Why tribute bands are not photocopiers

Tell people you play in a tribute band and sooner or later someone asks: "But why don't you write your own music?" Behind the question sits the idea that a tribute is a copy. A photocopy of a band, worth less than the original, and so not worth the bother. We see it differently, and not only because we play in a tribute band ourselves.

The record exists, the night does not yet

A photocopier needs an original that keeps still. Music does not keep still. Take the band we play. Reviewers describe how the Red Hot Chili Peppers open their concerts with a jam on guitar, bass and drums that only slides into Can't Stop after a few minutes. NME wrote about "extended jams" at the Isle of Wight Festival in 2014; in 2017 Miami New Times watched the band as it "occasionally grooved into a hot and heavy jam session". Which version do you copy, then? The one on the record, or the one from a night in 2014? There is more on those jams in From the archive: how the Chili Peppers jam live.

We stick to the record where you need to recognise it: the riff of Can't Stop, the bass line of Around the World, the solo in Dani California. And we jam where the Chili Peppers jam. That part is different every night, because Tom on bass and Jan on drums hear each other differently that night. A photocopier cannot do that.

Copying is a craft too

A copy asks for no decisions. A good tribute is full of them. The Analogues, the Dutch band that spent ten years playing the late Beatles albums, wrote out the arrangements note for note. Singer Felix Maginn told SuperDeluxeEdition how they set down "bit for bit", with pencil and paper, what happens on the records, and argued about it among themselves. That way they played live music The Beatles never took onto a stage. That is reconstruction. Call it copying and you would have to call an orchestra playing Beethoven a photocopier too.

The audience wants the band, not the wig

Music researcher Colin Outhwaite spoke to tribute musicians in Australia for The Conversation. The singer of The Smyths, a Smiths tribute, told him that his audience wants the band to "be themselves" rather than play a "pantomime" version. Outhwaite's conclusion: tributes "have their own personality".

We recognise that. In the raps of Give It Away, Daan sounds like Anthony Kiedis, but between songs he talks like the Brabander he is. Nobody in the room wants him to pretend he comes from Los Angeles.

Where the copy does matter

To be fair: a tribute band that plays too loosely is a cover band with a theme. Cesar Zuiderwijk, as a judge on The Tribute – Battle of the Bands, put it this way in TV Gids: "The most important thing is to get close to the original" (in Dutch). We agree. The notes and the sound have to be right. The original sets the bar.

A bar is not a template, though. You clear it by jumping again every night, in a different room, with a different crowd that goes off at a different song. That jump is the craft. And done well, it gives a room something a record cannot: the music of a band you may never see up close again, played by people who put their whole body into it.

That is why tribute bands are not photocopiers. They are the reason you get to hear Under the Bridge once more in a small venue, with sweat running down the walls.

This is a column by the De Peppers editorial team. Read what tribute musicians say themselves in From the archive: what makes a good tribute band?, or find more columns on our columns page.

De Peppers editorial team

Written by the editors at De Peppers, the Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute band from Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands. Every fact is sourced at the bottom of the piece. Spotted a mistake? Email info@mia-automation.com and we will check it.

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