Mark Staycer...Is he The Next Best Thing?

April 11, 2007

Mark Staycer: Is he The Next Best Thing?
Check out the new Next Best Thing show on ABC this summer and you could see Traverse City’s own Mark Staycer, competing for a $100,000 prize in his role as John Lennon.
Staycer cautions that his participation on the new celebrity impersonator show is not a done deal yet; he’s a semi-finalist still waiting to hear from ABC. But he did pass his audition in Orlando a couple of weeks ago “with flying colors.”
And, he beat out about 150 other top-notch celebrity impersonators from all over the country.
“They had everyone there, from someone like me who does this for a living, to a guy from the GM Tech Center who does an imitation of Jack Nicholson,” he says of the audition.
Auditions were also held in Las Vegas and New York. If his participation in the show is a go, then Staycer could be in Hollywood, producing the first program as early as May 1.

STIFF COMPETITION
As part of his audition, Staycer was faced by a tough American Idol-style panel of three judges. He had his choice of singing one of two Beatles songs, including the mopey “Stand By Me” and the vocal chord-shredding “Twist and Shout.” The kicker was he was forced to sing a cappella, without his guitar.
Staycer says he never broke character during his pre- and post-audition interviews with the judges (he’s a dead ringer for John Lennon’s voice and wit). When it came time to sing, he held his guitar as a prop and pulled off a medley of both songs that blew the judges away. They asked him to perform a follow-up Beatles song, suggesting “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” which happens to be one of the tunes that Staycer plays the best.
“I got a couple of lines into the song and a judge stopped me and said, ‘You’re in, dude -- welcome to L.A.’”
Others weren’t so lucky. A professional Britney Spears impersonator didn’t make the cut, even though she looked like a sure bet. There were also three Mick Jaggers, two Howard Sterns, two Jack Nicholsons, a Willie Nelson, a Kramer, and “a couple of anatomically-correct and perfect Dollie Partons.”
“I was the only Beatle to audition,” Staycer adds.

WORLD-WIDE
Staycer doesn’t have time to rest on his laurels. He’s already gone to his latest gig, performing with the Beatlemaniacs band on a fabulous new cruise ship in Greece. “It’s the champagne inaugural, so we’ll be sailing with a lot of people from the cruise ship company and their guests around the Aegean and then to Italy,” he says.
Then it’s off to London for three days before embarking on a pan-Atlantic cruise from Southampton to New York City, arriving back in the States in late April.
It’s just another “day in the life” for Staycer, whose career rocketed last year, thanks to his eerie resemblance to John Lennon and a brilliant mix of talents as a mimic, singer/guitarist and humorist.
Last year, Staycer spent eight weeks touring Japan as Lennon in a celebrity show. He also started performing with Beatles tribute bands on the cruise ship circuit, finding a frontman spot with the Beatlemaniacs.
“I’ve been to Belize, London a couple of times, basically all over the Caribbean and to Mexico and Portugal,” he says, running down a partial list of his travels over the past year. “The toughest part about it is just getting through the airports and past all the hassles of air travel.”
There’s also a multi-media project in the works that’s still in the hush-hush stage, but could result in Staycer being introduced to an audience of millions, above and beyond the ABC show.
So, will Staycer/Lennon make the final cut? Will he out-celeb the likes of Britney Spears, Elvis, Jagger and Marilyn Monroe? Will he reach what John Lennon called the “toppermost of the poppermost“? Stay tuned -- literally -- for The Next Best Thing show this summer.