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Steve Landes saw “Beatlemania” when he a child; less than a decade later he was in the show.

Landes is the John Lennon character in “Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles,” handling vocals, rhythm guitar, piano and harmonica.

Joliet audiences can experience the Beatles when “Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles” comes to the Rialto Square Theatre for an 8 p.m. show March 24. The show will pay tribute to the best of “Abbey Road,” the rooftop concert featured in the Disney+ documentary “The Beatles: Get Back,” as well as other favorites.

Rain toured with a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album in 2017 and 2018. In 2019 and 2020, they toured with a tribute to the anniversary of “Abbey Road.” The pandemic obviously forced that to close early in 2020.

“This tour is kind of a best of a lot of things,” Landes said. “Once we did ‘Sgt. Pepper’ and it went so well, we were doing the whole album. We didn’t want to lose that so we’re doing the best of ‘Sgt. Pepper’ along with the best of ‘Abbey Road.’ And now with the release of the ‘Get Back’ documentary on Disney+ that has everybody talking about the Beatles again, we inserted that into our show. The second act of our show is kind of a ‘best of’ the second half of the Beatles career at this point.”

The documentary “The Beatles: Get Back” definitely revived the band’s popularity, he said.

“Every time they release something or make the news in one way or another, it kind of reminds people, ‘Oh yeah, the Beatles are great,’” he said. “Obviously, this one was a big one. Everyone’s been talking about it. It’s really piqued interest yet again in a super-famous band. I hope that’s what our show does — we’re all about paying tribute to them. I hope people who come to see our show are reminded, ‘Oh yeah, the Beatles are great.’”

“Rain” began as an original band in 1975 in California that simply added some Beatles covers to their set list.

“We’re talking 1975, before tribute bands existed,” Landes said. “When they added those Beatles songs to the set list and decided, ‘Hey, let’s really try to sound like the Beatles records;’ obviously, that took off, much more so than their originals. Over the years … the band was re-stocked with guys from the Broadway show ‘Beatlemania.’”

A Philadelphia native who now calls Los Angeles home, Landes describes himself as a second-generation Beatles fan.

“When I was little, it was like, ‘Sesame Street’ and Saturday morning cartoons and my family playing Beatles records on the stereo,” he said. “And every once in a while, on Saturday afternoon TV, they’d show the Beatles movies like ‘Hard Day’s Night’ or ‘Help.’ Really from birth, I was into this whole Beatle world.”

He got a department store guitar for his 10th birthday and taught himself how to play, eventually learning how to write music.

“When I was 13, 14, the ‘Beatlemania’ show that had been on Broadway made its way to Philadelphia and my family went and saw it,” he said. “I thought, ‘That’s pretty cool. These guys get to make a living being musicians and dress up like the Beatles and play the Beatles’ music and look and sound like them.’”

He continued to play in top-40 bands and when he was 17, he auditioned for Beatlemania. By this point, the tour was drawing to a close, but nonetheless it got his foot in the door.

“From that, I met all these other people in the Beatles tribute world and it led me to ‘Rain’ eventually,” he said. “For a little kid that just loved the Beatles so much, to get to make a living portraying one onstage was kind of like when a little boy wraps a bath towel around his neck and pretending it’s a superhero cape somehow becoming a superhero or getting in the Marvel movies. That’s what it was like for me.”

The show is a multimedia experience that walks the audience through the Beatles career, he said. There are several costume changes along with state-of-the-art LED screens that span the length and width of the stage, he said.

“We use them as a living set piece. We dress the stage as if you were there for the Ed Sullivan performance, as if you were there in Shea Stadium, as if you were there on the rooftop for ‘Get Back’-slash-’Let It Be,’” he said. “We run everything chronologically so it really feels like you’re seeing the Beatles’ career play out in front of you onstage.”

Audience reaction is positive — he loves hearing people say they feel as though they actually saw the Beatles.

“We’ve been really fortunate that people have really taken to our show. I feel very blessed about that.”

‘Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles’

Where: Rialto Square Theatre, 102 N. Chicago St., Joliet

Information: 815-726-6600; rialtosquare.com

Annie Alleman is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.