I spoke with Jimmy on November 5, 2004 and he gave me permission to post the current bio from his official site. I didn't ask about the pictures, so they've been replaced with photographs taken by the lovely and talented Sue Park. Thanks to both Jimmy and Sue for the goodies. ~Michelle~

Jimmy's biography - Posted 11.12.04

I was born in Miami, Florida 5 May 1952. My major was art throughout school until I was 11& 1/2 when I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, 9 February 1964. That night I told my parents that I wanted to be a guitar player. My parents bought me an acoustic spanish guitar.

I began taking lessons with the lead guitarist of "The Ideals". After six months of lessons, I was showing him chords to Beatles songs and he decided I didn't need anymore lessons! At the age of 13, I started my own band, we chose the name "The Bedbugs" after the Beatles. I started playing at teen dances and parties, so you could say that I had visions of fame at an early age.

In 1966, my family decided to move to Los Angeles, California. As soon as we moved to California, I started to join bands. Since they were all looking for bass players, I decided to play bass onstage and play Beatles songs on guitar at home, in my spare time.

In 1970, at the age of 19, I attended college in L.A., while still living with my parents. The band I was in at the time, "The Chosen People", were asked to go to Canada for a three month tour. We had to ask my parents permission, because they were very strict at the time. Our 35 year old, female lead singer, Montica Montrel, convinced my parents to let me go on the Canadian tour, where I was to earn $150 a week (a fortune at the time!). I had to drop out of college, but since I was taking all music courses at the time, I thought nothing would be better than actual on the job training.

After returning from Canada, we decided to go off on our own, so we left Montica and started our own band, calling ourselves "Jonah". We soon hooked up with an agent and started playing the L.A. club circuit. We eventually had to change the name of the band to "Orion", because there was already a band named "Jonah" who was coming out with an album and you can't have two bands going around with the same name. "Orion" stayed together for about five years, playing the clubs. At the same time, we were doing original material in the studio, in hopes of landing a recording contract.

In 1974, I married Sheree (we are now divorced and she has remarried). Our son Aaron was born on 23 February 1976. I left "Orion" and began auditioning for other bands. In August of 1977, I saw in the trade papers that they were holding auditions in L.A. for the broadway show "Beatlemania" that was playing in New York at the time (starring Mitch Weissman, Joe Pecorino, Leslie Fradkin and Justin McNeil as the original Broadway cast). The producers had come to Los Angeles to form a west coast cast. I got the part of "George" and was eventually sent to Chicago to perform Beatlemania onstage at the Blackstone Theater. The show played there for six months, then moved on to the Taft Theater in Cincinnati, Ohio. From there, I toured all over the world with Beatlemania, performing the show in London, Holland, South Africa, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Cleveland, Ohio and also St. Louis, Missouri (where Lisa Wagner was in the audience...).

I started to venture off and audition for other projects after being with Beatlemania for several years. In 1983, I joined a heavy metal band called "Fanz". 1983 was also the year that Beatlemania stopped full production. Members of the cast formed their own Beatlemania shows and began touring, using such names as, "Former Members Of The Cast Of Beatlemania". I started freelancing, playing with seven different Beatlemania groups at one time, a different one every weekend.

I received a phone call from Gary Grimes of 1964 The Tribute in 1993, asking me to fill in for Tom Teeley, who was playing "George" with them at the time. Shortly after that I joined the Tribute permanently. In August 1999, I released "Four Little Ditties", a CD containing four original songs, to see if there would be any kind of positive reaction to my music. The response from fans was quite positive.

Due to the success of "Four Little Ditties, I released a full length CD, "A Dozen Scrambled Daze", in July 2001. I appreciate all the support from my fans. I hope you all enjoy my music.

Jimmy Pou