Formed from the West End cast of the Broadway musical “Beatlemania”, The Bootleg Beatles’ career began at a now long forgotten student’s bash in Tiverton, Devon, UK on March 26th 1980 - almost ten years to the day since Paul McCartney announced the original’s had split. Giving themselves six months to make or break it, the group signed up to the late Brian Epstein’s NEMS agency. The new band’s calendar slowly filled with a mix of all-night college balls and tough tours of the Working Men’s Clubs of the North of England and Scotland - The Bootleg’s Hamburg.

Cutting to 1982, the now firmly established B.B.’s were offered a six-week tour of The U.S.S.R., becoming the first western rock group ever to tour the Soviet Union. Almost true Beatle-like scenes of hysteria greeted the Bootleg’s sold out concerts in Moscow and Leningrad. The world beckoned the group as they toured India, The Middle East, The Far East (playing to 18,000 fans at the Areneta Coliseum, Philippines) and in 1984, to the USA (leaving London on Pan Am flight 01A on the 7th February – exactly twenty years to the day after The Fab Four).

As the eighties wound down the world’s first ‘tribute’ band were ready for a fresh challenge – the story had only just begun. Read on…