Abbey Road: A little part of Beatles history in Japan!

Hello everyone!

I'm Yukihiro Higashi, representative on behalf of Abbey Road Roppongi!
First thank you so much for taking the time to look at our project page, we really appreciate it!

Abbey Road is a live house・restaurant that focuses on giving guests the time of their life with live performances from Beatles' tribute, good vibes and everlasting memories. We are located in Roppongi, Tokyo and have been running since December 1996 thanks to the amazing and generous fans and customers that come to our live house. That's over 23 years (or 1.7 million plays of Hey Jude), all thanks to these amazing people!

However, from the beginning of May this year, we planned to close our doors, and looked to open again in June, in a new location in the same Roppongi area! While moving away from our historical foundations that has homed us for 23 years, we are excited to bring to life this new Abbey Road! And with that comes with mountains of preparations from the staff and bands!

That was until Corona hit.

With regards to Japan and coronavirus, many places such as live house and such were asked to voluntarily close their doors on April 1st. This meant a multitude of things for us. First was that our plans to close properly during May were halted, we also couldn't hold the last live session that we wished to do, celebrating our beloved guests, as well as making preparations to move even harder.

BUT, with all that said and done, we won't quit.

We want you to help us come together and create this amazing new location, to help us make this a place where countless memories can be made! We want to make sure that we can bring the multitudes of Beatles fans an amazing experience at our new Abbey Road! So please we ask for your help in supporting this project in anyway you can!

So what brought about this project?

Our main goal over all is to create an amazing experience that both entertains and amazes our patrons, all via our live performances.
But currently due to these strange and unforeseen circumstances, we are unable to do so.

We have been hit particularly hard since February. We first had a loss of customers as people unfortunately (but correctly) couldn't come to visit our venue, then in March we started losing reservations, leading to April which was our closure. We had originally planned on working until May 6th but this just wasn't possible. Then we received news that construction of our new venue was delayed due to the declaration of a state of emergency, which means that our opening of early June is expected to be delayed, and this will be a quite significant delay.

Live houses all around Japan have faced closure for more than 3 months, and for many business this is quite bad, but for us it is dire. What's more, with this planned movement being delayed, even with the slow reopening of Japan, we are unable to open when we need to, forcing us to face an even longer period of no income.
This is quite a situation that befalls us. We want to support the bands and staff members that have been a part of our family for years, but it is getting harder and harder to do so. And that's where we landed on the idea of a crowdfunding project.

And during the preparation time we have taken to bring this project to life, we have received comments from previous patrons saying that they are happy to help, that they want Abbey Road to continue, and to flourish, so that when we eventually do open, they can once again hear the amazing bands and feel a warm and inviting atmosphere!
We want to make sure that we don't lose this amazing centre of Beatles magic in Japan!

And that is where you come in! We hope that you can help to support our endeavors and help us move towards rebuilding another piece of Beatles Mania!

A look at what we do at Abbey Road

Abbey Road is a Live House・Restaurant that each night brings music to the masses! Our main band that plays for us is The Parrots, who are one of the (and maybe ) top tribute Beatles bands in Japan. We also a variety of incredible bands come and play, as well as bring family and friends with them, as well helping other Beatles fans find out about our Abbey Road! Over the years we've also had some amazing famous guests from band members from Toto to Harry Styles, from Caroline Kennedy to Tony Hawk! We're always astounded by the amount of foreigners know of our Live House, and are extremely grateful for their patronage!

As well as live performances, we also have a mountain of Beatles memorabilia, displays and various pictures and images which we plan on taking with us to the new Abbey Road! With all of these things together, we have created "The Beatles Heaven" in Japan!

We hope that we can fuel the fire that burns within many Beatles fans not just around Japan but all over the world, and by doing so inviting them to come join in what we hope to make the best entertainment venue around!

▶︎The main band「The Parrots（ザ・パロッツ）」

Since opening 23 years ago, we have had the amazing assistance from an incredible tribute band, The Parrots. This amazingly talented band have helped to keep this live house alive through the years, and have also been the reason for why many brilliant and famous musicians from around the world have taken it upon themselves to visit. Paul McCartney, himself once even visited and even played with The Parrots on stage for his wife's 54th birthday! The band plans to carry on for the foreseeable future, entertaining and introducing Japanese and foreign visitors to wonderful music of The Beatles!

The band were also honoured to be asked to play at the farewell of Caroline Kennedy when she departed as ambassador for the United States of America a few years ago! You can see the invitation that we received from her below. To receive such an invitation, made us felt so humbled, that such an incredible stateswoman would choose us to appear. To this day, the band feels incredibly proud of this.

For more information, you can visit the Abbey Road Roppongi Official Site!

http://www.abbeyroad.ne.jp/

Honoured Guests at Abbey Road Roppongi

As we said, over the past 23 years of opening, we've had the privilege of being honoured by many amazing musicians from around the world visit our small live house. We've been privileged to have a whole assortment of bands, singers, actors, and directors visit our establishment! You can see a few of these below!

Arctic Monkeys

Bon Jovi & Lukather

Harry Styles

JJ Abrams & Simon Pegg

Liam Gallagher

Pearl Jam

Peter Jackson Elijah Wood

Stereophonics

Sting

❮ ❯

Introducing the Returns

We are preparing a variety of returns, aimed at our overseas fans, as well as the fans that live in Japan!

Name Plates of Two Sizes!

Small Name Plate

Large Name Plate

One of the bigger rewards we are offering is a nameplate that will decorate the entrance hall that leads to the main room! At 50,000 Yen, we will create a nameplate with your name and location, so that everyone can know who has supported us! At 100,000 yen, we will create a larger nameplate, one that will allow you to sign when you come to visit us! We will also be adding a gift voucher of 5,000 yen and 10,000 yen respectively as well as a personal video message from The Parrots!

Name Plate Sizes:
■Small Name Plate : 150mm x 40mm
■Large Name Plate : 150mm x 150mm

Long Lasting Gift Vouchers

Another of the returns that we are preparing are long lasting and will be valid until August... 2022! For those of you that can't come before then, don't worry, if you can contact us we can try to work something out! What's more, the vouchers are being prepared at the same level so for 5000 yen backing you will get a 5000 yen gift voucher and for 10,000 yen a 10,000 yen gift voucher! We hope that you can get behind these vouchers!

What will the raised money be used for?

We plan on using everyone's money on two main things:

①The running and opening costs of the new Abbey Road Live House
②The costs of the returns that people back

When it comes to returns, we are planning to send returns out when the new live house opens. When the official open has been decided, we will let everyone know via the official site. We are also thinking about allowing return pick up from the live house when we open, however this is still in the discussion phase! We will also let everyone know more about this closer to the end of the project.

Thank you

Thank you so very much for reading until the end of this project page.
We feel so deeply about keeping this live house running even after we move to the new location, and we look forward to having all of you come and visit us!

Everyday since the beginning of this pandemic, we have felt an unease and uncertainty much like many of you.
What's more, we haven't been able to see our regulars, our guests and so on, and missing out on that part of our life has been a massive hit to us, more than any monetary loss that we have had during this time. We look forward to the day where we can once again play music and bring joy to our guests once again!

We will, without fail, come back bigger and better than ever before, and repay everyone multiple times over!

So please believe in us with this project, and help us with our dream of making our new Abbey Road the best it can be when we open. We urge all Beatles fans to help create a new nirvana for Beatles fans in Japan! Thank you for your continued support!