by Barry Miles
Paul at Cavendish Avenue, during his ‘bachelor phase’ after splitting up with long-term girlfriend Jane Asher. Paul met his future wife, Linda Eastman, in 1967, and they met again in 1968 when he and John Lennon went to New York to announce the launch of Apple Records. Paul and Linda were married on 12 March 1969.
The participating poets in the International Poetry Incarnation line-up before the event in front of the Albert Memorial, Kensington. From left to right are: Barbara Rubin, Harry Fainlight, Adrian Mitchell, Alexander Trocchi, Anselm Hollo, Marcus Field, Allen Ginsberg, Michael Horovitz, John Esam, Ernst Jandl and Dan Richter.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti interviews Allen Ginsberg in front of the Shakespeare statue at the Albert Memorial, Kensington, during a press conference for the International Poetry Incarnation. The event, held on 11 June 1965, was inspired by Allen Ginsberg’s reading at Better Books, then managed by Miles. Over 7,000 people attended the readings at the Royal Albert Hall, marking a definitive moment in the avant-garde movement.
I had followed the course of Apple from its first inception as a place where creative people could get funding. It had been discussed at my flat, and I had sat in on long discussions about the project at John Dunbar’s flat and at Paul’s house. Now he explained that they were thinking of launching a separate label on which to release more obscure material, because anything like that on Apple would be swamped by the Beatles and their more commercial acts. I thought this was a good idea.
Back in June 1968 an Apple internal memo had been circulated to ‘everyone’ which read, ‘Try to think of suggestions for a subsidiary label for Apple, which would put out more freaky sounds.’ In the end the name for the new label came from John Lennon who said, ‘A is for Apple, Z is for Zapple.’ The name had nothing to do with Frank Zappa, who was, however, miffed by the use of, as he saw it, his name. He was particularly irritated because Zapple appeared to be doing the same thing that he was doing with his Bizarre and Straight labels: in 1968 he released albums by Lenny Bruce and by Wild Man Fischer, both of which could be seen as anthropological studies of the late sixties culture. Zapple had also announced that they were going to release some Lord Buckley and Lenny Bruce tapes, so Zappa saw it as a commercial rival. John Lennon, however, was not interested in youth culture; his concern was with anthropological recordings of his own life with Yoko, beginning with Two Virgins, which he considered so important that the world should know all about it; therefore to have a dedicated label was a perfect solution for him.
This was a time when travel was difficult and very expensive; a ticket to New York cost three months’ salary. People listened to far more spoken-word and documentary records back then, particularly of recordings made in foreign locations. We often sat around listening to a Folkways album called New York 19 from 1954, compiled by sound archivist Tony Schwartz, which consisted of nothing but snippets of street sounds and short excerpts from ethnic music or religious ceremonies. One track was a brief interview with a road worker who was digging a hole in the road with a pneumatic drill. ‘I lost a quarter here two days ago, and I’m looking for it’, he told the interviewer. I had another album of a ceremony in a Japanese Zen monastery. One friend had an entire album about Eskimos, including several tracks where all that could be heard was a fisherman scraping a hole in the ice. These were commercial recordings: in the fifties there had been several best-selling albums demonstrating stereo with recordings of table-tennis games; Elvis sold masses of copies of Elvis Sails, a spoken-word EP from March 1959 consisting of nothing but his press conferences, and in 1970 Songs of the Humpback Whale was a best-seller. Parlophone, the Beatles’ own label at EMI, specialized in comedy and spoken-word albums. Seen in this light, the concept of releasing albums filled with poetry, conversations and fragments was not such a far-out idea.
There were a number of meetings, many with Peter Asher who was the head of A&R at Apple and so, technically, my boss. Mostly though, we sat around at my place or Paul’s discussing what could be released. I was very satisfied with how the spoken-word recording I made of Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso and Andrei Voznesensky reading at the Architectural Association had come out. It was everything that the Royal Albert Hall reading a few weeks earlier had not been: the poets were on form, they read well, they chose easily accessible works and were very well received. The record caught the atmosphere well. At Zapple we planned to record a series of live poetry readings, each featuring five or six poets: the ‘Liverpool Scene’ poets – Adrian Henri, Brian Patten, Roger McGough; the New York Poetry Project poets at St Mark’s Church in New York – Ann Waldman, Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett; and the poets and writers surrounding City Lights Books in San Francisco. Paul was keen on the idea of a record of William Burroughs talking about different drugs as well as reading from his work, and he also wanted to release BBC radio plays such as its production of Ubu Cocu by Alfred Jarry that he had listened to on his car radio while driving to Liverpool one time and which he had enjoyed very much. He thought it would be good to have such a performance readily available. We talked about setting up a deal with the BBC for a separate series of such recordings. None of it would have cost very much money compared to many of the other Apple projects.
On 3 October I had written to all the Americans on my list and had already taken a tentative step forward on the Michael McClure album. McClure was a poet and playwright, the author of Dark Brown, Billy the Kid, The Beard (which was performed in London in November 1968 to great acclaim) and many other titles. I had heard a tape from 1964 of him roaring his ‘Beast Language’ poems at the lions in the Fleishaker Zoo in San Francisco and of them roaring back at him, recorded one morning before the zoo opened by Bruce Connor. This sounded like our sort of thing, and so I obtained a copy of the tape from him, and the first actual studio activity on the Zapple label was to remaster Connor’s tape on to 15 inches per second (ips) at Abbey Road.
Paul, Peter and I discussed the idea of getting politicians to explain their political positions. We thought that the real motivation and reasoning behind much of the news was lost, or certainly misunderstood, and felt that people, particularly young people and Beatles fans, would benefit from hearing why leaders such as Castro or Mao made the decisions that they did. Consequently big boxes of Beatles records were sent out to Fidel Castro, Mao Tse Tung, Indira Gandhi and others, together with requests to record an interview for us or to allow us to record them. None of them responded, and it is unlikely that the records ever reached their intended recipients.
One of the most innovative ideas for the time was simply to record the Beatles discussing their upcoming album, complete with a few false starts to tracks or some rehearsals – the Beatles often blasted their way through some golden oldies in order to warm up before a session began. Paul thought that this was a great plan because it was publicity for their albums. It prefigured the idea of journalists releasing their interview tapes as albums, the first of which was The Beatles Tapes in 1976. The first recordings of out-takes and rehearsals were released six months later when the first rock bootleg, Great White Wonder by Bob Dylan, was released. It was this concept that anything could be recorded and released that was so great, and around the Christmas 1968 period everyone seemed enthusiastic about the idea.
Back in June 1968 an Apple internal memo had been circulated to ‘everyone’ which read: ‘ Try to think of suggestions for a subsidiary label for Apple, which would put out more freaky sounds.’ In the end, the name for the new label came from John Lennon who said, ‘ A is for Apple, Z is for Zapple.’
Once this door opened on to the business empire of the Beatles – the Apple offices at 3 Savile Row, London. The building would become the site for their famous rooftop concert. Fans still visit the landmark, many leaving behind their own tribute to the boys.
Chapter 3
Savile Row
APPLE WAS NOW A fully functioning record label, although already some of its initial idealism and adventurous spirit was being sorel
y tested. On 20 April 1968 Apple had placed advertisements in the UK and the USA advertising for talent using a photograph of Alistair Taylor posing as a one-man band, saying, ‘This man now owns a Bentley.’ This was followed up in May by a trip to New York and John and Paul going on the Today Show on 15 May to announce Apple and to appeal for film scripts and cassettes. Johnny Carson was on holiday, so they were interviewed by regular stand-in Joe Garagiola, a former baseball catcher, who appeared to know little about the Beatles. The interview was further disrupted by an apparently inebriated Tallulah Bankhead who kept interrupting. But John and Paul were veteran interviewees and managed to get their point across.
Joe G: Could you tell us about your newest corporate business venture?
John: It’s a business concerning records, films and electronics and, as a sideline, manufacturing or whatever. We want to set up a system whereby people who just want to make a film about anything don’t have to go on their knees in somebody’s office, probably yours.
Paul: We really want to help people but without doing it like a charity or seeming like ordinary patrons of the arts. I mean, we’re in the happy position of not really needing any more money, so for the first time the bosses aren’t in it for the profit. If you come and see me and say, ‘I’ve had such and such a dream’, I will say, ‘Here’s so much money. Go away and do it.’ We’ve already bought all our dreams, so now we want to share that possibility with others. There’s no desire in any of our heads to take over the world. That was Hitler. There is, however, a desire to get power in order to use it for good.
John: The aim of this company isn’t really a stack of gold teeth in the bank. We’ve done that bit. It’s more of a trick to see if we can actually get artistic freedom within a business structure, to see if we can create nice things and sell them without charging three times our cost.
Joe G: How will you run your new company?
John: There’s people we can get to do that. We don’t know anything about business.
Naturally they were inundated. Denis O’Dell had to hire five people just to read through the film scripts that Apple Films received, and, after they moved to Savile Row, a room off Derek Taylor’s press office was designated ‘the Black Hole’ where sackloads of cassettes were stored, never to be listened to. They received hundreds of poetry manuscripts, even though book publishing was not one of their announced areas of activity. The first person to apply for money in Britain was Yoko Ono, who asked for £5,000 to make a film (this was before she and John got together). Her project was rejected.
On 5 May Twiggy saw Mary Hopkin on Opportunity Knocks, a television talent show, and telephoned Paul to say that he really should sign her to Apple. On 11 August Apple Records was launched. On 16 August Mary Hopkin’s ‘Those Were the Days’ was released, produced by Paul McCartney. It went to number one.
On 22 June 1968 Apple paid half a million pounds to bandleader Jack Hylton for 3 Savile Row, a large Georgian townhouse built in 1733 just off Regent Street in the West End, which had previously been the Albany Club (Albany, a private residential street, was just across the road). The door was guarded by Jimmy Clarke in his uniform of a dove-grey morning coat, a high, stiff collar and tight black trousers, as if he were the maître d’ at the Ritz. He was friendly but firm; however, a fair number of fans did manage to sneak in while he was distracted or doing other business. Inside, in the large entrance hall, the walls were all white, the telephones were all white and the deep pile carpet was apple green. At the end was the main staircase, with a subsidiary one to the left; there was plaster panelling in all the main rooms, including the entrance hall, dados, entablatures, cornices and in the back room on the ground floor was a row of columns. To the right of the stairs was the reception and Debbie, the receptionist; a few gold records on the wall, a row of chairs, the music magazines and trade press, with doors leading to Ron Kass’s office and the big back room. As head of the record division Ron had more visitors than anyone except the press office. Displayed on the main staircase was an oil painting of two lion cubs; otherwise the walls were lined with gold records. On the first floor in the building’s two principal rooms were the offices of Neil Aspinall and Peter Brown. The front room ran the full width of the building and featured elaborate plaster moulding on the ceiling.1
Derek Taylor’s press office was on the third floor. It was a large room, dominated by Derek’s high scallop-backed white wicker chair that he had shipped from Los Angeles when he moved to London to join the Beatles. It was known as the ‘throne of Apple’, and it was from here that he managed to keep in check the waves of madness caused by John and Paul inviting every nutter, crazy, hustler and conman in the Western world to apply to them for funds. It was also the public face of the Beatles. All the celebrities visiting London from the USA or Europe wanted to drop in on Apple, it was one of the sights: Jane Fonda, Lauren Bacall, Harry Nilsson, Duane Eddy, Dennis Hopper. It was always fun to stroll in and share a glass of wine with Michelle Phillips from the Mamas and the Papas. Being in the front line was an exhausting business, and Derek was fortified by frequent joints and drinks, although he was asked early on to stop taking LSD during the working day.
At Apple. Standing, from left to right, are Denis O’Dell, Paul McCartney, ‘Magic Alex’, Brian Lewis (O’Dell’s assistant), Ron Kass; seated to the right of the desk is Neil Aspinall and, in front, John Lennon with Derek Taylor.
The moving card sent out from Apple to announce their new offices. This card was sent to all their contacts prior to the opening of the 3 Savile Row offices in July 1968. This card was bought directly from Apple Scruff Lizzie Bravo, who, in February 1968, was one of two Beatles fans recruited by Paul McCartney outside the EMI Abbey Road Studios to provide backing vocals on ‘Across the Universe’.
A matchbook from the Apple offices featuring the logo on the front and address on the back; visitors to the Apple offices were given an array of such tokens. Both items are courtesy of the Mark Naboshek Collection.
To keep the world informed of the Beatles’ moves and plans and to deal with the madness of the American press during the absurd days of the ‘Paul is dead’ fiasco required a number of assistants, the main ones being Mavis Smith, ex-Ballet Rambert dancer and married to the editor of Melody Maker, and Carol Paddon, who came to him from Terry Doran and whose desk was next to the toy birds – they endlessly dipped their beaks into a tray filled with water and were irritatingly fascinating. Richard DiLello, the ‘House Hippie’ rolled joints, ran errands, poured drinks, pasted cuttings into books and made himself useful. There were more typists and a series of other young men and women who drifted in and found themselves working there for weeks, often without pay. Chris O’Dell, the woman ‘from Tucson Arizona’, was one of these. She was a close friend of Derek Taylor from Los Angeles, and after doing odd jobs such as filing press cuttings, getting in the lunches and relieving Laurie at the switchboard she was finally given a job as Peter Asher’s personal assistant.
Peter was initially next door to the press office, but there were too many interruptions there, so he moved to the top floor of the building, the fifth, up in the eaves. It was quieter up there and he could get on with his work of listening to tapes. Peter had put his faith in James Taylor, a young American songwriter, and was hard at work producing his first album. Peter had so much faith that James was even staying with him at his flat on Weymouth Street. When Allen Klein took over Apple Peter left, taking James with him. Peter managed him and produced Sweet Baby James, Taylor’s first massive hit album.
Chris had a small room next to Peter’s office furnished with a purple desk, taken from the ill-fated Apple Boutique, and a cane rocking-chair from Derek’s press office.
At first Paul was the only Beatle to make regular appearances at Apple. He came in most days and was concerned at the amount of money haemorrhaging from the building. Directors were treating themselves to the finest wines over luncheon, everyone travelled first class; the entertainment and travel bills we
re enormous. Unfortunately it was the press office who bore the brunt of Paul’s criticism. It was the most obviously visible example of money being wasted as far as he could see. But they were only doing their job, which was to represent the Beatles. Far from having to publicize ‘the boys’, their job was to fend off the press, placate and stroke the reporters and try, on the side, to promote the other artists that Apple had signed. Paul’s and John’s appearance on television offering to help anyone who needed money for a project had resulted in an endless stream of people, all demanding attention. Some were satisfied with a drink or a joint or some free records, some received a small amount of money, and others had to be escorted, swearing, from the building. The Beatles started it, and someone had to deal with it. Paul’s attempts to cut back on expenses met with obstruction, not from the staff but from the other Beatles:
I’d say, ‘Let’s not booze all day’; ‘Let’s not employ millions of chicks in mini-skirts even though it does look nice, and they smell nice and those angora sweaters are rather dishy, but let’s not do all that.’ I’m referring to the press office. I once tried to get rid of one of the secretaries, but she was a bit comely and they all threatened to resign. Derek Taylor threatened to resign and I said, ‘Well?’ I was trying to hold my own. Then George came in and saw me. ‘She goes . . .’ [Paul imitates a pleading look.] ‘We all go . . .’ [Paul spreads hands in despairing gesture. The secretary stayed on.] ‘Ooops!’ Actually what I was trying to do was slim down the rather overloaded press department where there were a few nice chicks and a lot of booze, and, as you say, you used to go there, so did everyone else. That was the place to go.2