Beatles tragic Kram to tour Let It Be Live with Aussie rock supergroup ARC

He plays the drums in Aussie rock supergroup ARC - Antipodean Rock Collective - alongside Darren Middleton (Powderfinger), Mark Wilson (Jet) and Davey Lane (You Am I), all of them self-confessed "Beatles tragics".

As they did with the sell-out Abbey Road Live, the band will once again walk the tightrope to faithfully and lovingly bring another brilliant Beatles creation to life on stage - Let It Be from start to finish - followed by a second set playing a selection of favourites from The Beatles' vast catalogue.

The 12-date national tour kicks off on July 15.

Kram can't wait.

"The very first time I heard them was on a tape in my Mum's car. It was an old Toyota Cressida and one of the speakers was busted so I couldn't hear half of the vocals," he said.

"Then someone gave me a tape to listen to and I'm pretty sure it was Abbey Road on one side, and a whole bunch of Beatles songs on the other.

"They just blew my mind.

"The same year my school counsellor gave me a Sex Pistols tape which I loved just as much, so those two bands, as well as an old Black Sabbath record of my Dad's, were very much my early influences.

"In a way, creatively, I am a combination of all three."

He credits The Beatles' varied sound as one of their most enduring legacies.

"If you have different songwriters and singers in a band, you inevitably get variation, and for the listener it creates a really interesting mix of sounds and musical styles.

"That's just one of the ways they influenced me and Spiderbait in general. Their variation.

"I know we always had difficulties when we would sign a deal in America and they would say they loved our metal stuff but not our pop stuff. In Tokyo they loved our pop stuff but not our metal stuff, and we were like, 'Well, we like everything'.

"I think there can be a lot of pressure for a band to have a certain sound so as to not confuse their listeners, but just listen to the Beatles' records. Revolver, for example, is just so varied and so different and that was very much a template for us."

Mention of Revolver leads to a quick discussion about the last song on the album, the wonderfully trippy Tomorrow Never Knows. It follows the vastly different tone and pace of Got To Get You Into My Life.

"Yeah, how amazing is that song? We played it in the last show and I think Davey singing it is as tripped out as I have ever seen him, and that's saying something," Kram said, laughing.

"He literally floated and eventually came back down."

Returning to the thread about variation, Kram says it "not only allows you to write a whole bunch of different music, it also creates a certain dynamic to your style and stops you from getting too predictable in your writing and in the emotional response you have when you play".

It keeps things fresh and interesting for both musician and listener, in other words.

"I've been jamming the song Dig A Pony this week and I just love the drums so much. It's my favourite Ringo drumming," he said.

"It's very fast, it's free, and it's like he's not even thinking about it and is just going with the flow. And I just love John's vocal.

"But I can definitely say that 30 years ago I probably wasn't into that song.

"We're going to do a retrospective double album of Spiderbait stuff this year and I was listening to all of Janet's songs and I remember thinking at the time 'Yeah, this is a good song', but now, looking back 20 years later I'm like 'Wow, this song is just amazing'.

"It's exactly the same with Beatles songs. Over the course of your life you reignite your enthusiasm for some older songs, or maybe you didn't like it at all then but you really like it now.

"It's just another example of the variety a large volume of work can produce. You never really tire of it.

"I don't think I will ever tire of Beatles songs. It's just not possible."

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