It’s been a long, winding road for McCartney impersonator

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This article was published 28/09/2011 (5470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Tony Kishman was in his 20s, singing in a Top 40 cover band, he added a Paul McCartney song called Beware My Love to the band’s repertoire.

The Arizona native didn’t think much of it when people started saying he looked like the sweet-faced McCartney when he performed it.

In fact, he was so unaware of his vocal and physical resemblance to the British pop giant that in 1977, when the producers of the Broadway tribute show Beatlemania contacted him to audition, he asked, “As who?”

He thought they must want him to portray George Harrison. He was a guitarist, not a bassist or pianist. For the audition, he scrambled to learn a few songs on those instruments, but didn’t cut his hair into a moptop.

“I had hair down to the middle of my back,” he recalls. “I wasn’t about to cut it until I knew I had the gig.”

He got it, and spent six years impersonating the “cute Beatle” in the touring Beatlemania. His long and winding career road has been linked to Sir Paul’s ever since. He still tours in a Fab Four tribute show called Twist and Shout.

In May, 2010, Kishman appeared with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in the “live Beatles experience” Classical Mystery Tour. He’s back with the full WSO this Friday through Sunday, starring in Live and Let Die: A Symphonic Tribute to the Music of Paul McCartney.

This time, he’s portraying the superstar in his mid-50s, his own current age (the real Paul is 69). He’ll deliver a parade of hits — complete with Macca’s trademark head-wagging and finger-pointing — ranging from Beatles favourites like Hey Jude and Let It Be to post-Beatles material like Jet and My Love.

It’s a show the lookalike/soundalike has performed with about 15 orchestras. He’s bringing a three-piece band that includes the same “John” and “Ringo” as in Classical Mystery Tour, but they’re serving as anonymous backup players.

After nearly 35 years as a McCartney doppelganger, Kishman has yet to meet the man himself. He came close in 1979, when he was performing Beatlemania in London and went to a McCartney & Wings concert at Wembley Stadium.

A roadie friend got the Faux Four tickets, but told them they had absolutely no hope of meeting the superstar. “He said, ‘Even if Rod Stewart was in the audience, McCartney would never have anybody come backstage.'”

So the quartet ducked out during the final encore. The next day, the roadie showed up saying, “Where did you guys go? Paul said, ‘Tell those lads from Beatlemania to come on backstage. I’d like to meet them.'”

“I almost went into convulsions,” Kishman ruefully remembers.

McCartney apparently did see them on TV and was quoted as saying, “The guy that plays me isn’t left-handed, but he’s a good musician.”

A few audience members are bugged that Kishman doesn’t play the Höfner bass left-handed. But the Beatlemania producers never thought it was an issue, he says.

Kishman and McCartney are both high tenors. Many of the classic songs are pitched very high, and are punishing to sing with advancing age.

“Even Paul himself has a hard time singing his own songs live,” Kishman says. “When you hear him try to sing Maybe I’m Amazed now, or any of the higher, more difficult numbers, it’s sort of a letdown. But yet we still love him, because he’s Paul….

“Any bass player will tell you he’s one of the greatest. The basslines he created are unbelievable — very melodic. Silly Love Songs has an amazing bassline, and he’s singing the most incredible vocal line over it….

“When I first started doing Paul, I said, ‘There’s no way I’m going to be able to do both these things at the same time.'”

Kishman, a songwriter himself, used to dream of getting out of McCartney’s shadow. When legendary Beatles producer George Martin came to see Beatlemania in 1980 and was impressed, Kishman gave him a tape of his own material.

“He said, ‘Tony, I’m afraid I can’t help you. You sound too much like Paul McCartney. There’s already a Paul McCartney.’ Of course at the time, I was crushed.”

But Kishman took a sad song and made it better. “I kind of turned lemons into lemonade,” he says with a chuckle. “I guess I’m the guy that’s chosen to do this.”

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca