Today is a big day for Beatles fans.  Digitally remastered versions of all of the Beatles studio albums (14 discs) are being released after years of anticipation in The Beatles Stereo Box Set.  Also new today is The Beatles: Rock Band.  Available for Xbox, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii, the game is played with Rock Band compatible instruments.  Limited edition collections of the game with Beatles replica Rock Band instruments are also available.

Admittedly, the Beatles are not a dreary band and they are not the typical subject matter of this blog.  (The Beatles did have a dark side.  For instance, the song “Norwegian Wood” on Rubber Soul ends with the singer burning down a woman’s house as revenge for making him sleep in the bath all night.) But I’ve been excited about today’s new releases for awhile and I felt like celebrating.  So I asked Kukubee, the artist that created this site’s header, to do a zombie interpretation of the cover of my favorite Beatles’ album, Abbey Road.  It’s fantastic!

It got me thinking that while the Beatles make a fun group costume for a foursome, creepy, undead Beatles would make an even more fun group costume.  So whether you want to be an authentic Beatle or an undead Beatle, I hope you get some ideas from this post.

Ed Sullivan Show Era Beatle

R.W. Lease, Ltd. sells reproductions of the black suits worn by the Beatles during their debut on the Ed Sullivan show on February 9, 1964.  The jacket is made of 100% worsted wool with a velvet wing collar, four-button front with no outside pockets, a double vent back, and three-button sleeves.  The trousers are drainpipe trousers.

A Hard Day’s Night Era Beatle

The same year, 1964, on August 11, A Hard Day’s Night premiered.  You’ll want the same moptop style wigs and grey suits with black collars.

R.W. Lease Ltd. also makes a reproduction of the classic grey suit seen in the film Hard Days Night.  The suit is 100% worsted wool with an inset black velvet collar.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Era Beatles

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released June 1, 1967.

For a more authentic look:

Abbey Road Cover Beatles

Abbey Road was the last album the Beatles recorded before breaking up in 1970.  You can see by the diverse looks of the band members that they’ve grown in different directions.  For the suits and denim I’d check out thrift stores, Ebay, overstock.com etc.

George Harrison

To be George you’ll need long Brown hair and a beard and mustache.  He’s wearing a western style denim, button down shirt, slightly flared jeans and white dress shoes.

Paul McCartney

Paul has sort of medium length shaggy brown hair.  He’s wearing a navy suit with a white dress shirt.  He holds a cigarette and has bare feet.

Ringo Starr

Ringo has medium to long brown hair with a beard and mustache.  He wears a long black jacket over a white dress shirt, black trousers and black dress shoes.

For authenticity, turn to R.W. Lease Ltd. again.  They’ve replicated the long Edwardian coat that Ringo wore for the Abbey Road cover as well as to the premiere of Yellow Submarine.

John Lennon

John has long and messy brown hair with a full beard and mustache.  He has on round glasses.  He wears an Ivory wool blend suit over a white shirt with white dress shoes.

For John’s hair, look at hippie and Jesus style wigs.

You should be able to find some simple round glasses at a costume store, but if you want quality frames there are replicas of the styles John wore.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 6:28 am and is filed under Costumes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.