All you need is Beatles

Love never goes out of style. Maybe that’s why the Beatles don’t either.

Even as one disposable pop trend after another courts the fleeting attention of teens, the Fab Four still attracts new legions of followers four decades after the band’s heyday.

Like love itself, the Beatles are all a young music fan needs.

“Most of the bands I listen to, there’s always something about them I can find that some people don’t like,” said Ben Tully, a senior-to-be at Bainbridge High School. “The Beatles are so timeless. What’s cool is the whole ‘love’ message – that’s a message that people will always be interested in.”

Tully is the impresario behind a live performance of the Beatles’ classic album “Revolver,” a production that makes its third and final appearance at 7 p.m. Friday on the Grace Episcopal Church lawn on Day Road East.

Tully discovered the Beatles a decade ago, when the Apple Records vaults turned out three volumes’ worth of outtakes and unreleased studio sessions as “Beatles Anthology.”

It was a revelation for the young musician – whose mother, Betsy Dunlap, is a longtime island piano teacher and whose father, Tim Tully, is a veteran of the local stage – who to that point wasn’t much of a pop fan.

Tully dreamed up the tribute to his favorite band last November, when he was selected to the high school’s Student Arts and Activities Board.

A bass guitar and trumpet player by training, he recruited members of his own rock band and other musicians he knew from around the school.

When it came time to select an album to re-create, he had unusually rich source material from a band that in its brief existence simultaneously invented modern pop music and obliterated its boundaries.

Tully considered “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Abbey Road,” but decided those records would be too hard to reproduce. Edging out the ever-popular “Rubber Soul” was the groundbreaking “Revolver.”

The album was released exactly 40 years ago on the fulcrum of the Beatles’ two distinct creative periods – the mop-top, teen-frenzy-inducing days through 1965, and the heady psychedelic period from 1967 on in which the recording studio itself become a key instrument.

“Revolver” keeps a foot in each world, from the drolly acerbic “Taxman,” to the elegiac chamber music of “Eleanor Rigby,” the exuberant, horn-driven pop of “Got to Get You Into My Life” and the lysergic drone of “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

The record announced that the Beatles were headed in directions only they could comprehend, ushering in the flower-power rock of the late 1960s.

“I think that album really captures the transition from the Beatles being really big pop stars to being incredible and respected musicians,” said Tim Spenser, who with Tully and Nowell Kahle re-creates the Beatles’ harmonies onstage. “It’s right at the height of their popularity and the flowing of their their creativity.”

Nearly 20 musicians – including horn and string sections – make up Tully’s live revue, coming on and off stage depending on the arrangement. The first two performances, in March and May at BHS, were greeted by enthusiastic crowds, and yes, a little screaming.

Friday’s performance will be family friendly, more white-shirt-and-tie than Nehru jacket. It is, in the end, timeless music that transcends generations.

“To me, they’re the best,” Spenser said. “There’s something about them that no other band has been able to replicate. It’s like they’re singing to you when you’re listening to them. I haven’t heard any other group that’s been able to do that.”

Tully agrees.

“Their music appeals (both) to people who are really, really critical of music and people who aren’t really knowledgeable about music,” he said. “They were so experimental, but they never got so weird that they weren’t listenable or pop-oriented anymore.”

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