A Little Mystery on Ocean Avenue

What if a 60-year-old album could redirect a weekend in Asbury Park? This November, the Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel will find out when Everything Fab Four Fest unwraps three days built around the Beatles’ Rubber Soul — equal parts celebration, close listening, and joyful fanfare for anyone who still believes an album can change the way you hear everything afterward.

Weekend Spotlight

Friday night opens with Max Weinberg, the E Street drummer whose lifelong love of the Beatles comes through in a conversation with Bob Santelli from the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music.

Weinberg will take the stage again with The Weeklings for a handful of Beatles tunes and hold a special meet and greet that promises stories as much as signatures. Saturday brings Jake Clemons and his band, carrying a family lineage of Clarence Clemons’ big-hearted saxophone sound into a set that also supports the Light of Day Foundation with a charity meet and greet.

Across the three days, you’ll find performances that range from singer-songwriter turns to psychedelic grooves, all threaded with reverence for the songs that first signaled the Beatles’ leap into new creative territory.

Conversations and context

Dr. Kenneth Womack, Monmouth University professor, Beatles scholar, and host of the Everything Fab Four podcast, curated the program as a focused look at Rubber Soul’s turning-point status.

Expect panel discussions, multi-media presentations, and intimate interviews that place each track in the album’s musical and cultural moment while exploring how its textures and songwriting still ripple through today’s artists.

In fact, our own “musicologist” Scott Freiman will be opening the event on November 6th with his in-depth Deconstructing Rubber Soul presentation!

Community, charity, and collectibles

The festival folds local pride and purpose into the fan experience. Meet and greet sessions will benefit causes such as the Light of Day Foundation. A vendor room stacked with books and vinyl will make it easy to leave with something that deepens your listening.

More than a line-up, the weekend is an invitation to wander Asbury Park’s music heritage and to feel how a single record can keep revealing itself.

Practical details

Everything Fab Four Fest runs November 6–8, 2025, at the Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel, 1401 Ocean Avenue, Asbury Park, New Jersey.

Tickets and the full schedule are available at https://ef4fest.com/.

If you love Rubber Soul, love the stories behind records, or simply want a weekend where conversation and performance meet, pack a light jacket and bring your ear — this is the kind of festival where a familiar groove suddenly sounds like news.

-The CS Team

Photo: Getty