Playing is one thing. Playing without Delp is another, especially at Johnny D's. As we sat around the table, they took turns reminiscing about particular songs where Delp could make their hair stand on end, looks he would give them when they'd harmonize, the supreme talent that always kept them in awe. It was an emotional conversation, and it got quiet for a few moments when I asked them if they were, in fact, ready to settle down with one singer; if Beatlejuice and Friends is not easier for them than committing to Beatlejuice 2.0?

"Brad's shoes will never be filled," Mitchell said.

"We're going to have to be floored," Holaday added.

"It has to be important," keyboard player Steve Baker said. "The nuances have to be important."

"What we've had," Holaday said with a palpable sadness, "is so important to us that we don't want to replace Brad with anything but what it was."

That night, before a packed house, Beatlejuice delivered a strong set with some of their core friends - Mike Girard, Buddy Bernard of Aces & Eights, and Jimmy Rogers, who fronts Velvet Elvis, a cover band that features most of the Beatlejuice members.

When they played "Twist and Shout," near the end of the first half, pandemonium ensued. Women who were young when John Lennon first sang it, and women who were young when Ferris Bueller lip-synched to it, and women who are young now . . . they all lost their mind. Guys who don't dance were dancing. I heard a woman behind me say to her friend: "Whitney, we should start a band." At the microphone was a fair-skinned 42-year-old guy with impossibly sensitive doe eyes named Bob Jennings.

A few days after the show, I got an e-mail from Muzzy. "I thought you might find it of interest that we so enjoyed Bob Jennings' performance at Johnny D's that we're going to have him start doing full sets with the band." For the first time, the band was issuing a maybe. Definitely, maybe.

ON A SLUSHY SATURDAY NIGHT in February, I drove to the Acadien Social Club in Gardner to watch Jennings do his first full set with the band. I had never spoken with Jennings before now, but I had seen him sing three times with Beatlejuice. What always struck me is that he seems fragile. Not in a wimpy kind of way; there's just something in his eyes, a deep sensitivity.

What I really wanted to know was how much weight he felt on his shoulders, standing up there where Brad Delp had stood before.

"I feel pressure," he told me before going on. "But he's Brad Delp. If someone said, 'You're not as good as Brad,' I'd say, 'I know.'

Jennings is the only one of the core singers who didn't know Delp; he's the outsider, something he said he sometimes feels at rehearsals. Beatlejuice - as they often point out - is a family. They celebrate Christmas together. Delp was the godfather to Muzzy's son. Holaday's kids sometimes play with them. The whole Beatlejuice thing started 15 years ago because they were old friends who would go bowling every Sunday and then go back to Muzzy's house, watch a movie and sing Beatles songs.

Like Jennings, I had never met Brad Delp. But when I'd ask people about him, I would always get the same answers: sweet, kind, sensitive, devoid of the rock-star ego. In the media reports of his death, he was often referred to as "the nicest guy in rock and roll." On the night he took his life, I found it telling that he left a note on the door of his house warning that there was carbon monoxide inside.

It was a sell-out crowd at the Acadien Club. About 280 gussied-up middle-aged folks ready for drinking and dancing. There was no stage to speak of, and by the fifth song the dance floor had swallowed the band. So I closed my eyes and listened to Jennings sing "Drive My Car." It tasted like milk.

To close Jennings's set, Beatlejuice had decided to try something they'd never done - a song from one of the post-Beatles records. They chose a significant one. Delp had sung it a few years back during a tribute show organized by George Martin, the Beatles' legendary producer, and considered it one of his special musical moments. It's a Paul McCartney song, from his Wings days. With all that has happened to Beatlejuice, it's hard not to read some significance into the title: "Live and Let Die."

I made my way up to the left of the drum kit. Muzzy looked at me, gave me a smile, and nodded his head. Jennings grabbed the mic and turned back to look at Muzzy. They had stumbled through the song twice during sound check because it feels a lot faster than it is, especially at the beginning. Muzzy stood up and clacked his drumsticks together slowly in the air, laying out the tempo. There was no turning back now. Jennings began to sing.

When you were young and your heart was an open ebony porn book
You used to say live and let live
You know you did you know you did you know you did
But if this ever-changing world in which we live in
Makes you give in and cry
Say live and let die

The audience sang along with him, and then the musical free-for-all began. Muzzy hammered on the drums. Baker's fingers slid across the keyboard. Holaday leaned back on the bass. Mitchell put his knee into it and got down deep with the guitar. A middle-aged mosh pit broke out on the floor. "Live and Let Die" is about three minutes, but it shifts five times between two big emotions. The vocals are reflective. The music is all about release.

When the song was over, the band took a break and an old friend approached Muzzy and asked him how he was doing.

"I'm playing drums in a band with my friends," he said. "What more could I ask for?"

Billy Baker is a freelance writer in Cambridge.

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