In theory, each individual Beatle would have an Apple account for purchases and for stuff they wanted, and their individual assistants would ask for things like air tickets, and they would be sorted out and supplied. Ringo and George were low-key and pretty self-sufficient, while Paul and John, who actively did far more, used the staff to get things for them. They all had personal assistants, but I have to say that for musicians and rock stars, George and John’s assistants weren’t much assistance. They kept asking us what to do. For a while, influenced by Yoko’s obsession for all things arty, John employed an art gallery type named Anthony Fawcett, who helped them produce some of their exhibitions and outlandish experimental films—referred to around the office as their “home movies.” He didn’t last long.
Individual requests yielded petty jealousies. For instance, John and Yoko’s “home movies,” which were in no way Apple projects yet charged to Apple, aggravated the other Beatles because they were enormously expensive and earned nothing. I think that John and Yoko must have believed they were doing solid projects. In the great scheme of Beatle-life, most of their personal indulgences were small beer, hobby stuff to while away the time, or to experiment. With all the money that was around it seemed nitpicking to criticize and mostly people didn’t. Those were weird times, after all. Everybody was experimenting with something and moving on to the latest idea. It was mostly the acid casualties who still dressed like Sgt. Pepper and got stuck in the groove. It was a fun thing at the time, but not even the Beatles wanted to go around looking like they just stepped out of their Yellow Submarine.
Alex’s electronics department was a big waste of time and money, but it had nothing to do with Apple. It was a fantasy created by John and Alex. The boutique was also a waste of time and money, but it was money that they could afford to waste, money that was earmarked to go to taxes anyway. They could as well have had a public bonfire on the roof of Apple with the money they wasted—but it would probably have rained. There was considerable waste—including the lead from the Apple roof that some enterprising office boy was stealing by the sackload and strolling out of the front door with like Santa, until the upstairs started to leak—but nobody cared. George even wrote it in a song: it was all written off to the taxman. As Mario Puzo once said, “If you wanna get rich, you gotta get rich in the dark.”
Apple probably put more kids through Eton than any merchant bank. Looking back, one can see how it straightened out a lot of misconceptions about how to run a worldwide entertainment business. Its logo should have been a slyly smiling python with the apple. We should have attached a big blue plaque on the wall at number 3 Savile Row, saying in Latin, GET IT RIGHT OR THEY’LL STEAL THE LEAD OFF YER FUCKIN’ ROOF, or perhaps nailed up one of the big signs erected around London by Syd Bishop, a leading demolitions company: WATCH IT COME DOWN.
But, despite all, Apple was amazing. It sold hundreds of millions of records, in real figures, not hyped up to move sales along. We used to get sales figures showing a quarter of a million album sales a day, every day! The place was so knee-deep in platinum and gold and silver discs, there was nowhere to put them. Klein got 20 percent of it all, but John, who brought him in, was crackers at the time and shouldn’t have been taken seriously. They didn’t need Klein or anybody like him. Ron Kass was doing a great job. We all adored Ron, but there was no way that Ron and Yoko would ever see eye to eye. He was a smashing bloke. He dressed well, he was polite and he was educated. He knew and understood the music industry. In fact, he was one of the best things that happened to Apple. But Klein hated him and Yoko hated him and those two were forces to reckon with.
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Despite Klein’s presence among us, somehow business proceeded as usual, with some high spots. Janis Joplin was one of those high spots. I met her quite a few times. Albert Grossman, Bob Dylan’s manager, managed her. He was a legend, a cuddly, great bear of a man with a gray ponytail. Because he wore nothing else but blue denim shirts and jeans, it always appeared that he only had one set. We often bumped into each other at MIDEM (the annual music industry convention in Cannes) where he was always a very generous host.
The first time Janis came to England, it was in early in 1969 to play the Royal Albert Hall in London. It was a fantastic show and far exceeded her wildest expectations. She had always heard that we British were a stuffy lot, but when everyone starting dancing in the aisles, she reacted with a mind-blowing performance. Afterward, while still out of breath, she said, “God, is that exciting, man!” On a roll, she continued, “Nobody, nobody even . . . thought it would be that good! I didn’t . . . That was more good than any other good. . . . Yeah, London was the best. Nobody’s ever got up and danced and dug it . . . and they did, man! They fuckin’ got up and grooved, and then they listened. That was dynamite.” Fine words indeed.
Like many other musicians when in London, Janis took to hanging out at the Apple offices. I can still see her in my mind today, wearing a great big sort of Cossack hat. The corner of my desk seemed to attract them all like magnets. She would perch on the corner with a joint and a glass of bourbon or Southern Comfort from Derek’s huge stash and gossip a mile a minute. She wasn’t attractive, but she was a really nice, funny woman. She swung both ways, but gave little indication of it, at least, not to me. I didn’t see any sign that she was mainlining at the time—in fact, I don’t think she used many drugs at that stage. She got into them when she got more successful.
Janis, Albert and I would hang out at the Speakeasy listening to White Trash, a Scottish band signed to Apple. Ian Mclean was their lead singer and Ronnie Leahy was on keyboards. Ronnie’s wife Joan famously became Mrs. Richard Branson. Ronnie always maintained that Richard, who did incredibly well while still at school by importing records from Europe, swept her off her feet by flashing his money. White Trash’s music was bluesy and cool but we never sold any records. The closest they came to having a hit was their version of the Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers,” which Paul wrote while staying with his father in Liverpool. The story of the song is interesting, in that it shows the various sources Paul used to draw on for his material. Jim McCartney had remarried and had a daughter, Ruth (Paul’s stepsister). Paul was sitting doodling at the piano when he noticed some of Ruth’s sheet music on the piano, “Golden Slumbers” among it. He didn’t read music, but liked the words. It was out of copyright, written by Thomas Dekker in 1603, and Paul decided to write his own tune. As usual, John and he are credited, but Paul actually wrote it.
The basic problem with White Trash was the BBC banned them from their play list because they thought their name was racist. Somebody then compounded the fact that the BBC had missed the point by 180 degrees and they changed it to Trash, which was even worse. Janis adored their bluesy sound. She would get up with them at the Speak and sing. She’d get silly and drunk and have great fun. The office boy and general junior dogsbody at Apple at the time, the keen young American, Richard DiLello, was assigned the job of hauling Janis and White Trash/Trash around. They became a sort of project with him and he started taking lots of pictures. One snap was of Janis in the hat outside the Albert Hall, not long before she died. At the time, Richard wasn’t a very good photographer, but that one became famous. He observed enough of what a manic place Apple was in those days to write a book about it, The Longest Cocktail Party.
Despite the arguments and the wrangling, at heart the Beatles remained close friends who really cared about each other. Without outside influences, they could still get together as a unit in the studio and work amicably. This was the case in July 1969, when they settled their differences long enough to start the long process of recording Abbey Road, a process which would continue during July and August. It was to be the last big opus, a swan song to the Beatles. It became one of their most evocative and beautiful albums. At first, they resurrected “Everest,” the previous working title for the White Album, and decided to use it. They wanted the album to reflect the eternal, soaring images of the mountain itself and they e
ven discussed going to India to film and take that classic photograph. The idea of the Beatles trekking through Nepal at that stage in their lives was ludicrous. I think it was George who suddenly had a Zen moment when he said, “Well, we’re here—in Abbey Road. It’s our spiritual home. Let’s call it that.”
Paul was keen. He lived just across the road and to him this was home anyway. For once there was no disagreement. They set up a photo shoot and the famous “zebra crossing” shot was taken of them striding across the black-and-white stripes of the pedestrian crossing that led to Cavendish Avenue.
If this was going to be their last album—which they suspected it would be—they wanted to go out with a bang. They had almost too much material to choose from, some going back years and years from when John and Paul had first started writing songs. Even George, who had come to songwriting late, had enough for what would become his triple album. I remember being with them when they sat around the studio for days listening to tapes and drawing up lists. They rejected “Jealous Guy” and “Mother Nature’s Son”; and they even rejected John’s classic “Imagine” because it wasn’t finished—the song that was to be called the greatest song of all time, equal only to Paul’s “Yesterday.”
They wanted all four of them to have something on the album. Many people thought that George stole the show with his wonderfully uplifting “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something”—which has been called one of the loveliest of ballads. Ringo did the cute “Octopus’s Garden,” and John did three songs, his magnificent “Sun King,” “Mean Mr. Mustard” and “Polythene Pam” (this last one harked back to his student days at art school). Paul, who was the driving force behind the project, did all the rest, including “Golden Slumbers.”
The title of one of John’s songs included the word “heavy,” as in, “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” The hip contemporary use of the word has been attributed to me, at least by Paul in his biography, Many Years from Now. It came about one day at Apple when the atmosphere was more poisonous than usual and everyone was feeling glum and despondent, as if the weight of the world was on their shoulders.
I said, “Man, the atmosphere sucks. It’s so heavy.”
Paul, who was in love with words, looked up and said, “Wow!” Soon, they were all using the word, as in “it’s so heavy, man” and it went from there. Around the world? I have no idea, but it did at least go all the way to John’s song.
One clever idea on the other side of Abbey Road was the medley. This used up a large swathe of the Beatles’ unfinished songs, ones that possibly might never get finished. I think George Martin and Paul were responsible for that innovative notion, and it worked.
Paul, George and Ringo immediately started work on the Abbey Road sessions on July 1, but John and Yoko decided to go on a family holiday with Julian and Kyoko to Scotland to stay with one of Mimi’s sisters, where John had spent almost all of his childhood vacations. It was a standing joke in the office how bad at driving John was. He rarely got behind the wheel himself because his sight was so poor. But, this time, he was determined to be a family man—a very stoned family man—but still, they all set off on a meandering journey. Within a couple of days news came that John had wrecked the car, an Austin Maxi, on a lonely stretch of road, and he, Yoko and Kyoko had been injured and were in the hospital. All three were badly gashed and needed extensive stitches, while Yoko had a badly wrenched back and couldn’t move. After the accident, Cynthia removed Julian and Tony Cox swooped on Kyoko and took her to Denmark. John tenderly arranged for Yoko to be transferred by helicopter from the hospital lawn to Glasgow Airport, where she was put into a private plane and taken to Heathrow. From there, a helicopter flew her to the spacious lawns of their new home, Tittenhurst Park.
John had bought this huge mansion the previous year, and had it completely renovated. The renovations included a state-of-the-art studio and an enormous white music room that contained nothing else but a white grand piano and drifting white voile curtains. It was in this room that “Imagine” was finally finished the following year, inspired by Yoko’s ability to play classical piano, her Grapefruit book, and their joint quest for peace. It would have been nice if things had remained simple, but to everyone’s astonishment, after the accident John ordered a big bed from Harrods and had it installed at the studio for Yoko. A microphone was dangled in the right position above the bed, to enable Yoko to pass comment. I don’t think such a thing had ever happened before in the history of recorded music. People didn’t know where to look, or what to say. The other three Beatles should have said no. One depressing repercussion of Yoko’s back pain was that heroin came into John’s and Yoko’s lives in a major way and they disappeared from sight. Holed up in the huge bedroom of their new home, they dreamed the summer away, like Coleridge and a geisha. In the end, they went cold turkey on their own—even wrote a song about it, the first recording they ever did on their own at Abbey Road—saying that they pulled through with pure willpower and inner strength. Maybe so, but it’s documented that they were definitely checked in at the London Clinic and numerous friends visited them there.
With Abbey Road in the bag, ready to be launched, Klein announced that we would be going to the Capitol Records/Apple Convention, to be held in Hawaii. Capitol, a part of EMI, distributed Apple in the U.S. and he stressed that it was important to meet all the heads of the divisions and for them to get to know us better. This made some of us laugh. We had originally attended the first convention in Las Vegas two summers earlier, long before Klein’s arrival in our midst. Our team was mainly a very happy Allen Klein, who was finally in charge of the Beatles, and me and Jack Oliver who were in charge of drinking since I didn’t think Klein would allow us to say much and we had no intention of hanging out with him anyway.
But I must admit it was wonderful to fly to Hawaii in a Boeing 707 in 1969 before it became so touristy. It was like being in the start of a Bond movie, the one where Ursula Andress came up out of the sea in that white swimsuit. The whole island smelled as if it had been sprayed all over with the most wonderful subtle perfume. It was quite heady. As well as the small British contingent, Klein brought a load of his own people from New York, including executives from Invictus Records, who launched the group, Chairmen of the Board, at the convention. Klein was very buoyant, practically bouncing around like a beach ball, slapping backs and beaming. “Look at me! Top of the world, Ma!” He spent the afternoons playing tennis with the Italian crowd from New York, running all over the court showing off, while Jack and I did the PR thing from our lounge chairs on the terrace, with lots of tropical booze served in hollowed-out pineapples. Every now and then, Jack would glance across at Klein and say, “Look at that fat bastard. I’d like to stuff this pineapple right up his jaxsey.”
I said, “Nice thought. Great waste.”
Our hotel, which was right on Waikiki Beach, was the hotel where the TV series, Hawaii Five-O was filmed. About a thousand drunks, in what is now known as “the full Jimmy Buffett” of lurid shirts and baggy shorts, staggered around with their pineapples slopping, laughing and mimicking Jack Lord’s big closing line: “Book him Dann-O. Murder One.” The cabaret was Freda Payne, doing “Band of Gold,” and Glen Campbell and Joe South—big mates of Elvis—also performed. Elvis himself happened to be making a film there at the time and Glen and Joe introduced us to him. We didn’t say a great deal; one never does in those situations. It was just a handshake and, “How do you do?”
I was totally in awe. His voice sounded as if he was speaking the words to “American Trilogy,” as if he’d said, “Look away, Dixieland!” He looked fantastic and I remembered how that earlier summer in Los Angeles, the colonel had given me some tickets for his “comeback”—which also happened to be in Hawaii. Sadly, he wasn’t in concert this time, so I never did get to hear him sing live.
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In many respects, Ringo had drifted sideways from the mess at Apple some time ago. He drifted for a while and even said, “I wondered what I shou
ld do with my life now that it’s all over.” He decided to go back to his roots by producing an album of big band and show tunes from his childhood. He asked his mother to remind him of a few and friends came up with others. From September 1969 to early 1970 he got on with making his own album on Apple, Sentimental Journey. It was produced by George Martin, and friends, such as Paul, contributed with the arrangements. Ringo said in an interview: “The great thing was that it got me moving. It got me going. Okay, let’s go, not very fast, but just moving in some way. It was like the first shovel of coal in the furnace that makes the train inch forward.”
While Ringo got on quietly with making things happen, George was the first to express his annoyance over his own position. He felt that the records he was making with Jackie Lomax, Doris Troy and Billy Preston were not getting the same push as an individual Beatle album. The only real hits were Billy Preston’s single, “That’s the Way God Planned It,” and the two Hare Krishna records, which were seen as novelties. He couldn’t get Apple to sign Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, whom George was passionate about. To get some space, he went out on tour with them. It wasn’t structured, like the tours Brian had worked hard on with the Beatles. It was much looser and it was fun. I think that was when he realized there was a whole different world out there.
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