The Rolling Beatles

Get back to where it all began….

Première performance

Get back to where it all began… is a multidisciplinary and informative arts project, with music, image and text making up the ingredients of a spectacular performance. Against the backdrop of a filmic and photographic report by the young filmmaker Michael Kolenbrander and artist/photographer Rimke Nolten – with textual contributions by Ben van Melick – the collective will present a musical theatre performance that is an ode to the most celebrated rock pop groups of all time: The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. This is a project in which music, film, photography, design, literature and journalism fuse to create a dazzling and deafening theatrical performance.

The gentlemen of The Rolling Beatles found their inspiration in the famous Abbey Road Studios in London: Abbey Road… ‘back where it all began’ and thrived. The music of The Stones and The Beatles left its mark on the evolution of music, youth culture and the arts across the globe. Nevertheless, their music remains timeless: it still inspires musicians and prompts them toward innovative developments. Their music remains nourishing and contemporary. In ‘Get back to where it all began...’ this quality is emphasised in text, images and sound.

It goes without saying that music plays the lead in this production. Besides music by The Beatles and The Stones, you will also hear music by the rockers that inspired them, as well as some of The Rolling Beatles’ own numbers. This is no typical, run-of-the-mill cover band: they present their own interpretations of pop music's history. Energy and styling, ‘that’s their way’.Ultra-short films by Michael Kolenbrander with texts by Ben van Melick illustrate the typical in words and music in a whimsical way.

The Rolling Beatles are Hans Keuls (drums), Pieter Vermeulen (guitar), Paul Logister (bass and vocals) and Ralph Winkler (guitar and vocals).

In collaboration with: Ben van Melick, Michael Kolenbrander and Rimke Nolten.
Staged by: Michael Kolenbrander and Rimke Nolten
Director: Aimée Charlier

Fragments taken from Van Melick’s text
1.
it grew rampant
in the body of a pallid teenager in drainpipes
spotty, dry lips
blue suede shoes
awkwardly tough, jauntily fashionable

2.
Ride my pony, ride…
ambiguous
to the bone

Photo: Rimke Nolten