Art of Time Diary #5

You may even read this before the National Post publishes it. Here’s My unedited version of today’s diary.

Here I am in the middle of rehearsals for the upcoming Art of Time Ensemble Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club celebration. Digging into the material I keep reflecting back on the weird twists of fate that the Beatles keep throwing at me. Some people don’t know about my band – Odds. Others who do know the band may not know we broke up from 1998 to 2007. Sorry friends. Maybe forgot to mention it. We were doing really well in 1998 but it felt like it was time to break up. Its just part of what you do if you’re a band. I know, for sure, I made a clear announcement to the band that I was leaving.
Everyone in the band knew but we certainly forgot to tell our agent who called about a week after my pulling the plug to say that Sir George Martin was about to embark on a big symphony tour and would we be the “electric band” part of the orchestra. We were to play the guitar, drum and bass parts and sing a lot of the vocals on a program featuring Sir George Martin conducting a symphony playing his classic Beatle orchestrations. The promoter had sent Sir George our albums. He had listened and declared us “great” and “the right choice”. I guess our influences were showing even more than we thought. No higher compliment could be paid. His official endorsement of our “Beatle spirit” was the sincerest form of flattery (I draw up just shy of the word imitation).
We talked it over and decided this was too good to miss. We agreed to put off our break-up until the Sir George tour was over. Our onstage vibe was going to be authentic “Let It Be” tension but what the hell.
About a month later Mr. Martin decided a long tour was going to be too much for him. He called and said he was just going to do a couple of shows in a few cities with musicians from those locales. He was sorry. So then we broke up.
That is the weird story of how the Beatles got our band back together…for a month. They were such a good band that their dysfunctional broken up band could get other broken up bands back together. Magic.
Odds have been back making music for years now. That had nothing to do with the Beatles I just wanted to make sure I told you about that this time.