by Peter Brown
1
Brian’s earlier suicide note and the will that accompanied it remained a secret shared only by Clive, Queenie, and me. In it he had designated that all his holdings go “to my family,” and since by English law everything went to Queenie anyway, we all felt his wishes had been fulfilled. However, there were other bequests in the will, and without explaining to anyone what they were doing, Queenie and Clive decided to fulfill each of the other gifts. Geoffrey Ellis and I were given a generous cash gift and, along with Nat Weiss and each of the Beatles, we were asked to choose something from Brian’s possessions.30
The value of Brian’s estate was purposely underestimated for the purpose of “death duties,” an opportunity for Inland Revenue to plunder the dead as well as the living. Still, at roughly £800,000, the estate taxes were backbreaking, and Clive had to start selling off Brian’s personal holdings to pay it. He got rid of the lease on the Saville, he sold the silver Bentley, the house in the country, the furniture, and the crystal chandeliers. Last to go was the Chapel Street town house, where Clive even weighed the coal in the basement so he could charge the new owners.
At NEMS there was a wild scramble for power. The old guard Liverpool contingent, which included me, Geoffrey, and Neil, among others, lined up against the newer partners like Stigwood and Shaw who had been brought into NEMS later. The entire burden of the Beatles’ personal management fell on my shoulders, much to my distress. I suddenly found myself the object of much resentment from employees who thought I was eagerly stepping into Brian’s shoes. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I did what I had to do simply because there was no one else who knew how to do it.
Stigwood and Shaw continued to insist that Brian’s death would not interfere with their option to buy NEMS. Vic Lewis, on the other hand, hinted in an interview with the London Times that he might take over. “Brian Epstein designated the operation of much of our company’s overseas business to me.” Clive called for a meeting of the board of directors of NEMS, hoping to block Stigwood and Shaw’s takeover, and Stigwood told reporters that if a boardroom battle developed, he felt he had a “tough ally in Mr. David Shaw”. Stigwood and Shaw had one major problem though: they had to convince the Beatles to stay with them. Stigwood hardly even knew the Beatles. In fact, the Beatles were shocked to learn that Brian had planned to sell NEMS. In any event, as far as the Beatles were concerned, Brian’s option agreement with Stigwood didn’t include them anyway. When they heard that Stigwood and Shaw were claiming otherwise, they met with Stigwood to set him straight. “We weren’t about to be sold, like some sort of chattel,” Paul said. “Not to Robert Stigwood, not to the Queen Mum.”
A diplomatic effort was arranged by Clive Epstein and Stigwood and Shaw’s quick exit was negotiated. It was agreed they would stay with the company only until they were able to raise enough money to start their own company, the Robert Stigwood Organization, which was backed by Phillips, the German entertainment conglomerate. Stigwood insisted on some sort of severance settlement from NEMS and he was paid £25,000 just to get out of the company quietly. He took his office furniture and the Bee Gees with him. The Bee Gees, of course, turned out to be one of the biggest pop acts of all time, and Robert Stigwood became an international impresario and producer of Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, and the movies Saturday Night Fever and Grease.
“No one could possibly replace Brian,” was what Paul kept saying. Except, perhaps, Paul himself. On September 2, only six days after Brian’s death, Paul took the reins and set us off at a wild gallop. He requested that I arrange a meeting with all the Beatles at his house in St. John’s Wood to discuss their next project. Paul’s idea was to go right on with the Magical Mystery, Tour that he had dreamed up on the plane coming home from America. He had decided it would be an hour-long special for TV. He had already written part of the title song, and with an addition of six or so other new songs, they would make a film to go with it, a kind of Sergeant Pepper with pictures. The project was to be recorded, produced, scripted, directed, and edited by the Beatles—namely Paul himself.
“I knew we were in trouble then,” John later admitted. “I didn’t have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music, and I was scared. I thought, ‘We fuckin’ had it ... ’ and I thought, ‘fuckin’ I’ve never made a film, what’s he mean, write a script...’ Then George and I were sort of grumbling, you know, ‘fuckin’ movie, oh well, we better do it,’ we felt we owed it to the public that we should do these things.”
A formal script was never prepared for the project. Instead there was only an outline, sketches of dwarfs and rewarmed Fellini characters out of Paul’s comic-strip imagination. John halfheartedly contributed a dream sequence with fat ladies and spaghetti. The closest to a written synopsis was the press release, which said, “Away in the sky, beyond the clouds, live 4 or 5 musicians. By casting wonderful spells they turn the most Ordinary Coach Trip into a Magical Mystery Tour.”
Magical Mystery Tour was a mess. If Brian had been alive, it never would have happened the way it did. On Monday, September 11, a sixty-seat yellow and blue coach festooned with signs that identified it as the Magical Mystery Tour took off for Devon and Cornwall with a cast and crew of forty-three aboard. Following them was a procession of carloads of Fleet Street reporters, plus ten or fifteen fans in their own cars. The Magical Mystery Tour stopped in Devon, where they hoped to find the Devon Fair but found only a town. At Teigen the local constable chased them on for disturbing the peace. They changed directions and headed for Brighton, where they filmed two cripples sunning on the beach. When they stopped for a lunch break, they discovered they were thirty lunches short to feed the cast and crew. The first night on the road the sleeping accommodations had been underbooked and Paul and Neil spent hours sorting out fights between fat ladies and dwarfs who did not want to share rooms. Heading north the next day, their caravan caused mayhem and traffic jams wherever they went, not just because of the procession of cars that followed them, but because a line of cars now preceded them for a mile. Unable to take another second of it, John ordered the bus to stop, stormed out the door, and ripped the signs from the sides of the coach in a fury.
“They should have filmed that,” Neil barked.
Paul had planned to shoot the finale, a top hat and cane dance number, at Shepperton Studios outside of London, but no one had thought of booking time on the sound stage. In desperation they leased an old airfield in West Mailing, Kent, where a huge set was built. The climactic Busby Berkeley episode employed more than forty dwarfs, a dozen babies, and a military marching band in full costume. Paul took all the developed footage and disappeared into an editing room he’d hired on Old Compton Street to piece it together. Each Beatle had a say about the film, and it was edited and reedited and tinkered with a thousand times. Often it was changed back and forth four times in the same day, with Paul countermanding John’s suggestions of that very morning.
One day I received a phone call in my office on the Beatles’ private line. It was Paul and it sounded like long distance. “Where are you?” I asked him.
“I’m in Nice, France,” Paul told me, “with a camera crew. We found the perfect hill, but we haven’t brought the right lenses. Do you think you could have them shipped out to us, along with some money?”
I was baffled. “Nice? Perfect hill? What are you talking about? How can you be in France? I have your passport.”
Paul explained that he wanted to include a scene in Magical Mystery Tour of him sitting on a picturesque hill singing a song he had written called “The Fool on the Hill.” He took off for France without telling anybody and bluffed his way past the English authorities at Heathrow, saying his passport was waiting for him in France. In Nice he told the French officials the passport was arriving later by messenger, and they agreed to allow the celebrated visitor into the country by special dispensation until his passport caught up with him. By the time Paul and the crew returned to London, it had cost
£4000 just for the one shot of him sitting on the hill in Nice.
When Magical Mystery Tour was finally finished, Paul screened it for everyone at NEMS. The reaction was unanimous: it was awful. It was formless, disconnected, disjointed, and amateurish. I told Paul to junk it. “So what, we lost £40,000,” I said. “Better to junk it than be embarrassed by it.”
But Paul’s ego wouldn’t let him consider this. He was positive that Magical Mystery Tour would be as warmly greeted by the public as all the Beatles products that came before it. Reluctantly, we sold the TV rights to the BBC, who put it on the air on December 26, Boxing Day in England, when millions of Britons were at home celebrating the holidays.
The critical reaction was truly remarkable. The critics pounced. “... blatant rubbish” cried the Daily Express, “... the bigger they are the harder they fall ...” Nine thousand miles away, in Los Angeles, Daily Variety covered the reaction with the headline, “Critics and Viewers Boo: Beatles Produce First Flop with Yule Film.” The press was so unaccountably mean and vindictive that for the first time in memory an artist felt he had to make a public apology for his work. The next day a picture of Paul in a sweater and herringbone jacket, on the phone to journalist Ray Connolly, ran on the front page of the Evening Standard. The headline was, “We Goofed Says Beatle Paul.” “It was like getting a bash in your face,” he told Connolly. “You know [better] the next time. It annoys some people that we always jump in the deep end without knowing what we really want, but that’s the way I like to do things. I suppose if you look at [Magical Mystery Tour] from the point of view of a good Boxing Day entertainment we goofed really.”
As Time magazine subsequently noted in a report on the failure of Magical Mystery Tour, the film managed to gross S2 million from rentals to colleges. In America the Magical Mystery Tour album grossed S8 million in its first ten days of release. In England, where Magical Mystery Tour was released as an EP, it also hit the number-one spot. As usual, whatever they touched turned to money. And money began to be their biggest problem.
2
And still the money rolled in. Or did it? When Brian was alive, as far as the Beatles were concerned, all they had to do was pick up a phone or sign a bill and everything would be paid for. They never gave a second thought to how much they spent or where it was coming from. Suddenly, with Brian gone, they had to come face-to-face with a lot of hard facts. They were being taxed at a 96 percent rate. While the flotation of Northern Songs had given John and Paul some untaxed income, Ringo and George were poor in comparison. In any event, everyone had spent well beyond their means. Documents prepared in June of 1967 showed that they had spent approximately £750,000 on homes, cars, and luxury living. Because of the 1965 finance tax, it was no longer possible for them to advance money from their various companies without incurring an immediate tax liability. Also, a payment of £1 million in advances and royalties was due them by EMI.
The advice of the tax experts was simple. Expand. Invest in related businesses with practical real estate values and then go public in four or five years. This was a solid, long-term plan to ensure the Beatles wealth as they got older. For the Beatles, the message was simple: spend.
For several months the Beatles toyed with the idea of a related business, but for the Beatles the very word “business” had terrible connotations. There was something about business that was like going to school. Businessmen were derisively called “the men in the suits,” and even associates like me, who were close to them, were considered men in suits. Why couldn’t business be fun? they asked. Why couldn’t business be called something pretty like, say, “Apple.” Apple. Everybody knew the children’s nursery poem, “A is for apple ...” Apple, said the Beatles, would be a place where business could be fun.
From their old company, Beatles Ltd, a new company was formed called Apple Corp., a pun of Paul’s, which was to “manage” a new partnership called Beatles and Co. I was asked to become administrative director of Apple, plus operate and run Beatles and Co. Neil Aspinall was named a managing director of Apple Corp. Apple Corp. in turn purchased 80 percent of the stock of the old company. The formation of the new company also included what was to become a crucial partnership agreement, which they all signed. As it turned out, John was so stoned at the time he later couldn’t recall having signed any partnership papers at all.
The catch to investing money was that in order to get the tax break it had to be invested in a “related field” or, loosely interpreted, in whatever it was the Beatles did. The first idea was to open a chain of record stores called Apple, not so much to sell records as to be able to buy up valuable real estate for each store. But selling records was dismissed as too commercial for the Beatles. Apple had to reflect the spirit of the times we were living in. It had to be something bigger, more encompassing than just becoming shopkeepers. Overnight the idea mushroomed, as was the Beatles wont, and Apple became bigger than life, just like them. Apple became a multifaceted source of endowment and financing in all areas of creativity: music, filmmaking, publishing, design, and electronics.
There were two perfect examples to invest in right under their noses: Magic Alex and The Fool. Magic Alex would be given a workshop in which to research and develop all of his wonderful inventions, including the paint that plugs in and lights up the wall. The Fool could design and manufacture clothing on a mass level and sell it in their own store. In September, while filming Magical Mystery Tour, the Beatles allocated £100,000 to The Fool to design and open a clothing line and boutique, “a beautiful place where you could buy beautiful things.” It didn’t seem to faze the Beatles that The Fool’s previous experience in the retail business, an Amsterdam barber shop they had converted into a boutique, reportedly went bankrupt because The Fool’s personal expenses ran so high. Magic Alex was commissioned to design the store’s lighting, and he spoke of hanging a sun in the street to light up the night sky for the opening.
The Beatles discovered that their accountants had already purchased for them, as a long-term investment, a building on the corner of Baker and Paddington Streets, on the “wrong side” of Oxford Street, just off the beaten path of shoppers, where the design and construction of the Apple Boutique could begin. In the floors upstairs from the store they opened other Apple offices. Terry Doran was made managing director of Apple Publishing. John’s childhood pal, Pete Shotton, who was running a supermarket John had purchased for him, was asked to apply his retail expertise to the Apple Boutique. When the Oxford Street building became too crowded, additional offices were opened on a large floor of an office building on Wigmore Street. Here Ron Kass, the vice-president of Liberty Records in Europe, was hired away to run Apple Records. Jane Asher’s brother, Peter, was asked to head the company’s talent division. Apple Films was established, to be presided over by Dennis O’Dell, a former associate of Richard Lester’s. Brian Lewis, a prominent entertainment lawyer, ran the legal and contracts department. Stephen Maltz, an accountant from Bryce-Hamner, also joined the firm. Most everyone hired assistants, and the assistants hired secretaries.
The construction of the boutique took a little longer than was expected. A group of art-school students was hired to repaint the five-story exterior of the building in a psychedelic motif designed by The Fool while the interior of the store was being redesigned. Paul would arrive at the store every morning bright and early and ask the workmen to literally move the walls around. The same afternoon John would appear and say to move the walls back the way they were. In the interim tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of merchandise and fabrics began arriving at the cutting rooms upstairs where tailors busily turned out Fool clothing.
The boutique finally opened its doors on December 7, 1967. The all too self-conscious invitation to the opening read, “Come at 7:46, fashion show at 8:16.” Only George and John bothered to attend. Alex had hung no magic lighting in the street; it had proved too complicated, and the lighting in the store was expensive but not very unusual. The painting of a woman’s fa
ce with stars in the background and a rainbow swirl of colors below her that had been executed on the building might have been attractive to some, but not to the local business community. The Civic Association started suit to have it removed. As the press and public wandered around the newly opened store, they were clearly confused as what to think. The store was stocked with trinkets similar to those found in any “head” shop. The incense, bracelets, and wild velvet and satin clothing seemed slightly stale, like props left over from last summer’s flower-power vogue. The huge dressing rooms of the boutique were only good for one thing: shoplifting. From the day the store opened its doors, it started losing money.
But losing money was what it was all about, in a way, and the Beatles remained undaunted.
3
It was in February of 1968, just as Apple was about to go into full swing, that the Beatles informed me they intended to finish the Transcendental Meditation course they had begun the previous August in Bangor, North Wales. But this time the Beatles had agreed not to just a ten-day course but to go off to Rishekesh in the remote wilderness of north India for three months of serious study. The mastery of Transcendental Meditation, they hoped, would give them the wisdom to run Apple. In Rishekesh, they said, they would live in an ashram—without any drugs or alcohol.
The Beatles’ faith in the tiny Maharishi seemed unshakeable. Through the winter they had remained serious devotees of the guru and visited him frequently in his London digs in South Kensington. They still went to his lectures, and George and John became vegetarians, although John had almost immediately gone back to his regimen of drugs after Brian’s death. The Beatles were even contemplating, as an offshoot of Apple Films, to finance a major motion picture about the Maharishi, the proceeds of which would fund a Transcendental Meditation University in London.