Endorsed by the real thing, these musicians make a living by being someone else
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But for these Melburnians it’s also the ticket to a career impersonating some of music’s biggest names.
Coverbands are fine but impersonators go the extra mile to make us feel like we are watching the real thing.
These are the champions, my friends.
KYLIE
Like Kylie Minogue, Lucy Holmes seems ageless.
The Ringwood North singer and actor has been doing a matchless Minogue for nearly 20 years as 100 Percent Kylie, with the songbird herself having given Holmes the highest praise of all. “(In 2014), she called us ‘The best Kylie show in the world’, then she followed up on Twitter and congratulated me,” the mum of one says.
Eleven years Kylie’s junior, 39-year-old Holmes’ first memory of Minogue is as Charlene in Neighbours, wearing mechanic’s overalls and a perm and telling Scott to “rack off”.
“I listened to opera, classical, heavy metal when I was young, then when I got into my teens I was into the Impossible Princess era and Confide in Me,” Holmes says, Holmes studied for a Bachelor of Music Theatre at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, taking on roles such as Cosette in Les Miserables. But she says the role of Minogue has been an easy fit. “It’s very natural. I’m just a performer who is trying to encapsulate her,” she says. “One of my strengths is I learnt to mimic voices.
“I was born in Britain and raised in Australia and Kylie was born here but lives over there. That quasi-British Aussie voice with the twang, it’s bizarre. I love it.”
In 2001, Holmes did her first 100% Kylie performance at The Elephant and Wheelbarrow pub in St Kilda. “Now we’ve played huge arenas, but every time I drive past the pub, I have a chuckle to myself,” she says.
Holmes now also wears feathers, has back-up dancers and a band, and is widely regarded as the go-to Kylie impersonator. “I performed to 10 million people on Christmas Eve on BBC1,” she says. “Five of the world’s best impersonators were all there. I sang Santa Baby, then Spinning Around.”
She was also flown to the UK to be Minogue’s body double on a Magnum ice cream ad.
When not in character, Holmes has hosted breakfast radio on LightFM for more than a decade and does plenty of MC work.
Mega Minogue fans, particularly those in Jakarta, Malaysia, Dubai and Hong Kong, get full Kylie fever.
“In those countries, they don’t grasp the concept of an impersonator,” Holmes says. “They see a girl on stage, she looks like Kylie, they think it’s her. It’s hard with the language barrier to explain you’re an impersonator.”
Holmes, who was one of the 100 judges on TV talent quest All Together Now last year, takes everything in her gold-panted stride.
“I’ve done it for 18 years. I’m a Kylie jukebox,” she says. “My favourites to sing are Better The Devil You Know, Confide In Me, On a Night Like This and Slow. But I absolutely love new ones, too. “When Kylie released her Golden album (last year), I was like, ‘Yes, fresh meat’.”
QUEEN
As far as frontmen go, Freddie Mercury was inimitable. Almost.
Queen Forever frontman Gareth Hill sees the formidable task as a joyful challenge.
“Before each show, I run around the dressing room singing, ‘Aaaaaaaaa-yooooo, deeeeee di de do deeee doh,’” he says, going full Wembley. Hill has another secret, too: boot polish.
“I used to dye my hair black, which meant I had to be Freddie Mercury during my normal everyday life. One day I tried boot polish. I can just wash it out, it doesn’t drip unless I’m under very hot lights.
“I put some mascara on the moustache, shave the rest, put some eyeliner on and I’m done.” Growing up in Warrandyte, Hill’s pivotal Mercury moment came in high school.
“A friend in Year 7 brought in a cassette tape of Bohemian Rhapsody for music class. It’s the first time I remember hearing Queen in any form. It only took one play and I was hooked,” the 45-year-old says.
Hill’s natural flamboyance led him towards Mercury.
“Up until 2004, when I went to see another Queen cover band, the idea never entered
my mind. I honestly never thought I could replicate Freddie,” he says.
“I try to take on Freddie just like an actor in a play or a music theatre production. My philosophy is that you have to be the character and there’s no better character than Freddie.”
Since forming in 2011, Queen Forever has done the requisite weird and wonderful gigs.
It’s played in Gunbalanya in Arnhem Land to 900 indigenous people and performed I Want To Break Free at the recent Hong Kong Rubgy Sevens in front of 40,000 fans.
Hill, who lives in Williams Landing, runs the property investment business he inherited from his father a few years ago but will soon wind it down to take on Freddie Mercury impersonating full-time. Last year’s box-office smash Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody
resulted in a spike in bookings. “The average age of the crowd used to be 40 or 50,” he says. “Now we’re getting 10-year-olds coming who know all the songs.”
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DAFT PUNK
One act with a distinct advantage over others in this game is Discovery: Australia’s Daft
Punk Tribute Show. Why? Because the French disco house duo invariably wear bespoke gleaming masks. It also helps that the real thing rarely tour, so demand is high.
Discovery’s Damian Andres and Matt Campbell have been mates since they were 15 — Andres grew up in Keysborough, Campbell in Blackburn — and shared a passion for dance music of the time, including Armand van Helden, Roger Sanchez, Stardust, Madison Avenue, and, of course, Daft Punk.
The real duo has only toured here once, bringing a giant, lit-up pyramid set for the 2007 Never Ever Land concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter wore their robot masks, punched the air and didn’t utter a word.
Andres and Campbell were already hardworking DJs when they saw a niche.
“I basically purchased the helmets to have as a display in my house at the time,” Andres says.
“When I showed them to Matt, I asked him whether he’d be keen to do a DJ show dressed up as Daft Punk. Luckily we are similar in height and frame to the real Daft Punk so once we took a couple of photos and stopped laughing at ourselves, we secured a gig in St Kilda in 2012.” The gig was chockers, the crowd went wild and word got out.
“We had to sharpen up our costumes and personas to give the effect the audiences were really watching Daft Punk,” Andres says.
“We kept performing for a bit over a year when our agency called and asked to sign us up and tour us around the world, pun intended.”
Fans will be pleased they go method.
“We are always in character and not speaking when the helmets are on and, yes, we fist pump,” Andres says.
For day jobs, Andres works in sales at MYOB while Campbell moves and shakes for NAB. Their night job is far more glamorous.
Discovery was billed as a secret act at a forest rave in Indonesia in front of 10,000 punters. And they pulled the wool over the eyes of one of the world’s biggest companies.
“We’ve played a Google Christmas party to about 2000 people who thought we were the real Daft Punk,” Andres recalls.
Their set always features Around The World, Get Lucky and the ultimate crowd-pleaser
One More Time.
“But a surprise track that we always finish with is Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger mashed up with the bass line from Blue Monday by
New Order,” Andres says.
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ELTON JOHN
Bohemian Rhapsody owned musical cinema in 2018.
Now, with the Elton John biopic Rocketman out this month, Lance “Elton Jack” Strauss (left) is ready for an increase in interest.
In fact, the 64-year-old has been ready since the mid-’80s.
“In 1987, the best place to be seen by a national audience was Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s Red Faces segment,” he says. “I sang Bennie and The Jets and got a score of 26 (out of 30).
“(Judge) Red Symons gave me a six. I won and was invited back the following week
as a paid performer.”
Something even better came out of it than cash — a moniker.
“Daryl Somers loved me and that same night Ernie Carroll — who voiced Ossie Ostrich — coined the name Elton Jack. I was off and running.”
Strauss grew up in California and moved to Australia at 17. By then, Sir Reginald Dwight — aka John — had already made his mark.
“My first memory of Elton John was hearing Your Song on the car radio in the summer of 1970,” he says. “I was a complete Beatles tragic but something struck a chord in me when I realised this guy was just like me, a balding piano player. I was 15.”
Strauss, who does the Elton Jack gig full-time, has seen John perform about a dozen times.
There are always ebbs and flows in the life of a tribute act, but playing the Crocodile Rocker has been his ticket to the world.
“Between 1990 and 1995, I had a seven-piece band,” Strauss says. “We were working up to five nights a week in pubs, clubs and, of course, corporate shows.”
In 1993, he went to England with his band to try to conquer Europe.
“We were there for two years and appeared on countless TV shows in 15 countries.”
They played the Royal Albert Hall and the Natural History Museum before heading home to perform at the Sydney Opera House.
“I mainly do the ’70s classics in my shows so Crocodile Rock, Rocketman, Bennie, Daniel, Tiny Dancer and Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting to get people going.
“I’ve been doing a heap of cruise ships for the past 10 years and that’s the perfect demographic for early Elton.”
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U2
Bono has become a divisive figure for some in the past decade, thanks to that iPhone fiasco, but U2’s legion of fans will show up anywhere they can hear the band’s music being played faithfully.
It helps that Michael Cavallaro (below) has the extroverted Irishman’s swagger and timbre down pat. Cavallaro has led The U2 Show Achtung Baby on stage around Australia and parts of Asia for hundreds of gigs spanning more than a decade.
Growing up in West Melbourne, he saw New Year’s Day on rage in the mid-’80s and was mesmerised by the band’s sound, all before the quartet became a household name.
“There was something that stood out to me and made me pay attention to New Year’s Day. Then I had to find out more about the band that wrote the song,” the 43-year-old says.
“The Edge” guitarist Peter Kalamaras is the group’s founder. Cavallaro got lucky when “Adam Clayton”, his bass-playing mate David Attard, suggested him as Bono. After messing about with a few drummers, they found their “Larry Mullen Jr” in percussionist Craig Jupp.
Like many tribute acts, they hit the seas. “We’ve been fortunate enough to play around the world on cruise ships, and many corporate events,” Cavallaro says. But he says it's super fans that have kept the act afloat all these years. “Without them we’d probably still be playing U2 songs in our bedrooms.” U2 Show Achtung Baby has played in Singapore to 6000 people “all drunk on beer and their love of U2.”
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Locally, their biggest gig was 10,000 people.
While Cavallaro specialises in Bono’s Mr MacPhisto character from the Zoo TV tour, the group has two modes — greatest hits r a hits and rarities show.
“Where The Streets Have No Name, With Or Without You, One and Beautiful Day always get the people going.”
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