Tenors of Rock throw big voices into big classic rock anthems

Gareth Richards says “Bohemian Rhapsody” was “the most dangerous record that had ever been released” when it had the whole world asking if Scaramouche could do the Fandango in early 1976.

But 26 years later, the epic Queen single was safely repurposed as a cornerstone for the West End musical “We Will Rock You.” And that show was a signal to the British singer that he didn’t have to choose between theater and rock bands. There could be “a marriage between the two.”

Richards assembled the Tenors of Rock, a harmonic quintet giving full-voiced arrangements to classic-rock favorites. They carve new vocal parts out of melodic rockers but offset the theatrical flair with a real rock band, including former Slaughter drummer Blas Elias.

Despite their visibility on the British version of “X Factor” in 2013, the Tenors opened at Harrah’s Las Vegas on Wednesday to make a run at Las Vegas stardom.

“Two years ago, I realized I had a big vision, and the U.K. wasn’t the right market,” says Richards. “We’re a bit of a negative nation” when it comes to embracing new acts and then abandoning them just as quickly.

By contrast, the enthusiastic response to a 2013 showcase at the Palms convinced Richards that Las Vegas was where they needed to be.

“Everyone’s been so sweet,” says Jimmy Denning, the towering Scotsman who tends to stick out because of his mohawk and kilt. “This is really a weird town for us. Most of us grew up in London working in the theaters and it’s really quite cut-throat. Everyone hates each other and everyone hates success.”

Richards and Denning both have stage credits as actors but were working backstage for a British production house, “out in the cold, lifting steel,” Richards says, when he thought of a new way “to earn some money singing rock ’n’ roll with your mates” instead of striking sets.

“I love the theatricality of creating a show, making it not just a gig,” he says. But at the same time he didn’t want to create “a storybook show” such as “Rock of Ages.”

“This is about real guys singing real songs in a new way,” he says of the friendship between him and his brother Dai Richards, Denning, Tommy Sherlock and Jonathan Williams. “This is all about giving this music everybody loves a new treatment.”

The Tenors still stand to inherit audience from “Rock of Ages,” which closed at the Rio on New Year’s weekend. But there’s a big difference: “Rock” came with a campy premise that allowed audiences to have its Whitesnake and snicker, too.

That would be the kiss of death when the Tenors break into “Sweet Child o’ Mine” or “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

“I think what we do is give it a truth,” Richards says. “Yeah, we flip some songs around, but there’s no destruction of what the song is meant to be about.”

Back in Britain, the Tenors have given the classic-rock treatment to more recent hits such as Bruno Mars’ “Grenade.” But the early plan for Harrah’s is to stick to classic rock, bracketed on the front end by early Beatles and on the back by Bon Jovi’s 1993 hit “Bed of Roses.”

The latter shows how even a big power ballad leaves room for more. The Bon Jovi song starts with a guitar solo, but “if you listen to the lyrics it’s completely stripped back. You can imagine this guy completely broken, sitting at his piano,” Richards says. “So I started completely a cappella and brought everything in later on.”

“It certainly never takes away from the truth that was already in the song.”

The quintet hope to tell a little of their own story onstage as well. “We have kind of been through a lot. So when we do it, we kind of do it with heart,” Denning says. “I think the reason we appeal from 4-year-olds to 84-year-olds is because we just do it with a little bit of heart. Then it doesn’t matter who you’re playing to, they’ll go with it. Because you’re just doing it from your soul.”

Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com and follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.