The Zapple Diaries

by Barry Miles

  That same day saw Ron Kass dismissed. Klein had been gunning for him since he arrived and finally got him by alleging financial impropriety. It was a false accusation, but he managed to sow the seeds of doubt in the four Beatles’ minds (the full story is in Peter Brown’s book, The Love You Make). Kass had done an exemplary job in running Apple Records, given how difficult the Beatles had made it for him, and the sacking was utterly unwarranted. Fortunately he had a good contract; I thought he should sue Klein for slander, but Ron said he had been expecting it. That same day Peter Brown, in his position as an Apple director, signed over the lease of the town house in Mayfair that Kass was living in. Brown wrote, ‘I got supreme pleasure in seeing Kass get that town house.’ Ron was replaced by Jack Oliver, who had previously been Terry Doran’s personal assistant. He knew nothing about running a record company, which is why Klein put him in that position.

  Things were made so unbearable that Denis O’Dell, head of the film department, who had been producing Ringo in The Magic Christian, resigned. He had sensibly kept his office at Twickenham Film Studios and no doubt also had a good contract. I met him a few times, and it was obvious that he wouldn’t have remained at Apple very long; he was too professional and had been in the business since 1951 and could see disaster coming.

  In June, shortly after Kass was fired, Peter Asher resigned. He told Disc and Music Echo:

  When I joined Apple the idea was that it would be different from the other companies in the record business. Its policy was to help people and be generous. It didn’t mean actually I had a tremendous amount of freedom; I was always in danger of one Beatle saying, ‘Yes, that’s a great idea, go ahead’, and then another coming in and saying he didn’t know anything about it. But it did mean that it was a nice company to work for. Now that’s all changed.

  Klein installed his number-one man from the New York office, Peter Howard, as financial director. From now on Apple was a straight business, employees had to sign in and out with time cards and it became a thoroughly unpleasant place to work if you were on the staff. John and Yoko installed themselves in Ron Kass’s former office and were there virtually every day, giving interviews, promoting their various films and projects. This was another cause of resentment in the building: Yoko used to bring her daughter Kyoko into the office, and she was allowed to run and play as she pleased. She took to pulling the plugs out of Laurie’s telephone switchboard, cutting off transatlantic calls and major business discussions, but no one was allowed to intervene. Then John Lennon got cut off mid-call. But instead of stopping her he yelled at Laurie as if it had been her fault. They had fired the kitchen staff as a money-saving operation, but Yoko had a £15 tin of caviar delivered every day from nearby Fortnum and Mason’s, usually leaving the unfinished tin out to spoil instead of putting it in the fridge, so that the next day she began another one. The chef’s wages had been £12 a week. The other Beatles stayed away, and Apple became John’s and Yoko’s office.

  Amid the disintegration of Apple and despite the spectre of Zapple’s demise, Life with the Lions and Electronic Sound were released and promoted as Zapple records, as shown by this advertisement in OZ (an Australian underground magazine).

  I was concerned because it seemed inevitable that the Zapple label would be axed even though it had only just been launched, on 1 May in the USA and 9 May in the UK. Klein couldn’t fire me because I wasn’t on the staff; nevertheless, I felt considerable sympathy for my friends there and was dismayed when Peter Asher said he was leaving. I also felt a certain loyalty to those artists I had recorded – Olson, Weaver, Ferlinghetti, McClure, Bukowski and Brautigan – and wanted their records to be released. I had also spent a lot of time preparing for Allen Ginsberg’s album. Peter advised me to stay on and do whatever I could. He said to go to New York and record the Ginsberg album and intimated that Ron Kass, who had gone straight on to become the new head of MGM Records in Hollywood, might well release it if Zapple didn’t. Emboldened, I flew to New York to begin work with Allen.

  When I joined Apple the idea was that it would be different from the other companies in the record business. Its policy was to help people and be generous.

  The Hotel Chelsea has housed many notable writers and artists over the years, including William Burroughs, Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, Arthur C. Clarke, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, the Grateful Dead, Larry Rivers and Mark Rothko . . . to name just a few.

  Chapter 16

  The Second Trip: Allen Ginsberg

  KEN WEAVER HAD MOVED to Tucson, Arizona, so I needed a hotel. Allen suggested that I stay at the Hotel Chelsea on West 23rd Street, ‘This is where you belong,’ he said. He was right. I finished up living there for a number of years. He insisted on inspecting the room, number 420, to make sure it wasn’t too ratty. The first thing to do before we began recording was to arrange Allen’s contract. The contracts for the albums I had already recorded had been done by Apple’s contract department. This one would have to be written by Allen Klein. Allen and I went to see him at 1700 Broadway. Iris Keitel showed us in.

  Klein’s office had tall double doors made from heavy beaten copper, which looked like something Klein had picked up from the auction of the Cleopatra set in Hollywood. It was a power office, with two sides of glass, looking out over Central Park and the surrounding skyscrapers of mid-Manhattan. Klein sat slumped behind an empty desk which seemed much too big for him, with his hands on the desk. He didn’t get up. He wore a dirty white T-shirt; it looked as if he’d been reading the New York Times where the ink always comes off on your fingers and finds its way on to your clothes. Although Klein was very used to meeting famous people in showbusiness, he seemed genuinely interested to meet Allen who came from a different world. He wanted to discuss Allen’s political opinions, the Vietnam War and Allen’s philosophy. I don’t think it was a strategy but a genuine interest; however, we soon got down to business. He had proposed a contract that gave Apple all the rights and none to Allen.

  Allen’s early background was in advertising, and his brother Eugene was a lawyer and had had a look at the contract. A side of Allen emerged that I had not previously seen, that of the canny businessman. Allen suggested that the basis of a contract was that two people agree to do something together, and the contract formalizes this intention, whereas he saw Klein’s attitude as essentially confrontational. They talked about this for a while but when Klein wouldn’t move Allen insisted on his rights. ‘Assuming I trust you,’ he said, ‘how do I know you’re always going to be here as head of Apple? You might go down into Central Park one afternoon and rape a little girl on her way home from school.’ He pointed out of the window up Broadway towards the park. ‘Then you’d go to jail and I’d have to deal with a stranger who didn’t understand the nature of our deal.’ This visibly shocked Klein, who span around in his huge leather office chair, ‘That’s absurd!’ he shouted. ‘I have a wife and children. I wouldn’t do a thing like that. You’re just saying that to try and shock me, to be obscene!’ But he wouldn’t let it go; Allen was famous for his words, and Klein wanted to talk. He discussed pornography and censorship, and in the end the meeting lasted more than an hour, with only one short break when Klein shouted at someone in Australia. Klein seemed to like Allen, or more accurately he seemed fascinated by him, but we emerged from his office with no deal in place. Klein said he would prepare another outline contract but in the meantime we should go ahead and start recording. We were to use Capitol Records’s midtown studio on Broadway, wholly owned by EMI in London, which had a deal with Apple.

  I discussed the album with Allen in great detail, and we decided that each track should be treated individually, with its own selected instrumentation, rather than assemble a group of sympathetic musicians and have them back Allen on every track like a band. Thus some tracks were virtually solo and others had a number of instruments. One time we went for a more Elizabethan-sounding arrangement, and another we opted for a country-and-western feel. But first we had to find the musicians
and an arranger. Fortunately Allen knew the perfect arranger: Bob Dorough, cool jazz pianist, composer, songwriter, all-round bebop-era jazzman and one of the few performers to sing a vocal on a Miles Davis record.1 With his experience as a producer and arranger he was the perfect man for the job – better suited than me in fact, but he never pulled rank and was a pleasure to work with. Next we had to find musicians. Bob Dorough was a fine keyboard player, and I thought that for most tracks we would also need a guitarist and a bass player, and, beyond that, it would depend upon the arrangements.

  Expenses receipts and ephemera from the Hotel Chelsea, which became the author Barry Miles’s home away from home.

  Allen immediately suggested we go to see Charles Mingus and ask if he would play on the album. This was beyond my wildest dreams. We went to the Village Vanguard where Mingus was playing2 and after his set we went backstage. He was friendly but seemed a little spaced out. This was his empty period; he had not released a record since January 1966. He said to come to visit him and bring a tape of the material we had. The next afternoon, on a blazing hot day, Allen and I walked over to Avenue C and down to East 5th Street. Mingus lived at the end of the dead-end block going west. The street was filled with overflowing garbage bins, and the burnt-out shell of a car, robbed of everything that could be sold, stood outside his building. I think we woke him up, even though it was about 3 p.m., because he seemed woozy. He wore just a pair of sagging underpants, and sweat ran like river tributaries down his round stomach. He found us orange juice from the fridge.

  It was a railroad apartment, and the first room was filled with old newspapers and mysterious plastic bags, stacked high with a corridor between. In his living-room he gestured to the tape-recorder, and I threaded on Allen’s demo tape. I had a pick-up reel with me in case there were none available. Allen had written a number of songs since the tape was made and these he sang, accompanying himself on his Indian harmonium. Mingus hushed Allen and listened closely to the tape and to Allen’s recital. Then he gave a careful analysis of Allen’s music. His voice was terrible and would need strengthening, Peter should be left out completely, the tracks were raw and should stay that way, Allen’s timing was off but could be fixed by a good walking bass. He said it was good work but he didn’t think he could play on it; it wasn’t jazz. We asked if he could recommend a good bass player and he said that Herman Wright was our man if he would do it. Well, that would be great, I thought. I knew his work with the Chet Baker Quintet and with Yusef Lateef, and it would be an honour to work with someone so accomplished. (I had never expected Mingus to actually play with Allen.) Charles gave us the details, and we had a meeting with Herman and he immediately understood what we were trying to do and agreed to play on it. He finished up on six of the twenty-one tracks.

  While Bob worked on the arrangements we looked for musicians and rehearsed the material. The photographer Robert Frank, an old friend of Ginsberg (and Kerouac and the Beats), let us use the huge front room of his apartment on West Side Drive on the Upper West Side. I thought we would start with the simplest pieces to get Allen used to the microphone and for him to learn microphone technique. ‘The Human Abstract’ was just Allen singing with his Indian harmonium, and there were several others that at this point had no instrumentation other than guitar.

  I had thought that EMI Abbey Road was old-fashioned, but at Capitol the recording engineers not only wore white lab coats but had little leather holsters in which they kept their tape-editing scissors. They were so experienced and skilful that they disdained a tape-editing block – a metal block with a 45-degree groove cut into it – and simply held the tape in one hand and made a perfect 45-degree cut across it. Then they did the same to the tape they were editing and applied the splicing tape. I was impressed. I was less impressed by their openly disdainful attitude toward Allen and Peter Orlovsky. These were old-style big-band variety showbiz people, and the countercultural music of the late sixties had not yet penetrated their consciousness. However, we were paying, and they did what we asked them. The trouble was that Mingus was right; Peter’s voice was so bad there was little we could do with it. He was still taking amphetamines, and he still had his ‘leper’s voice’. It was loud, flat and out of tune, with no redeeming qualities. We mixed it down as low as possible before Allen objected. We did two or three sessions and had two tracks done when the inevitable and expected happened. Allen Klein closed Zapple without informing me or anyone in the Apple office. Capitol would accept no more studio bookings and refused to hand over the existing tapes unless I paid for them; they clearly didn’t trust Klein’s office to pay. I was stuck with studio bills and a hotel bill at the Chelsea. I tried Paul McCartney at home but was always told he was out, and none of the Beatles could be reached at Apple. Eventually, after a few days of worry, Derek Taylor got authorization – I think from George Harrison – to pay off my debts (but not the studio bills) and I was able to rest easy again. Meanwhile, with so much preparation and work already done, Allen decided that he would pay for the recording himself and we would lease it to a record company. I estimated that the studio costs and the musicians would amount to about $10,000, and Allen felt he could manage that. I called Peter Asher to discuss the idea of releasing it on MGM. Ron Kass had moved from running Apple Records to become the head of MGM Records and had hired Peter as his head of A&R. It was the old team back together again. ‘Come and discuss it,’ Peter said.

  Mingus lived at the end of the dead- end block going west. The street was filled with overflowing garbage bins, and the burnt-out shell of a car, robbed of everything that could be sold, stood outside his building . . . He wore just a pair of sagging underpants, and sweat ran like river tributaries down his round stomach.

  Chapter 17

  The Second Trip: LA

  I FLEW FROM NEW York to Los Angeles and headed straight for TT&G Studios where Frank Zappa was recording. He had offered to put me up and suggested that I meet him there, catch some of the sessions and then go back with him to Woodrow Wilson Drive where he lived. TT&G stood for ‘Two Terrible Guys’ – Ami Hadani and Tom Hidley. It was at 1441 North McCadden Place near the intersection of Sunset and Highland in Hollywood. It was where parts of The Velvet Underground and Nico, the Velvet Underground’s first album, had been recorded and was designed for modern rock music, with high decibel levels. Frank was recording Hot Rats when I arrived. Captain Beefheart was there, and Johnny Otis, the legendary bandleader, was the session leader. I was suddenly back in the heart of the rock ’n’ roll business. Frank was very interested to hear all the gossip about Klein and the break-up of Apple. I told him that I was doing an album with Allen Ginsberg, and he recommended that we use Apostolic Studios in New York, where he had made We’re Only in It for the Money, Lumpy Gravy, Uncle Meat and Cruisin’ With Ruben and the Jets.

  The purpose of the trip was of course to firm up the deal with MGM, but there were no problems there; they were happy to lease the album, and I met the art department personnel and the other people I would be dealing with as producer. Ron Kass, Peter Asher and I stood in Ron’s palatial office, with its Picasso prints, and looked out over a livid orange-and-red Los Angeles sunset, touched glasses and laughed. It did seem a whole lot better than the bickering and backbiting at Savile Row. The visit to MGM is one of those examples of a road not travelled. It seemed that there was work at MGM if I wanted it, going through all the back catalogue – people like Sam the Sham – and planning a reissue series; also reissues of the Velvet Underground and of course the Mothers of Invention’s early records, which were all on MGM-Verve. As I knew Zappa, and was in fact staying with him and he seemed to trust me, I was sure we could have worked together. There was also the possibility of getting together with Valerie. It was all food for thought.

  Back in New York we were ready to begin rehearsals. Bob had finished his arrangements, and we now had our musicians: Janet Zeitz on flute, Cyril Caster on guitar, trumpet and French horn, Jon Sholle, a multi-instrumentalist who played aut
oharp, electric bass, guitar and drums on the album, and of course Herman Wright on stand-up bass. Bob Dorough played piano and organ on many of the tracks. I made a block booking at Apostolic Studios, and we began.

  Apostolic was downtown, at 53 East 10th Street – it was very rare in those days to find recording studios outside the midtown music business because everyone said that no one would go downtown to record. It was $95 an hour and $115 an hour after midnight.

  It was named after their prototype twelve-track Scully tape-recorder: a huge machine about six feet long that Paul Berkowitz, the maintenance engineer, stripped down every weekend. There was an in-house astrologer who each day cast the i-ching or studied his coffee grounds or something and who sometimes decided that the signs were so bad that no recording should be done that day. Fortunately the signs were propitious throughout the six weeks or so we were there. The studio engineer and tape operator was Dave Baker, who had a laid-back, easy, friendly manner and to our amazement was a Coca-Cola afficionado who could identify which bottling plant a bottle of Coca-Cola came from. Unlike Capitol, these people appreciated working with Ginsberg. I was most impressed with the technical know-how and the equipment: it was the world’s first twelve-track (although sixteen-track rapidly overtook it). It was a funky studio, with clippings from newspapers and photographs pinned on the wall. In the control booth was an illustration from a fifties trade magazine entitled ‘How to hold a large rabbit’ showing a serious-looking farmer supporting a rabbit the size of an eight-year-old child. This was also the first place I saw a mock-German warning to inquisitive visitors, although it had apparently been around since the early fifties: