PORT TOWNSEND — Mark Cole was leery, like a lot of John Lennon fans would be.
A tribute to Lennon, by a singer from California?
Yet Cole, owner of the Upstage theater, decided to give Drew Harrison a listen. The San Francisco Bay Area performer, whose show is called “The Spirit of Lennon,” wanted to come up to Port Townsend.
And “my heart jumped,” Cole recalls, “at being so immediately moved by the works of John, a person who truly changed the world.”
Harrison’s tribute to Lennon’s life and art is not about wardrobe or schtick, Cole felt. Instead, he said, “his music totally delivers John Lennon.”
On that same day that Cole first watched Harrison’s video, he also revisited the long-range plan for the Upstage as a place for musicians, dancers and other artists. It has become that. But the theater and restaurant are not faring terrifically well amid the recession, and Cole is considering a conversion to nonprofit status.
As he explores that possibility, Cole is holding fundraisers at and for the Upstage, which is where Harrison and Lennon come in.
The singer will bring his “Spirit of” show to the all-ages venue this Thursday at 7:30 p.m. For this Upstage fundraiser, tickets are $15 — or $5 for those 25 and younger.
“We really like youth to get to hear some of these great acts,” Cole said, “and the fact is that around here the 25-and-under group does not have the resources to always attend.”
Harrison, meantime, doesn’t flinch when facing skepticism from a reporter.
First of all: Don’t some people hold Lennon’s memory as sacred, not to be sullied by some American guy?
“I’m one of those people,” Harrison replies. “That [music] is sacred ground.”
Lennon’s fierceness, his hopes for peace, his honesty and his art — all of it inspired Harrison as a young man. He went to the University of California at Berkeley to earn a degree in peace and conflict studies. Then he ran a bar, the Nightcap, in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Then he set out for Ireland, intending to play music on the streets.
And, as Lennon himself said, life happened while Harrison was making other plans. The singer ended up moving to Eastern Europe where, after the Berlin Wall had come down in 1989, rock ’n’ roll had at last come out to play.
Back when the Iron Curtain was up, that kind of music was verboten. You could not have a Rolling Stones or Beatles cover band, not openly. But with the fall of the wall, out came “Satisfaction,” “Ticket to Ride” and a cavalcade of exuberance.
So, when Harrison arrived in the Czech Republic in the 1990s, he found kindred spirits. Karlovy Vary, a city in western Bohemia, is just one of the locales where people turned out in force for his Beatles tribute concerts.
After a few years in Europe, Harrison decided it was time to return home to California. He brought the Beatles back with him: In 2001, he formed the Sun Kings, a tribute band that’s still together and touring.
“The Spirit of Lennon” is something Harrison does less often than his Sun Kings show. In it, he seeks to deliver Lennon’s philosophy, without a lot of special effects.
“I’m not a costume guy,” he said, though “I do wear the glasses. That’s my nod.”
It’s just a coincidence that he shares the surname of Lennon’s fellow Beatle, George, though when Harrison was a boy — a very young boy — he did tell people that George was his uncle.
Harrison starts his tribute with the Beatles’ “Help!” and moves forward from 1970 to 1980, the era when Lennon developed his solo career.
“Lennon was theater, in and of himself,” Harrison said. “He believed that life is art; so live it.”
Very often during a show, people are moved to share their own memories of Lennon.
“There’s no fourth wall,” Harrison said.
Some come up to him to share their feelings, sometimes negative, about Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono. They believe she broke up the Beatles, and they cannot believe that Harrison does not hold a grudge
against her for that.
“I’m a fan of Yoko,” Harrison says without reservation. “I think she’s an incredible human being.”
In “Spirit of Lennon,” Harrison does not go into how Lennon was murdered on Dec. 8, 1980, soon after his 40th birthday and the release of the “Starting Over” album.
“Spirit,” Harrison said, is about hope. And he cannot get through the night without “Imagine,” Lennon’s plea for peace.
“I’ve sung it countless times,” including on many New Year’s Eves, in Europe and North America.
“Everyone gets it,” Harrison said. “‘Imagine’ is thinking about having a better world, and how that might come about. It still makes sense to me.”