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"If you want to play guitar to service a song, there's no one better to study than George Harrison," says guitarist and singer Joe Bithorn, who pays his respects to the late Beatle nightly as part of Rain, the much-heralded Beatles tribute band that has been packing 'em in on Broadway since last fall.

"George was one of the most versatile guitarists ever," Bithorn says. "He had many influences, and he was a very fluid instrumentalist. But he always knew that the song was key. Look at what he did in All My Loving, for example [shown in the above video]. Carl Perkins, Scotty Moore and Chet Atkins – George loved them all, and he managed to wrap a little of each player into one neat package that really lifts the song to a new level. Amazing."

George Harrison, backstage in 1965, warming up on his Gretsch Tennessean. © Bettmann/CORBIS

Bithorn caught the Beatle bug early - in fact, it was seeing Harrison play the solo to All My Loving on The Ed Sullivan Show that "sealed the deal for me and made me realize I wanted to play the guitar for a living." And that he did: by the age of 16, with a variety of influences that included Eric Clapton and Duane Allman, among others, Bithorn was already being recruited for studio sessions. He would eventually be hired by a touring production of Beatlemania, in which he portrayed Harrison on stage, which led to him joining Rain in 1983.

With Rain, Bithorn has traveled the world playing the music of The Beatles - and, more specifically, George Harrison - but for the next year or so, the guitarist (along with fellow 'Rainmakers' Steve Landes [John Lennon], Joey Curatolo [Paul McCartney] and Ralph Castelli [Ringo Starr]) will be entertaining sold-out crowds on the Great White Way. "It's really a blast playing Broadway," says Bithorn. "We get such a mix of people in the audience. Kids, their parents, their grandparents, folks from Baltimore, people from Tokyo on vacation - Beatles fans comes in all shapes and sizes. What we try to do is give everyone the experience of what it must have been like to see The Beatles live, and the only way to do that is to take apart the music and re-create it authentically."

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