Statements from Apple Employees:

•Alistair Taylor: "...we should have a small kitchen where we cooked and had our meals if we were entertaining anybody instead of going out and spending 30 pounds at a restaurant...Most of the extravagances were due to Peter Brown and Neil Aspinall sitting down and having superb four-course lunches with classic wines in the dining room at Apple.

•"Nobody around here deals in cash. We've got checkbooks, credit arrangements, dozens of accounts, but there are no mountains of used fivers lying around" (Taylor, A p. 147).

•Alistair Taylor: "The money was coming in so fast, but there were no controls. I got laughed out of court when I tried to control Derek. That's when I said we needed a "Beeching", and the next thing I read was that John and Yoko had gone to see Lord Beeching. They had taken it literally. It evolved from that and, of course, we ended up with Allen Klein. So, the man whose head is on the chopping block first is the guy who thought the idea up. Klein fired me
.

•Press Office Release: We in the Press Office, as undersigned, are paying for an advertisement ourselves because we believe the record Govinda by the devotees of the Radha Krishna Temple, produced by George Harrison, to be the best record ever made! You too?

•One of the Scruffs was eventually hired by Apple as a receptionist and John paid her a clothing allowance because he liked to see her dressed in all in black or all in white. Another became a tea girl at Apple (Flippo, p. 275).

•An employee at Apple: "Everybody in the business knows what a joke it (Apple) is".

•Alistair Taylor: Somebody said to Paul, "What is it like to sack someone like Alistair Taylor?" They quoted
my name, and he said, "Oh well it's just got to be done." I feel they just chickened out. I thought Paul and I
were very close. Obviously we weren't! I just didn't work for them for God's sake. I mean, I've been on
holiday with them. They confided in me. I could write a book that would make Peter Brown's look like Enid
Blyton, and yet they did come to rely on other people doing everything, including jobs like that. A very strange quartet!"

•Nigel Oliver: We used to take stacks of albums out of Apple. All of the albums that were supposed to be posted to America we never sent. I was the best office boy though; people thought I was the one who could be trusted, I wore a suit and I was making seven pound fifty (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 66).

•George Peckham: Eventually I had to sit down with George and the others and tell them that people want to come and cut at Apple and I asked if we could open up Apple to outside clients. They agreed and the next thing you know Apple studios was up and running. It was busy as h*** after that (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 37).

•After Brian died Apple started to expand into music publishing, signing new artists, sponsoring inventors, and generally putting into practice the principal of making business fun. Business at NEMS wasn't fun at all, so a phone call from John a few days ago was very welcome. "Hello, Alistair. You're looking a bit pissed off at NEMS recently". "I am, really. All the infighting is getting to me". "Well, would you like to come and be General Manager of Apple?" I didn't need a second invitation. I've given my notice to NEMS and I'll transfer to Apple as soon as I can (Taylor, A. p. 108).

•Pete Bennett: Paul McCartney hated the strings on Let It Be, and he didn't want Phil Spector producing the album. Paul complained to us, but we put it out anyhow. It wasn't even Klein's doing...We put it out because John Lennon wanted it out. You have to understand that Lennon was Director of Apple Records. Lennon had the last say, and for whatever reason, they made Lennon the president when they set up Apple
(Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 130).

•Derek Taylor: At 8 O'clock one morning I got a phone call...it was all four of them, rowdy and friendly and sober and calling, I assume, on a whim. 'Come back to England and run Apple' one of them said. What did that mean? 'Run Apple Records', said John. 'This is George's idea. I've asked Mal but you can do it anyway with Mal'. 'Bullocks to yer', said Paul. 'He asked Peter Asher'. 'You can come and drive the big green jobs anyway', said George...The best thing would be to come and talk about it . Taylor agreed and within days of the conversation, he was already making plans to move his family back to England (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 31)

•Apple Promotions Manager Pete Bennett: George Harrison was pleading with me to do something for
Badfinger, so I broke Come And Get It on WLS in Chicago by buying air time, one minute commercial
spots, and playing Come And Get It. It was like a paid advertisement, but the radio station didn't make us say it was. After we started playing the spots, people started calling in and the program director started playing it, so that's how we broke Badfinger in America (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 128).

• John Kosh, 23 year-old London artist and designer of the Get Back album cover and book: I wasn't exactly staff, but I had an office. I started out on the ground floor in Ron Kass' old office, then I ended up on the third floor with Derek Taylor. They didn't have an art studio; we just had an office. Looking back on it, Apple's fees were ridiculously low, but you didn't need much money in those days. We would sometimes get paid in substances, though I don't know how it was channeled. None of the suits and ties ever got an idea of what was going on. But wherever we went, we went first class. Apple sent me to New York for six months and I lived off the fat of the land-all paid by Apple. (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 103).

•Tony Bramwell: I was hired to work for Apple Films. I was at Apple records for about a year before we started up Apple Records. The problem with Apple films was that United Artists, who had the rights to finance and distribute Apple Films, didn't think it was such a great idea...so that was a bit of a disaster. We actually bought the rights to Lord of the Rings which The Beatles would have starred in...we were actually in pre-production (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 31)

•Neil Aspinall: A lot of people put themselves forward to run it...but there didn't seem to be any unanimous choice. So I said to them, foolishly I guess, "Look, I'll do it until you find somebody that you want to do it (Granados, M. Those Were the Days. p. 12)

•Derek Taylor: I slipped into it [the position as Press Officer for Apple] having been appointed personal
assistant to Brian Epstein. I got the job because old colleagues on the press started to ring me up saying,
"Come on, we know you're in there". And I'd say, "I'm not the Press Officer. He's in the other room". So
they'd say, "You can't give us that..." George Harrison: Also the Press Officer we had was useless. I think
we all benefited when Derek got that position because he knew their needs having been a press man. We trusted his ability not to sacrifice us to them. I think it worked quite well (Giuliano Lost Int. p. 158).

•Neil Aspinall: We didn't have a single piece of paper. No contracts. The lawyer, the accountants and Brian, whoever, had that. Maybe The Beatles had been given copies of various contracts, I don't know. I didn't know what the contract was with EMI, or with the film people or the publishers or anything at all. So it was a case of building up a filing system, find out what was going on while were were trying to continue doing something (Granados, M. Those Were the Days. p. 19).

•Once the smoke had cleared, it was obvious that Klein had negotiated an exceptionally lucrative deal for himself. Peter Brown admits that he had no idea of why The Beatles would offer Klein such generous compensation: "They had no idea how to negotiate. I don't know where their heads were" (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 89).

•Ken Mansfield: Capitol President Stanely Gortikov called me one day and told me that the Beatles, mainly Paul McCartney and Ron Kass, has asked for me to head up Apple Records in America. 'You don't have to tell us where you are or what you're doing and you don't have to clear your expenditures. You only have one responsibility-to keep it together with The Beatles...The only thing that happened was that my stationary changed to US Manager of Apple Records. But Capitol paid my salary. I became the personal liaison. Everything had to go through me. (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 45).

•Ken Mansfield had very high hopes for The Iveys in America. "I believed in Maybe Tomorrow so much that I had 450,000 copies pressed up. We came out full blast, had radio play and acceptance from the stations, but we ended up probably selling 200,000 copies (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 55).

      General Statements:

•Apple's management team consisted of Alistair Taylor: "a glorified accountant with some management experience", Neil Aspinall: "who had never finished his accountant training and was a road manager", and Peter Brown: "who, like me, had been a shop assistant in Liverpool selling records"..." running a multi-million dollar company (quotes from Alistair Taylor).

•In the end Jeremy Banks was the only employee to be declared redundant and he was fired in November 1968. During his six months at Apple, Banks did coordinate some successful publicity photo opportunities and he set up several deals which gave Apple a royalty for all Beatles photos that were provided to the press. However, he was also notorious for spending most of his time at Apple pursuing freelance work and consuming a potent mixture or champagne and diet pills. To help out the press office after Bank's departure, Derek Taylor hired Mavis Smith to be his assistant (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 63).

•Concerning the move to Savile Row in 1969: Apple added another office boy to their staff-18 year-old Nigel Oliver (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 65).

•One Apple Boutique employee that the Beatles were particularly keen to keep on Apple's payroll was the enigmatic Caleb. Not wanting to lose the services of a good mystic, the Beatles brought him over to Saville Row, with the aid of his i ching coins, he proceeded to contribute to the decision-making process at Apple.
He remained at Saville Row for several months, until one of his coin tosses suggested that it was time for him to move on (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 49).

•They (The Fool) had know for some time that The Beatles were looking to diversify, and Simon and Marijke had previously run a boutique in Amsterdam know as The Trend. The Beatles were receptive to their ideas, and it was agreed that they would be employed to create designs exclusively for the boutique which, along side garments, would also sell an assortment of Eastern knick-knacks, furniture, posters, and underground books (O'Del, Denis. At the Apple's Core, p. 75).

•From Clayson p. 129 on Ringo: Whenever he was in the mood, he'd lean forward on the hard-backed
Regency chair in his office and play company director. For awhile he shrugged aside the disgusting realities of the half-eaten steak sandwich in a litter bin; the receptionist rolling a joint of the best Afghan hash; the typist who counted paperclips and span out a single letter (in the house style of no exclamation marks!) all morning. Then she popped out, not returning until the next day. A great light dawned. "We had like a thousand people that weren't needed-but they all enjoyed it; they're all getting paid for sitting around.
We had a guy there just to read the tarot cards, the I-Ching. It was craziness (Melody Maker).

•Derek Taylor discussed being given the job of "Office Eccentric" with Paul McCartney. Quite to Taylor's surprise McCartney agreed with his quixotic request and instructed Taylor to have an appropriate sign made for his office door. Sadly, like so many of the ideas that were bounced around Apple's Wigmore Street office during that time, nothing more ever became of the idea of an "Office Eccentric" (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 31)

•The Beatles decided to go into business with him (Magic Alex), financing a company called Fifty Shapes Ltd. Later when the Beatles decided to make Apple an all-inclusive entertainment organization, Fifty
Shapes Ltd. renamed Apple Electronics and brought into the Apple fold (Granados, S. Those Were
the Days. p. 20).

•The Beatles had lured several Abbey Road Studios employees to come over to establish Apple Studios.
One of the first was former Abbey Road engineer Malcolm Davies, who was hired to run the cutting room in the Apple basement for the Beatles exclusive use (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 36).

•Some employees charged clothes and food for their own use to Apple.

•To represent Apple at Capitol's Hollywood office, Capitol's Director of Independent Labels, Ken Mansfield, was hired to be North American Manager of Apple Records (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 45).

•To assist Davies in the cutting room, Liverpool musician George Peckham was hired to train as an Apple Studios cutting room engineer (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 36).

•In January 1968, he (Terry Doran) hired Mike Berry-a former assistant at Sparta Music Publishing-to help scout new talent and secure cover versions of Apple Publishing copyrights (Granados, M. Those Were the Days. p. 18).

•Dubbed "Magic" Alex by John, Mardas convinced him that all kinds of fantastical ideas and patents were possible if he were given the financial backing (O'Del, Denis. At the Apple's Core, p. 74).

•Peter Brown was given permission to hire an assistant in April 1969, he hired a 20 year-old Londoner
named Bill Oakes (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 82).

•The flower arranger came in once a week. Corsages and long-stem roses were going to persons unknown.

•Derek Taylor came to Apple to work before they even knew what he would do there (Giuliano).

•Apple selected a 33 year-old American named Ron Kass to be President of Apple Records. Prior to be
hired by Apple, Kass had been in charge of UK operations for Liberty Records (Granados, M. Those
Were the Days. p. 27).

•They named 45 year-old Dennis O'Dell as Director of Apple Films. O'Dell had previously worked with The Beatles on A Hard Day's Night and he was highly regarded in the film industry and the Beatles circle (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 27).

•Disillusioned by the whole experience, Fire spent the remainder of the year getting out of contracts with their managers, Decca and Apple, and they eventually went on to release an album on another record label (Granados, M. Those Were the Days. p. 19).

•While (Mike) Berry's attempt to supplement his Apple salary with songwriting royalties was ethically
questionable and certainly not in the spirit of Apple (although he did assign the publishing rights of Around the Gum Tree to Apple) the bubble gum style of Around the Gum did have some commercial merit and ended up being a regional hit when it was recorded by a group called The Real McCoy later that year (Granados, M. Those Were the Days. p. 19).

•Ronan O'Hahilly, former boss of Radio One joins Apple as Business Advisor. August 68.

•Paul: The idea of Apple is that even if you are a clerk in an Apple office or in anything to do with Apple, we really do try to turn you on. There is a definite effort to turn people on in this building. The people who don't want it, who don't like it, will go back to being hired clerks because they'd rather do that. But if you want to come here in order to be a sort of turned-on clerk, that's great. I think occasionally too much of it goes on and you don't get much work done because everyone's so busy turning each other on. But it is nicer. I mean it really is a different atmosphere in this place from any building I've ever been in.

•There were questions about the whereabouts of the colored TV and carpet that vanished from John's office, which typist was phoning Canberra every afternoon, why had so-and-so given himself a 60 pound raise and why is he only seen on payday? (Clayson p. 145).

•Alistair Taylor: Alex has designed a tiny throwaway radio supposed to sell for a few pence and made out of a few pieces of plastic. I heard a prototype that would fit in your pocket and looked as if it were made out of the leftovers from a child's construction kit, but it worked just fine. Quite an inventor! (Taylor, A. p. 115).

•Tony Bramwell received a note from John telling him not to do pre-publicity for 'The Ballad of John and Yoko' because of the potential problems with radio stations over the 'Christ' lyric in the song.

•Meanwhile Apple, the group's self-sacrificial gesture to hippie correctness, set up "to encourage unknown literary, graphic and performing artists," was merrily leading them to the brink of chaos and bankruptcy in the days before Aspinall assumed sole control. In the vacuum left by Epstein, the group claimed to be managing themselves; in fact, day-to-day arrangements of their affairs fell to Aspinall. Lennon once offered him the job of manager, but amid the general confusion he turned it down (The Sunday Times: The Culture: Section 10: 12 November, 1995, pages 4-5).

       Credit/Debit Figures:

•There was no scale of wages at Apple. The House Hippie (office assistant) received £10 per week. He subsidized this wage by lying about taxi rides taken and keeping the reimbursement from Apple. He did eventually write a letter asking for the equivalent of 70 U.S. dollars. It is not known to the author whether he ever received it (Dilello).

•Photographers held Apple in high regard as Apple was supposed to pay some of the highest fees in the business. A photographer could earn up to £500 per photo (Dilello).

•Considering that [Derek] Taylor was one of the premier publicists in the music industry, the salary that Apple gave him £115 a week-was rather average, even by 1968 standards.(Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 31).

•Despite the widely-held public perception that anyone associated with the Beatles or Apple were earning fabulous salaries, only Peter Brown and Ron Kass received any special compensation. "The most I ever made was £30 per week", laughs Bill Oakes."They were cheap bastards...Peter Brown had a marvelous deal... He made around £100 a week, but he had everything paid for...his mews apartment, his restaurant bills, his groceries, Jimmy, the Apple doorman, used to get Peter Brown's groceries (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 32).

•Apple had a deal with a London agency that gave the agency 65% of all the photos sold.

•The phone bill was £4,000 for a quarter. Non-employees were also using the phone.

•Ironically, several months after Richard DiLello's optimistic proclamation to Rolling Stone that the Apple staff would have jobs for as long as they wanted, Allen Klein closed down the Apple Press Office in July and fired DiLello and secretary Carol Paddon after they both made comments on the depressed state of Apple's affairs in an interview in an English magazine (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 134).

•The house hippie (office assistant) resigned during the wake of Allen Klein's firings. But he found out you get three times more money if they fire you, so he asked for his resignation back. He got it.

•He (Magic Alex) would be paid a good wage (According to Barry Miles in Many Years From Now around £40 a week and 10 percent of any profits from his inventions) (O'Del, Denis. At the Apple's Core, p. 75).

•Neil Aspinall and Pete Shotton took a business trip to New York for Apple business. They would meet with the Beatles' U.S. lawyer, Nat Weiss to discuss launching a branch of Apple in Macy's and Sgt. Pepper discotheques.

•Two "models" joined Aspinall and Shotton in their hotel for their last night in N.Y. Neil and Pete had an early flight the next morning, so they told the girls to sleep in and order breakfast at Apple's expense. Room service and telephone charges for that morning alone were for over $1,000. Items included steak, strawberries, champagne, and a case or two of liquor to take home.

•A memo from Allen Klein to Alistair Taylor said that if someone is working over lunch please notify the kitchen by 12:15. This would cut down on expenses. This policy also affected those employees who did not have a lunch expense account.

•John commenting on Neil Aspinall: I was the one that protected him many times from Paul. Paul had no love for Neil and vice-versa. And all of a sudden he's a Paul man. Because they clung to Paul-Derek included-because they all thought Paul was the one who was going to hold it all together. So they had a choice of which side to come down on, and they chose Paul, and the past, and I cut'em off. You see they get under the delusion that they are the Beatles. They begin to think that they are the Beatles, that they are the source of power (McCabe/Schonfeld p. 72. For the Record).

•In 1970 Apple accounts were released which showed that accountants wrote off three motor vehicles because the accountants didn't know if the cars actually existed or who owned them. This accounting information only covered to the end of 1967.

•Derek Taylor asked for permission to buy a £150 light show for the press office. It would make people happier and they would like to see it, he thought.

•Hundreds of pounds of records were being handed out to anyone who asked for them. Staff, friend of staff, disc jockeys, music columnists and legitimate people were getting two copies. Cost was 22s every time one was handed out (Dilello).

•The liquor bill was £600 per month and the food bill was close to that (Dilello).

•DJ's, producers, journalists were going to The Speakeasy on Apple's accounts (Dilello).