MopTops Play the Stick
Stephanie Bradley
This is from today's San Francisco Examiner:
MopTops play the 'Stick
Look-alike band plans song-for-song homage to the Beatles on 30th
anniversary of their last live performance
Edvins Beitiks
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
HE COULD'VE been the next King of Garbage, dropping down from a Sunset
Scavenger truck to
pick up desiccated goo in the Avenues. Instead, he's become John Lennon.
Joe Stefanelli, 1979 grad of Riordan High, grandson of garbage pioneer
Guido Campi, son of
Sunset Scavenger's Leonard Stefanelli, was going to go into the family
business in San Francisco.
But then, dressed as Lennon, he won a Halloween contest at L.A.'s
Whiskey-a-Go-Go and turned
his eye to the Beatles.
Now Stefanelli is front man for the MopTops, who flew into San Francisco
Wednesday to mark
the 30th anniversary of the Beatles last concert at Candlestick Park -
their last live concert
anywhere. The MopTops performance, matching the Beatles concert of Aug.
29, 1996 song for
song, is set to start an hour before the Giants game against the
Philadelphia Phillies Wednesday
night.
Those who have kept an image of the Beatles on stage, especially the
concert scenes from "A Hard
Day's Night," will see real similarities between Lennon and Stefanelli -
good enough at what he
does to have won the role as the on-screen Lennon in the movie "Forrest
Gump."
"I've sort of become accustomed to being John," said Stefanelli, who
spends his waking hours in
the guise of Lennon, walking the walk, talking the talk. When he
mentions his family's ties to San
Francisco, Stefanelli says, "Me mum grew up in the Mission District,
Oakwood Street. Me dad, in
the Haight."
Stefanelli, who grew up near 22nd and Sloat as a 49er and Giants fan,
listening to a radio in his
garage as Lon Simmons broadcast games, figured to follow in the
footsteps of his father, president
of Sunset Scavenger from 1965-85. "He turned a $6 million business into
$100 million in 20
years," said Stefanelli. "They used to call him the King of Garbage."
Although he was rightful heir to the title, Stefanelli put off stepping
into the family business, going
south to try his hand at acting in L.A. ( "My dad said, "You'll never
make any money at that' " ). He
won a couple of costume contests as Lennon, paid the bills briefly as
part of a late incarnation of
the Bay City Rollers, and didn't make the cut in some early ersatz
Beatle groups.
"To be fair, I didn't really know all the songs then, didn't know much
Beatle lore," said Stefanelli.
"But I learned quickly."
Stefanelli sat for hours, for days, watching bootleg tapes of old
British TV shows, midnight Beatle
concerts and the footage from "Hard Day's Night" and "Help!" An actor
first, a musician second,
Stefanelli taught himself to play guitar and by 1992 was the most
visible member of the MopTops,
a group that has played throughout the West and just completed a 30th
anniversary tour of Japan.
For the Candlestick performance, Stefanelli is joined by Rick Pizana as
George Harrison, Carmine
Grippo as Ringo and Tim McDougall as Paul McCartney, who plays the
guitar left-handed,
McCartney-style. They'll launch into the same Candlestick program as the
Beatles did 30 years
ago, starting with "Rock 'n Roll Music" and "She's a Woman," as
Stefanelli and the others dip and
glide, singing and shouting and smoothing the sides of their Mod
jackets.
"We're not a pickup band," said Stefanelli. "We're actors. We're always
in character. We've got
the same kind of suits they wore, the same boots, the same awful, awful
floral shirts for the '70's
stuff. We don't wear wigs. There's nothing phony about us."
Stefanelli said the MopTops audience runs from "three years old to 63.
And there are groupies,
definitely groupies. It's unbelievable, really."
The Beatles' success in America came from their artistry and the
serendipity of "their timing," he
said. "It was after the assassination of John Kennedy. This country
needed an uplift, and they were
there . . . They were great musicians, they had the goods. But they also
didn't take themselves too
seriously. We don't either. If you like us, fine. If you don't like us,
fine."
Stefanelli still shakes his head in wonder at the three-part harmony on
"Paperback Writer" and
songs like "Nowhere Man" and "I Feel Fine," his personal favorites. He
also respects what Lennon
has done - "There was this sense of, he didn't care. He was the rebel of
the group, but it was his
group."
Playing the Beatles, day in and day out, can take its toll, Stefanelli
said. "It tends to make you
punchy. You lose touch with reality.
"When I was in Japan this girl came up and wanted me to sign a picture
she had of the Beatles. Her
mother was with her, and her mother wanted to give me a hug . . . She
wouldn't let me go. She was
grabbing at my hair, pulling at it in clumps. I thought somebody was
going to get hurt.
"She had to know I wasn't John Lennon, but it didn't make any
difference," said Stefanelli. "It's
times like that that I feel like I'm kind of poaching John's image, you
know?"
But then Stefanelli will be standing in front of a hollering crowd,
hitting the first bars of "Paperback
Writer." At times like that, he doesn't mind missing out on being the
next King of Garbage.