Eventually, Stigwood met the Beatles and they weren’t keen on him taking over control from Brian. They didn’t know much about him. They said if he ever managed them, they would just play ‘God Save the Queen’ until he released them from any contract.
Then, in December, I got a phone call. John Lennon’s unmistakable voice came on the line.
‘Hello, Alistair. You’re looking a bit pissed off at NEMS recently.’
‘Yes, John, I am. All the endless in-fighting is really getting to me and nothing is the same without Brian around.’
‘Well, why don’t you come over and be general manager of Apple,’ he said.
My heart leapt. John asked me when I could start and I said, ‘Tomorrow.’
Lennon laughed and said, ‘When you said you were pissed off, I didn’t know you were that pissed off. Welcome aboard, mate.’
We had started to set up Apple before Brian died. In fact, Brian was on the original executive board along with the accountant and the solicitor, Neil Aspinall, the boys and myself. It really started as a way to spend the boys’ massive money mountain and somehow to minimise their tax bill. But Brian was never greatly interested by it. They were paying 19s 6d in the pound in income tax at the time and Apple was a way to reduce this to something like 16s. The boys’ idea, if that is not too strong a word, was that business should be fun, not just a load of boring guys in boring suits poring over boring figures. They wanted to find exciting, new, original thinkers to give them the platform to develop new products and ideas. Some of the philosophy behind the whole thing was distinctly wacky. Remember, the boys were experimenting with lots of drugs at this time so they weren’t always desperately rational. But at heart it was a great idea.
I was delighted to be involved with the Beatles so closely again. And a stylish flat in Montagu Place, just across from Jimi Hendrix’s old flat where John and Yoko were later busted, was part of the salary and I was the new general manager of Apple. I prepared myself for a brave new world of building up the Beatles’ business without Brian. If only Apple hadn’t been such an unmitigated disaster area, it would have been the ultimate dream job.
One of the first big ideas was to set up a chain of card shops selling birthday and Christmas cards and cards for every occasion. In business terms, this has been proved a successful idea many times since, but the boys thought it was just about the most boring concept in the world. I became the link between the boys’ brainwaves and the real world and sometimes it seemed to be a huge gap to bridge.
The boys decided they’d have people they liked around them, so I was ordered to find the telephone number for Derek Taylor, the colourful former Press officer who was now happily installed in California and heavily involved with the Byrds and the Beach Boys. They crowded into my office to make the call like a group of kids organising a party. It was the middle of the night in Los Angeles but the boys didn’t care about boring details like that. Once Derek was roused and brought blearily to the telephone, the Beatles took the receiver in turn to sweet-talk Derek into coming back into the fold.
Then Paul persuaded me to undertake a modelling career. It only lasted for one job but it was certainly fun. His idea was for adverts in the New Musical Express saying ‘This man has talent’ with the picture of a very straight, suit-wearing, bowler-hatted businessman who had allegedly just broken into the music business. Paul wanted to encourage even the most conventional of creatures into throwing off the shackles of everyday life and plunging into the unknown with the assistance of this wonderful organisation called Apple. Naturally, the straightest guy Paul knew was ‘the man with the shiny shoes’ – yours truly. So I was sent out to buy a bowler and Paul rigged me up as a sort of one-man band for his advertising campaign.
The photo-session was hilarious. There I was, strapped into the one-man band kit, with a great heavy drum on my back complete with cymbal, guitar, mouth organ, the lot. I sat precariously perched on a stool with all the clutter any singing accountant might have lying around the house – euphonium, French horn, trumpet, violin bow, manuscript paper, copies of the Writers’ and Artists’ Year Book and The Stage, and a cheap recorder all ready to record my music for posterity.
It did occasionally cross my mind that Paul was taking the mickey, but that was nothing new and I didn’t really mind. We tried quite a few poses with me sitting there looking creative and feeling like a prune, but Paul said that they were no good.
‘It’s no good if you’re not really singing. Sing us something. Anything you like,’ he enthused.
The only time I ever sing is in the bath and I couldn’t even think of what to sing. I settled on ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’ and just belted it out trying not to die of embarrassment. The photographer clicked away happily.
At the end of the session, Paul and I walked out into Soho and I was still flexing my shoulders to try to get the circulation back after having the drum strapped on to me. And I’d forgotten I was still wearing the bowler hat until Paul snatched it off my head, threw it into the middle of the road, and started jumping on it. ‘I’ve always wanted to do that,’ he said, and we both fell about.
There are loads of magical memories from my time with the Beatles and that is one of my favourites. It would never have occurred to me to jump on a bowler in the road, but the pleasure it gave Paul makes me smile even today.
When we’d stopped giggling, he took me round to tailor Dougie Millings, the guy who made the Beatles’ suits, and told me to choose any cloth I fancied. He then designed a suit for me, told Dougie to take the measurements, to finish it as quickly as possible and charge it to his account. That can’t be bad, I thought, a brand-new suit in exchange for a few minutes dressed as a one-man band.
Mind you, when I saw the ad all over the back page of the New Musical Express my jaw dropped. Paul had gone into full creative overdrive when he had composed the copy for the advert and had written that I’d had talent and now I was driving a Bentley thanks to my musical genius. I wish.
Apple was a truly bizarre place to work. Alex Mardas was one of the most amazing people. He was definitely way ahead of his time. He designed a telephone you could use without touching. You just spoke the number into it and it rang up whoever you wanted. I know they’re around now, but in 1967 this was remarkable stuff. Then he turned polystyrene ceiling tiles into a really effective loudspeaker and even an electric spoon that you could leave stirring while you got on with preparing the rest of the meal. Alex was unbelievable.
But the Beatles were always better at getting rid of money than anything else. George was always a keen car enthusiast and he began the rush to buy a Mercedes. He really wanted a Rolls-Royce but he soon lost interest when the snooty salesman told him there was a 14-month waiting list. George tried Mercedes instead and received an instant lesson in German efficiency. He fell in love at first sight with the huge new Mercedes 600 model. It had power everything – brakes, steering, windows, seats, air-conditioning. It was more expensive than the Rolls and George wanted one in black. There was just a five-day wait while Mercedes specially contoured the driver’s seat to fit George’s back. It was delivered to Kinfauns, his fabulous home near Esher, within a week.
Like anyone with a new car, George wanted to show it off. He rang Ringo who was mightily impressed. Within another six days, he had one, too. Then John saw the two cars parked together and he decided it was time he joined the club. I don’t think Mercedes could believe their luck. Paul decided to buck the trend and stuck with his Aston Martin DB6 and his sweet little custom-built Mini. It was the only Mini I ever knew with its own record player!
The Beatles all loved to buy, buy, buy. With George it was houses that were always taking his fancy. He alerted me one day that we were going to look at a mansion in Kent. I said, ‘You can’t go in person first time, George. The price will go through the roof. Or the locals will organise a petition to keep you out.’
‘We won’t be recognised. Pick you up at ten tomorrow. Just organise the ap
pointment, please, Alistair.’ And the phone went dead.
The following morning, just as I was waiting for George, I was irritated to get the message. A young woman was asking for me in reception. I went down to quickly get rid of whoever it was. Standing in the lobby with her back to me was a young woman in a very expensive but somewhat severe twin-set topped off by a pillbox hat. She looked the very epitome of respectability and squareness – until she turned towards me and I saw it was Patti Harrison, dressed evidently for an investiture. ‘Meet your wife for the day, Alistair,’ she smiled. ‘Now come and meet James, the chauffeur.’
Outside the front door, standing conspicuously on the double yellow lines was the enormous Mercedes 600 limousine which George had recently bought. At the wheel, staring dutifully straight ahead was our liveried chauffeur complete with peaked cap. Patti opened the door and I held it while she climbed in. He’s not much of a chauffeur, I thought. Aren’t they supposed to hold the doors open for us? Then the driver turned round and I was confronted by George’s beaming face. ‘Where to, wack?’ he said. Not a trace of the famous Beatles hair was to be seen. It must have taken him hours to pin it under his cap.
We swept off to a very expensive section of the Kent countryside where it turned out a magnificent pile owned by a stockbroker was for sale. His very county wife sprang to show newlywed Mr and Mr Alistair Taylor round the property and the chauffeur stayed at the wheel.
Patti and I tried to behave like a happy couple and talked enthusiastically about what we would like to do to the house. But we had some awkward moments. As we toured the expansive garden and approached the tennis court the houseowner said, ‘Do you play tennis?’
Patti said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Yes,’ but I supposed she would understand that we don’t have to do everything together. In the end, it was a lovely house and I thought we got away with our little charade rather well. Right up until the moment we were leaving when the house’s elegant occupant said, ‘Are you sure Mr Harrison wouldn’t like to see the house as well.’
The Beatles were never boring to be with but sometimes they were pretty dangerous. One of John Lennon’s personal crusades was to persuade me to turn on, tune in and drop out to acid.
There was a little pub round the corner from the early Apple offices. Before we moved to Savile Row, our first offices were temporary ones in Wigmore Street. At that time John used to come round and would want to go for lunch. He had just discovered the mind-expanding excitement of acid. And with the enthusiasm of the recent convert, he wanted to show me how fantastic it was. John knew I was straight. I had never smoked a joint. I had never taken acid. In the pub, the onslaught started. John and Derek Taylor had decided it would be a good idea if I went on an acid trip. They kept saying, ‘Al, it’s mind-blowing. It’s incredible. You’ve never experienced anything like this in your life before.’
I said I did not want to know. Call me a coward if you like, but I didn’t think a doped-up popstar was going to be the most reliable minder if anything went wrong inside my brain. If I decided I could fly from the top of a high building, I’m sure John would have been the one urging me to take off. I’d heard about people pretending they can fly. I never touched pot or speed. He and Derek spent weeks trying to get me to go on an acid trip. John kept saying, ‘Come on, Al. We’ll be with you. We’ll look after you.’ Finally, they gave up.
We had some very snobby neighbours in Savile Row and the boys used to love to wind them up. Whenever we had a new piece of music to listen to, which was pretty often given our business, they always made sure the windows were wide open and the volume was turned right up. We would get telephone calls from our frightfully upper-crust neighbours demanding, ‘I say, could you turn that awful racket down,’ and the Beatles would roar with laughter.
We had enjoyed such a good working relationship with the police that one of the few times I rebelled against the lads was during a rooftop concert when they insisted on secretly filming the boys in blue. I thought that was wrong and I still do. The boys loved defying authority. It was a natural inborn instinct to stand up for yourself. They were forever being told what they had to do, and standing up and saying, ‘Fuck off. We don’t have to do anything you say. It’s our lives to do what we want with.’ But generally they would go along with it. They decided not to film overtly but covertly instead. They put a booth in reception to secretly film the police’s reaction and I didn’t like this. I tried to protest that in spite of what they might think about coppers, we owed them a lot for their help over the past years. But they wouldn’t listen to me, as usual. This was just before the rooftop concert and I watched that from the post-box on the corner. I didn’t want to be part of any plan to take the mickey out of the police. I thought it was wrong.
Magical Mystery Tour might not have gone down in pop music history as one of the Beatles’ great successes but it was one of the happiest episodes. Paul rang me one day and asked me to come round to Cavendish Avenue. He said, ‘I’ve had this idea. Do they still do mystery tours on buses.’
I had no idea but I was prepared to find out. Paul had this happy memory from somewhere of getting on a coach and paying five bob and being taken off who knows where. At Paul’s request, I took Lesley down to the seaside for a week to investigate whether they still existed. Paul’s idea for MMT was to have a coach trip complete with courier saying, ‘If you look out to your left you will see such and such a castle and so on.’ Paul thought this would be a great starting point for something magical then to happen. ‘And we will be the four magicians creating all this.’
I thought it was a fantastic idea, I genuinely loved it. So Lesley and I went off to Eastbourne. I loved the place and always used it as my bolt-hole. If ever life got a bit too hectic, Lesley and I would go off for a few days to the Queen’s Hotel in Eastbourne and it was the one place I never gave Brian the number.
This time it was a Sunday and, just our luck, the rain was bucketing down. I happened to glance out of the window at a fairly empty car park and in pulled this gaudily coloured bus. It was bright and packed with people and it looked elderly with a sort of faded style, just as Paul had described to me. It was citrus yellow and hideous blue. I just dropped my knife and fork and shouted, ‘I’ve found it.’ Lesley knew what I meant and sighed as I went running out into the pouring rain and jumped straight on the bus. ‘Do you hire this bus out?’ I blurted to the astonished driver. ‘Yes,’ he said as if he was speaking to someone so stupid he didn’t know what function buses had in the scheme of things. I was so excited I ignored the sarcasm and got a card with the operator’s name, address and telephone number. The coach was owned by a firm called Fox’s of Hayes.
The following day, I rushed back to London with the good news for Paul and we hired the bus. At that stage, this was just one of those mad McCartney schemes. He hadn’t even told the other boys what he was planning.
This was the period when the Beatles spent a great deal of time stoned on acid so there wasn’t that much sensible communication going on. But Paul won over the others. His idea was that we would have genuine old-age pensioners and underprivileged children on board. Paul had also recruited Ivor Cutler and Nat Jackley. And I had been meeting and auditioning people, such as an accordionist. The idea was for Paul and the others simply to slope off with a skeleton camera crew and record the action as it happened. Hotel stops were booked. Then the others all started throwing ideas in and the whole thing got out of hand. If you watch it at the beginning, our bus from Fox’s of Hayes has all these psychedelic coloured panels stuck on it but towards the end some of them had disappeared. This was because they blew off as we were hurtling round the countryside.
One night they were down in Newquay and I got a phone call from Neil Aspinall. They desperately needed a Mae West life-jacket for a sketch to be recorded tomorrow. I was in the West End and they were right on the coast, yet it became my job to find this particular piece of nautical equipment. That was one of the penalties of being Mr Fixit. I legg
ed it round to Albemarle Street where I knew there was a sailing shop. But then I had the problem of how to get down to Newquay. I called the chauffeur and decided to take this life-jacket down in person. It’s a long journey, even in the back of a limousine. But when I arrived I marched proudly into the lounge of the hotel pleased with myself for delivering this vital costume only to be told by John, ‘No, Al. We don’t want the old Mae West any more. We’ve gone off that idea. But it’s great to see you. Have a drink.’
That was fairly typical Beatle behaviour. One minute something would be required instantly and it was incredibly important that it was provided. The next minute, they would lose interest and be panicking about something completely different. ‘Take it back with you tomorrow,’ laughed John.
A lot of it was filmed at West Morley airbase. The final scene, with ‘Your Mother Should Know’, had the Beatles resplendent in wonderful white suits and top hats and tails with a whole mass of people in this hangar going up a big white staircase. The boys kept their outfits a secret because they wanted to surprise everyone and they certainly did that. It was breathtaking. Paul was mad about Busby Berkeley at the time so we had the whole of the Peggy Spencer Formation Dancing Team. We invited all the people from miles around and thousands came. The idea was that the four boys appeared for one last time in the Magical Mystery Tour bus with a great crowd following them like the Pied Piper of Hamlin. There were grannies and women with babes in arms and gangs of Teddy boys, all sorts had arrived. We were just setting up this big finale when suddenly there was a power cut and every light in the place went out. It was Sunday afternoon. We needed another generator and we got one just in time, just as the crowd were losing interest and starting to drift away. We were just ready when suddenly every light went out again. More people left and by the end there were about 25 of us trying to make ourselves look like the sort of crowd you usually see at Wembley. If you look very carefully you can see me, Cynthia, little Julian, Big Mal, Neil and a few others desperately trying to make ourselves look like a crowd.
With the Beatles Page 17