The Threetles

The Threetles are Paul Brierley, Thomas Jones, Andy Housley and Simon McGoran also featuring Andy ‘Billy’ Preston.

Formed in 2013, The Threetles have played to packed houses across the North West to great acclaim.

This celebration band play a huge array of Beatles numbers spanning their entire career. In addition, they have been known to perform albums in their entirety, including the epic “White Album”

As our featured “Band Of The Month” for June, we caught up with Paul for a quick chat:

Whittles: Thanks for talking to us guys. Could you start by taking us through what inspired you to start a Beatles celebration band?

I’ve  been a musician since 1971 and played in dozens of bands. Groups would always include Beatles tunes in their repertoire, usually just the hits and well known album tracks.

Having said that one of my early bands “Fleece” who were formed in 1972 performed the second side of “Abbey Road” in local pubs and clubs. This had never been done before to our knowledge so I suppose that’s were the term “a Beatles band” was coined.  Still to this day we call ourselves a Beatles band and not a tribute. The title “Tribute” came along with TV shows like Stars In Their Eyes, where acts would dress and look like the people they were copying.

The Threetles were formed in 2012 when Tom and Andy were playing in an open mic night. I walked in, joined in and we became the Threetles. As time went by we acquired Simon on drums and another Andy on keys. Simon and I were in a previous Beatles band called The Semolina Pilchards. There was ten of us in that band and we did a lot of solo Wings stuff hence our brass section.

So there’s no real inspiration, just a life long love of the fabs music .

Whittles: Do you all have day jobs and are you in any other bands?

Yes, we all have days jobs ranging from GP,s to drum shop manager. I am a sound engineer now after being a pro bass player for 40 years.

Whittles: You often play Beatles albums in their entirety live. Which has been the most challenging to learn and which has been the most fun to play?

We like to mark the 50 years since something was released or happened. It started in February 2013 when we re-staged the Beatles playing at the Astoria, which is just across the road from Whittles.

Tuesday February 13th was the day in 1963 that beatlemania was born. 1000’s of Oldham teenagers tried to get in to see the fabs play. They had just driven up from London Abbey Road having recorded in 12 hours their first album Please Please Me

.John Lennon had a really bad cold and had lost his voice hence he hardly sang at the Oldham gig. We copied their set list as best as we could and even had the original DJ from the night Tony Prince. There were also many people that came who were there on the night in 1963. We raised nearly £3000 for Dr Kershaws that night.

The next time we did a 50th anniversary was for the album “Rubber Soul” in 2015.  A year later it was “Revolver” then “Sgt Pepper” and most recently the “White Album”.

All of the Beatles songs are hard to replicate if you want to get them just right as their production techniques were incredible. We spent many many hours getting things as close as possible, some with great success. They are all tricky in their own way so it’s hard to pick one out really.

Whittles: You once shared a stage with the fifth Beatle, Pete Best. What was that like? Did you get to meet him?

Pete Best was fab. Boy does he have stories to tell, or not! He s very tight lipped on the subject of him leaving the Beatles  saying, “I’ll leave you to make your own minds up”.

He was a really nice chap, we were with him and his brother Roag the whole day having a right laugh, he thought we were great . At this event we also met Freda Kelly who was the fan club secretary and later Brian Epstein’s personal secretary.

Freda has become a close friend of us all and has attended many of our gigs, she’s another one who was in the inner circle of the fabs.

Whittles: Which Beatle’s solo efforts do you prefer?

I like Macca’s solo stuff. Right from his first album, McCartney, through Wings and onto his live performances. Of course I hold John and George’s stuff in the same high regard as proved by us covering probably more of their material than Paul’s.

Whittles: Could you tells us about the “Deafened Delpher”?

Will the real deafened delpher please stand up?

We were playing a small festival in Delph a few years back. Party in the park. All was well, or so we thought. To our surprise, a letter had been sent to the Oldham Chronicle stating that, “a boy band with their amps no doubt turned up to 11 were disturbing the peace of the village”
We were dead chuffed at being called a boy band as our collective age must be 270 years!

We never found out who he or she was.

Whittles: How likely are we to see the Threetles play a rooftop gig in the future?

We missed doing the rooftop gig because I was in the middle of a 45 date UK tour. Shame really cos we had planned to do it somewhere, possibly in Manchester,  maybe even get the police to come and turn us off.

The Threetles are doing an interesting gig on August bank holiday Sunday at the Casbah club in Liverpool, it’s where the Beatles played their first gig in 1960 I think. It’s quite an honour to be invited to do this gig, we may also be appearing at the Beatle week fest in Liverpool.

Will we do a rooftop gig in the future? Very likely I reckon, don’t know where yet but we’ll let you know.

Whittles: Finally, do you have a message for the Whittles crowd?

We ‘re really looking forward to playing at Whittles again in June. It comes in a batch of gigs for us which is unusual as we normally only do around 6 gigs a year so we should be on form.

We like it when people challenge us to play obscure tracks, we haven’t been caught out yet so let’s see what the Whittles crowd can come up with.

Reckon the sitar and tablas will be making an appearance in June too. Hope to see a full house for a sing along, see ya, Paul.