(Courtesy of whosbadmusic.com)
Though Michael Jackson may no longer be with us, tribute band Who’s Bad comes to the Fox Theatre this Thursday to honor the energetic hits and dancing spirit of the King of Pop.
The CU Independent interviewed the Who’s Bad founder and saxophone player Vamsi Tadepalli to talk about the band’s history and why playing Michael Jackson is just so fun.
CU Independent: Where did the idea for Who’s Bad come from? What led you to found a Michael Jackson tribute band?
Vamsi Tadepalli: In 2003, I was about to graduate from University of North Carolina. I was a music major and looking to put together a band. I had a bunch of songs I wanted to play but a bunch of them were Michael Jackson songs. When you’re at a bar or a club or anywhere and Billie Jean comes on, you just see an automatic reaction from people. I thought to myself, these kinds of songs would be awesome live. The more songs I added to the list by Michael, the more I was like, “Let’s just do all Michael. No one else is doing it; there’s no band. There are definitely impersonators, but most of those guys just dance and dress like him.” So I wanted to be the first to put the music out there in a live fashion. We actually had a band put together before we even had a Michael, which is probably the opposite of what you’d expect. I mean you’ve got all these jazz musicians that were my friends, but we had to find a Michael. Fortunately there was a dude in Chapel Hill, who’s still with us today (Taalib York). He grew up singing and dancing just like Michael and he auditioned for us and killed it and the rest is history.
CUI: Usually there are choreographed dancers onstage with the musicians, but for this show there are not. Will the members be doing the dancing instead?
VT: What’s cool about it is, everybody onstage is engaged. It’s not like you have a band in the background that no one pays attention to and then Michael is upfront. At some point, everyone onstage is upfront dancing or doing a solo. The horn section does a lot of the choreography. I play saxophone with the band and our trumpet player Ray [McCall]…he and I will go out and do like “Smooth Criminal” choreography or the “Thriller” dance or the “Beat It” knife fight. I think that’s what the appeal was for a long time, because you would never expect someone like a professional trombone player to go out there and dance.
CUI: Apart from the choreography, what separates Who’s Bad from other Michael Jackson tribute bands?
VT: The main thing that separates us from the other bands is that we’ve been around the longest and we’re the only one that tours the entire world. Plus, a lot of the other tributes came out after Michael died. We’ve been playing since 2003, during a time when Michael was probably not at the height of his popularity, especially with all of the allegations. There was a lot of skepticism when we first started. [There were cases where] people put up tour posters that said, “Michael Jackson Tribute, don’t bring your kids.” Everyone had forgotten about his music and all they could think about was what was what he may or may not have done in his personal life. I guess our mission was to remind people how great his music really is.
CUI: Did your fan base change at all after Jackson’s passing?
VT: What we noticed in our crowds is that we saw a lot more kids. Like dressing up in Thriller jackets or whatever and they know all the songs. They’re six-year-old kids that know all the words and are dressed up. They didn’t grow up with him at all, but somehow the guy managed to reach them even after he was dead. Our roots definitely lie in the college crowds, because that’s where we came from. We started in Chapel Hill and that’s the kind of towns that we play. But since then, it’s become a little more family oriented. That’s the beauty of Michael’s music is that it does reach people of all ages, gender and race. We played a bunch of shows in China this past May and many people didn’t speak English, but they knew all the words to the songs.
CUI: Do you add your own original style to any of the classic hits?
VT: We do kind of add our own twists here and there. You’ll hear a lot of personality come from each musician. We do try to be as authentic as possible at the same time.
CUI: Is there anything you’d like to let people know about the band or the show?
VT: The show itself is 100 minutes of high energy, non-stop fun. There are actually two Michaels in the band that interchange. What that does is it creates a very fluid show because you never have to wait for someone to change a costume, and there are plenty of those costume changes throughout the show. It’s just a fun time to get up, get out there and dance. We’ve got a very ethnically diverse group of guys onstage and I think that’s indicative of what Michael’s music represents.
Who’s Bad performs at the Fox Theatre on Thursday, Jan 20. You can buy tickets here.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Stephanie Riesco at Stephanie.riesco@colorado.edu.
