With selections from nearly 200 Beatles songs, the evening is geared to please fans from all stages of the band’s life together — from their first American televised experience to the later days of long hair and sitars.
Castelli described a Rain show as a full-sensory experience.
“It’s a rock concert with a theatrical element to support the concert,” he said. “The support is in on-screen television commercials, which set the time. As the show moves forward [through the Beatles catalog], so do the TV commercials. We built sets around all the album covers, and we have six costume changes. It’s really quite an experience; everything we do is note for note. … Some people say it’s a psychedelic experience,” he laughed.
Castelli grew up in a musical family of Italian American immigrants in San Gabriel.
“I was fortunate — I had my mother and my father, and there was always music in the house,” he said. “I had several brothers, and I was heavily influenced by them. I was fortunate to have a drum set, which I would use as much as I could.”
One day, while Castelli was still in grammar school, his brother told him the Beatles would appear on the Ed Sullivan Show that night.
“What are the Beatles?” Castelli asked.
But he sat down in front of the set, little knowing that it would change his life.
“I watched them perform twice on the Ed Sullivan Show, and then I went into the back room, closed the door, put on ‘Meet the Beatles’ and listened to it over and over,” he said. “That one just lit the fuse.”
Castelli credits the Beatles with revolutionizing popular music.
