Attack of the clones; 'Britney' from Edinburgh and 'Peat Loaf' from

IF THE recent Michael Jackson interview actually confirmed anything, it's that this man really is a one-off. But it also showed us that some people still want to act like him. Wannabes, lookalikes, copycats, motivated by respect, or profit, or fun, or something. Like the fanatic who ran out in front of Jackson's car in Berlin. Spot- lit in the headlights and filmed by Martin Bashir's documentary crew, he busted into a mirror-perfect routine of the star's signature stage- moves. If Jackson's face was capable of expression, he might have registered admiration.

"He does it all," squeaked the King of Pop. "The moonwalk, the kick, the heelspin." With the right management, he could clean up with that kind of high-quality mimicry. He could be the Next Best Thing.

"Tribute acts are big, big business," says Tom Solley, head salesman for Edinburgh-based pop-clone agency Impressario Productions Limited.

'Tribute' means people who try to look, dance, play and sing like popular bands and artists. More affordable and available than the originals, fooling nobody, but close enough to please a crowd. And when The market supports multiple first, second and third rate copies of almost everybody who ever sold a record. The popular and the extinct artists are the most widely duplicated. ABBA, a prime example, have more impostors than Santa Claus.

Impressario Productions was actually set up by Gavin Dickson, former keyboard player and Benny Andersson stand-in for The ABBA Experience, when he saw an opportunity in the fact that plenty of people are not at all sick of these songs. His company now hires out three Scottish ABBAs, and is readily satisfying the younger appetite for pop, which is strong enough to swallow imitations, no problem.

Tom Solley runs us through the menu. There is a mish-mash chart- hit replicant combo called Steps Club 7. "This," he pitches, "is an all singing, all dancing pop tribute show appealing to six to 16- year-old kids. Plus mothers, grandmothers, fathers, grandfathers."

Then there are the solo copy-kids who do Kylie, Robbie, Britney. IPL advertises for mimics at music colleges, or grooms them at weekend theatre schools. Or they 'discover' them - their Robbie Williams (Mark Dillon) was found at a karaoke bar in Sighthill.

Once auditioned, the kids are "rehearsed to hell, and sent out to shows within a few weeks", where they perform in the style of the originals, to the tune of the originals, reproduced through a backing track.

Jenny Dryden, the girl who would be Britney Spears, got into it through a friend at Jewel and Esk Valley College, where she's studying Modern Musicianship. The friend is the drummer in an ABBA tribute band (Hah! What a phoney - ABBA had no drummer).

"I did an audition," says 20-year-old Dryden. "Then I got a call asking me if I wanted to do a Britney tribute. And I was over the moon, because I love Britney."

For an hour or so, at some regional theatre on a Saturday night, she and the audience pretend she's the real thing. "I'm not as much of a dancer," says Dryden, who performs under the monicker Absolut Britney. "More of a vocalist. I have a naturally husky, breathy voice, so I can do her baby babys and yeah yeah yeahs pretty easily. But I do try to wiggle it because that's how Britney sells herself. Not overly sexy if there's kids present, but if it's an older audience then you ripple your body and stuff."

So they get Britney for under a tenner, and she gets 75 quid. "Which isn't fantastic, but I wouldn't make that much working in a pub all day. As a student, it's a brilliant part-time job. And it doesn't feel like work because I enjoy it so much.

"Even though it's only tribute, it's given me some really big gigs, which will do me favours in years to come. It's a stepping stone for musicians. If you can step any higher, then that's fantastic, but if not, at least we're performing and doing the thing that we love."

All performers love the buzz, and Dryden gets a diluted but potent taste of the energy surrounding Spears herself. Last Hogmanay she sang for 50,000 hooting weegies in Glasgow's George Square. "That was an amazing experience. I was so buzzing that I was sick."

And then there are the fans. All pop stars say they do it for the kids. Dryden is in that surreal situation where she earns applause but it's not entirely hers. The harder she works, the better she gets, the greater the glory she's giving up to Britney. Which seems to be the sacrifice required in paying tribute. Playing in Spanish holiday resorts all last summer - which she was obviously pretty happy to do - she would spend an hour and a half signing autographs afterwards.

"They know you're not the real thing. But they still ask for you to sign as Britney Spears. So I do. I love seeing the little happy faces."

To hear Tom Solley tell it, those little happy faces are IPL's mandate. Obviously it's a money-making exercise ("I'm not going to show you my bank statement") but the expressed intent is to provide a service.

"Kids have an in-depth knowledge of S Club and all that," he says. "But the only live entertainment they get in Scotland is the pantomime once a year or the The Singing Kettle. Social clubs have not kept up with the times, they do not put pop shows on. So that's what we're giving them."

Trouble is, plenty of others have had the same idea. There are other Britneys, other Robbies. And they make raids. "We compete mainly with touring shows from London," says Solley. "There are a few S Club and Steps acts and dozens of tribute acts doing Robbie Williams, Tom Jones, Rod Stewart, all shooting up and down across the border and charging up to (pounds) 1000 for one performance. They go for the bigger venues like Falkirk Town Hall, and charge (pounds) 20 a ticket. "We're not saying that the actual content of these shows is any better than ours. A lot of them mime, for example. Our acts all sing. And dance. But you know what the music business is like."

And there it is. The tribute scene is not necessarily a bargain substitute, but some weirdly reflective part of the music industry itself, shifting around the edges, feeding off the same market forces and public tastes, subject to the same tensions and hierarchies. The mime acts make easy money, but get no respect from the tribute players who can sing. And the bands who can really play can't hide their distaste for the all-singing, all-dancing element.

While Jenny Dryden readily admits that what she does is "glorified karaoke", Rob Hartley, bass player for the self-explanatory Black McSabbath, admits that he's "a bit cynical about all that karaoke Britney and Kylie stuff". A placid, genial civil engineer with a weekend head for Ozzy Osbourne's brand of insano-rock, he suggests that his own end of the scene - heavy Seventies tribute bands playing in pubs - is thriving because "music hasn't got any better since then". So every time they get the chance, he and his mates put on "the wigs and the whole lot" and go and play the music that they've always loved for audiences who feel the same way. He plays Geezer Butler's brutal bass parts, they've got a psychiatric nurse called Psycho Ward on drums, and building contractor Jim Mackenzie acts and sings like Ozzy. Without guzzling fistfuls of drugs and dining on the heads of live bats? "No no no," says Hartley. "He has to drive home, and he's got work the next day." Sobriety notwithstanding, every show "is like a big party", and that's the only reason they do it. Plenty of people still dig Sabbath, but re-playing them doesn't pay too well.

"With rehearsals and petrol and all that, this is not a profit- making organisation. But we'd rather play to 40 Sabbath fans in Ullapool for (pounds) 200 than not play at all." Hartley's casual, practical enthusiasm was considered deeply un-rock by the ex- bandmates with whom he formed the original tribute act MacSabbath. "The first guitarist thought we should be playing the SECC for big money. He used to throw tantrums on stage, which is bit over the top since we're a bunch of middle-aged guys playing somebody else's music."

The old MacSabbath still exist, and pursue a "one-sided" rock feud with Hartley and co. But they haven't done a gig since the split. Ozzy, meanwhile, is a star again thanks to his family's smash-hit real-life sitcom. "I never miss it. But I wouldn't want anyone to think we were jumping on the bandwagon, we started this long ago. But I'm not complaining about the raised profile."

Any relevant events can raise the profile of a tribute band. Anything that reminds the public about the originals - a reformation, a re-release. A death. Joe Strummer, chief agitator of The Clash, died before his time last December. As shocked and sad as they were to lose a hero, Glasgow's Counterfeit Clash know it's not a coincidence that their shows have never been so busy.

"The funny thing is," says Robert McCahill, the music technology lecturer who pulls Mick Jones duties on guitar and backing vocals, "we got quite a few messages of sympathy from people. Which was bizarre. They wanted to tell us how upset they were. It's been quite touching recently, the whole place raising their glasses to Joe."

And sure enough, when I go and see them play at Glasgow rock pub Firewater, the guy next to me at the urinal is nodding his head to their bang-on cover of London Calling. He stares at me disconcertingly, looking for acknowledgement. "Joe Strummer, man," he says, tritely but sincerely.

Actually, The Counterfeit Clash are brilliant. McCahill says they play to "ex-punks who are now professionals, and come along in their suits. And the ones who never grew out of it. Then there's the younger folk discovering The Clash for the first time."

The night isn't ideal - a Wednesday night, a bar full of students - but by the time they play White Riot there are kids bouncing at the front and standing on tables. McCahill and the band take it just seriously enough to get the sound right. Otherwise they do it because it's fun. Maybe there's something essential in the music that makes it work even with someone else playing it.

Pete Rossi believes this wholeheartedly. He's also known as Peat Loaf, "the one and only dead ringer" for Wagnerian rock balladeer Meat Loaf, and appears in Mock 'n' Roll Dreams, a forthcoming TV documentary about tribute bands.

When I meet him, Rossi seems a downbeat guy, slightly battered by his troubles; Peat Loaf is quite the opposite, based on his hero and built on self-belief. Rossi has been a chef, and a miner ("made redundant in 1983, just before the strike"), and only started singing when karaoke came along.

"We used to get five happy hour vodkas and a pint and watch each other make fools of ourselves." Thus juiced, he found he could sing like the devil. But just after he formed his first band, he injured his back in a motorbike crash and threw himself into a total depression. He was helped by listening to Meat Loaf songs. "There's something about his music," says Rossi. "He's not just a guy who stands up there and sings, he puts his life and soul into it. He's living the drama of the song. And I started seeing that these were stories about my own life. I have experienced every lyric of that Bat Out Of Hell album. Music reaches depths that no drugs and no counselling can reach."

It's this level of identification that makes Rossi sure that his own 100 per cent live rock opera tribute is "exactly would see if you went to see Meat Loaf". But cheaper.

He's played Butlin's, and David Coulthard's birthday party, but he's up to his eyes in debt. Rossi is up against those big English tribute acts and he has also fallen out with many agents and promoters in Scotland. This makes it tough to get a gig. "But when the electricity kicks off, and the hairs on your neck stand up and the crowd go ape shit. That's what I do it for."

When he says it you believe that he believes he can become someone else. Later, while the photographer is shooting Pete in Dundonald, a couple of nu-rock kids come over. They're wearing Korn T-shirts, and frankly I'm expecting them to take the piss. "Hey big guy!" one shouts. "You're Peat Loaf! You're brilliant!" It sounds like he means it. Pete doesn't seem especially pleased, or flattered. He looks like he expects nothing lessu Mock 'n' Roll Dreams - Monday, 11pm, Scottish

Copyright 2003 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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