Alex Waldie – Being In A Rock & Roll Band Allows Me To See The World… For Free.
- Jack Ireland
- Oct 23, 2017
- 2 min read
Sheffield Student Alex Waldie is living the dream! His band, Hamburg Beat, travel all over Europe playing Rock & Roll music for adoring fans, and the best part: he gets to do it all for free.
The 20-year-old University of Sheffield student, who, along with his dad and his dad’s best friend, make up the Beatles cover band ‘Hamburg Beat’, admits he cannot freely travel around the world but has found a way to fulfil his love of travelling – playing in festivals and gigs across Europe.
Having started the Beatles cover band over five years ago, Alex has already seen the benefits it has brought to his life:
“I love travelling. We’ve been to around six countries in Europe. Obviously being a student, being the age I am and not working, I can’t afford to go for a weekend away two or three times a year.
“But the organisers of events and gigs pay the transport and they pay the accommodation so that’s the big perk for me. We get, pretty much, a free weekends holiday and a performance added in as well.”
When asked how the band formed, Alex pointed to his Dad’s 50th birthday party where it all started:
“So, I just love the music, there was a lot of little random freak events that led to the band starting. I always liked the music and wanted to play guitar, and being left-handed, like Paul McCartney, who played the bass in the Beatles, well I thought I’d get a bass, so I can be like Paul McCartney.
“My dad and Mac (his best mate), both play guitar. So, Mac would come over on a Saturday morning and they’d play guitar together, then I’d join them on the bass and that got the three of us then playing and singing along.
“It was their joint 50th party, five years ago now. We hired out this little place in Lincoln and just had us playing all night. We went down really well and were like ‘this is actually really fun, let’s get a few gigs in Lincoln and see what we can do’.”
Hamburg Beat’s big break followed soon after, when they were asked to play at ‘Beatles Day Mons’, a huge Beatles festival in Belgium:
“After our second or third gig, we got an email from the Beatles Day Mons’ organisers saying they wanted to fly us over to Belgium to play their festival about a year after the party. Within a year, we were playing in front of 2000 people on a massive stage.
“It just started from us playing in the living room and us all just loving the music.”
Speaking on what’s to come for Hamburg Beat, Alex welcomes the idea of getting bigger:
“We played in Hamburg this year, which was good because our name is Hamburg Beat, so that was always a big one for us. We’ve got one or two more hopefully in the pipeline.
“The one thing we’d really like to do, at some point, would be to play the big Beatle festival out in America, it’s meant to be huge. It’s one on the bucket list.”
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