixties had just started in earnest, and his brother had snuck him in to see one of their early gigs at London's old Marquee club. Strangely, it wasn't the insouciant riffs of Brian Jones and Keith Richards that really stood out, or even the badboy androgyny of Mick Jagger, but the bass playing of Bill Wyman. Nevertheless, it was a defining moment, and from then on, he was certain that he wanted to be in a band just like his heroes. His mother, however, wasn't so sure. 'What I want to know is what you're going to do when this pop fad fizzles out in 1970?' she asked him.
Thirty-two years after the prophesied death of his favourite artistic medium, Dagger, as the lead singer of an internationally adored band, at the peak of their career, with a nice west London home, a loving wife and an expensive wardrobe, finally persuaded his mother to come along to see him perform. He'd hoped that, spotting the excitable fans and the 'Sold Out!' stickers outside Portsmouth Guildhall, she'd accept that perhaps he'd been right about this pop music lark after all.
Sure, his band weren't exactly original - in fact, some might say they made unoriginality their trademark - but there was no doubting their success. Over the last few years, they had given a private audience to the likes of Sir Tim Rice, Bill Clinton, Princess Stephanie of Monaco and Phil Collins. After the show, she greeted him backstage. 'What do you want to look like that ugly sod for?' she asked.
Dagger, as one bouncer once remarked, 'isn't the real Nick Dagger'. He is a man in his mid-50s called Steve Elson, who makes a living pretending to be Mick Jagger and performing the back catalogue of the Rolling Stones, along with his bandmates, Pete Whittard (aka Keef Rickard), John Prynn (Charlie Mott), Alan Mian (Bill Hymen), Charlie Evans (Nicky Popkiss) and the remarkably versatile David Birnie (Byron Jones, Mick Taylor-Made and Ronnie B Goode).
He has been doing this since 1993, when he and part-time music teacher Whittard, the only other original band member, were asked to play some Stones covers in a party in America. Tonight, he is talking to me backstage at Bilston Robin, a favourite haunt of West Midlands rock stars, just outside Wolverhampton, about to play the first of two small gigs which will serve as a warm-up for a full UK theatre tour scheduled for April.
This tour will be singularly ambitious in the annals of tribute bands, not only featuring costume changes and segments from every era of the Stones's career ('apart from the rubbish stuff after 1980'), but also comic sketches, depicting such semi-fictional events as 'the Bedlands Bust' and Mick and Keef's never-realised acoustic jam session on a Seventies episode of The Sooty And Sweep Show.
'We're not lookalikes, apart from Charlie,' Elson says, nodding towards Prynn, the band's newest member. 'What we are is a cartoon version of the band. There's so much humour in the Stones's story, and we try and focus on that. It's more like Stella Street with music than a straight tribute.'
(It is worth noting, perhaps, that Stella Street didn't begin broadcasting until four years after the Counterfeit Stones's formation, and that John Sessions, the street's very own Keith Richards, has been spotted at CS gigs).
With the Counterfeit Stones, the punter is offered a full Stones experience, encapsulating every element of the band, and some new ones, thanks to Elson's indefatigable sense of humour, extensive collection of literature (he owns every book about the band ever published), and tirelessly sourced wardrobe. Like Spinal Tap and the Rutles, the Counterfeit Stones have mapped their alternative history out in minute detail, from the time that Keef tried to smoke a baguette to their communal dotage in the Furke Hall retirement home.
The slightly altered names have a purpose: these men are less imitations of Mick, Keith et al, more their evil twins. The band also have a bona fide history of their own, which, while possibly not up to their heroes' debauched standards, would certainly give, say, Coldplay a run for their money. Not long ago, Alan Mian's predecessor in the Bill Hymen role, Tayeb Fghoul, accepted an invitation to lunch with Bill Wyman at his Sticky Fingers restaurant.
And Elson and friends have played at the top of a mountain in St Moritz, hung out in Jacuzzis with celebrities and had girls bare their breasts at them. Elson once swapped wig tips with Joan Collins, and it is rumoured (courtesy of Sir Tim Rice) that 'the real Nick Dagger' attended one of their shows incognito last year.
As in the world of real bands, the world of tribute bands is overrun with rivalry. When your focus is the universe's longest-running, biggest band, this is understandably heightened. Currently, the Counterfeit Stones are arguably the world's second most successful tribute act, after the Bootleg Beatles, and the most successful Rolling Stones tribute band, ahead of Sticky Fingers and the Rolling Clones.
It is estimated that there are currently more than 10,000 tribute bands in England alone. These include Fake That, Status Clone and the Red Hot Billie Pipers, an all-girl Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute who promise to 'go topless for the encore'. Elson, who doubles up as manager for Counterfeit Stones, won't tell me what he earns from the band's tours, but assures me that it's 'a very comfortable living' and more satisfying than his time during the Eighties as the guitarist with the moderately successful (and very Stonesesque) rock band, Broken English.
Other tribute acts vary quite extremely in fees. The Likeness, a Darkness tribute band, charge upwards of £1,300 for a performance, yet gigs from Robbie Williams tribute Rob By Nature start at just £500.
Clearly, it's important to choose carefully when founding your tribute, since fortunes can depend directly on those of the band you are playing homage to. A case in point is the Oasis tribute No Way Sis, who I once spotted wandering rather forlornly around the 'Cigarettes And Alcohol' night at the Wag nightclub in Soho, in costume, in the aftermath of Oasis's Standing on the Shoulder of Giants album, being roundly ignored by each of the other 38 people in the venue.
The Counterfeit Stones, who make a point of never staying in costume outside of a gig, have little chance of hitting similar lows. By choosing to mimic a band famous for their endurance, they have ensured their own longevity. Their shows consistently sell out days after going on sale, and seem likely to do so until Elson and Co are put out to pasture in a real-life Furke Hall.
For someone like me, who loves the Stones, but has never really seen the appeal of witnessing them as little thrusting dots in a stadium, the Counterfeit Stones perform an irresistible service. If I close my eyes, it's like hearing (a relatively fresh and young version of) the real thing, not a bloke my dad's age in a leotard, a teacher from south London and four of his mates.
So what's missing? The high that comes from knowing that you're only a matter of yards away from a genuine legend? Perhaps. But clearly many of the crowd here can live without that. 'We nearly got to see the Rolling Stones once, but we got to Wembley and the gig had been cancelled,' says Dave Prentiss, a 62-year-old retiree. 'But we've seen the Counterfeits 135 times to date.' Adds his 65-year-old wife, Dottie: 'That Nick Dagger is a real gentleman. Not like a rock star at all. I can't believe he's the same man when he puts his wig on.'
Dottie and Dave are at the more mature end of the Counterfeit Stones's demographic, which tonight also includes numerous teenagers and a Marianne Faithfull lookalike in her early-20s. The Prentisses consider themselves - along with the intriguingly named Penny The Nurse, who, sadly, fails to make it to the Bilston show - to be the Counterfeit Stones's number-one fans. 'They just kept turning up, so we gave them the merchandise stall to run,' says Elson. 'When you're our age, you don't get groupies, you just get stalkers.'
In fact, the current line-up of the Counterfeit Stones, unlike that of the consistently middle-aged Bootleg Beatles, spans three decades, all the way from Elson, the oldest, at 54, right down to Evans and Birnie, who are both in their early 20s. It's only backstage, as the wigs are returned to their 'stay fresh' Tupperware boxes - 'I have a hell of a job explaining these when I get searched at customs,' says Elson - that this suddenly becomes clear. What also becomes clear is a slight aura of comedown.
Five minutes ago, these men were the coolest band on the planet. Now, they are a motley, good-natured assortment of 'nobodies' eating takeaway pizza, who have had to negotiate their way politely around a mumbling cleaning lady in order to get to their dressing room. As they leave, their sweaty outfits are left on the chairs in the dressing room for the following night's gig, before which they will not be washed. There is no hotel, just a trip back to London in a modestly sized van and another drive from west London to Bilston the following day, where they will be introduced by a local minor celebrity called Ian The Goat because the night's original guest speaker, ex-Move and Wizzard singer Roy Wood, can't make it.
There are no security guards, there is no fear of being 'papped' while out in the supermarket, yet there is the thrill of making an eclectic crowd of people happy, the buzz of playing 'Tumbling Dice' with a fag hanging out of the corner of the mouth. There may be more gratifying kinds of small-scale celebrity existences out there, but it's unlikely that there are many better-balanced ones.
· The Counterfeit Stones play Music Hall, Shrewsbury (Wed), Woodville Halls, Gravesend (Sat) then tour.
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