•"The following April the Apple headquarters was established
at 95 Wigmore Street. Grey suits were conspicuous by their
absence, though the Beatles emulated the corporate way
in one respect. The 15 directors were all men. The Managing
Director and his Assistant were the bands two roadies"
(information courtesy of 'New Internationalist' article
by new internationalist on-line issue 212 - October 1990.
Authors: Alan Hughes and Chris Brazier).
•"Lennon called it a psychedelic Woolworth" (information
courtesy of 'New Internationalist' article by new internationalist
on-line issue 212 - October 1990. Authors: Alan Hughes
and Chris Brazier).
•In February '68 The Beatles, Ltd. changed its name to
Apple Corps, Ltd. Apple Corps, Ltd: Apple Electronics,
Apple Films Ltd., Apple Management, Apple Music Publishing,
Apple Overseas, Apple Publicity, Apple Records, Apple
Retail, Apple Tailoring Civil and Theatrical, Apple Television
(planned), Apple Wholesale (planned).
•In January 1968, Beatles Ltd. changed its name to Apple
Corps. Ltd. and registered the Apple trademark in forty-seven
countries (Granados, M. Those Were the Days. p. 24).
•Apple took out a one-year lease on offices in an eight
story building at 95 Wigmore Street (Granados, M. Those
Were the Days. p. 24).
•Apple had five divisions: Electronics, film, publishing,
records, and retailing.
•It is important to note that Apple was not set up to
replace Epstein and NEMS. It was created as a tax shelter
to compliment, rather than replace, the existing business
structures (Granados, M. Those Were the Days. p. 6).
•The first step towards creating this new business structure
was to form a new partnership called Beatles and Co. in
April 1967. To all intents and purposes, Beatles and Co.
was an updated version on The Beatles' original partnership,
Beatles Ltd. Under the new arrangement, however, each
Beatle would own 5% of Beatles and Co. and a new corporation
owned collectively by the four Beatles (which would soon
be known as Apple) would be given control of the remaining
80% of Beatles and Co. With the exception of individual
songwriting royalties, which would still be paid directly
to the writer or writers of a particular song, all of
the money earned by the Beatles as a group would go directly
to Beatles and Co. and would thus be taxed at a far lower
corporate tax rate (Granados, M. Those were the Days.
p. 6).
•The idea Brian came up with was a company called Apple.
His idea was to plough their money into a chain of shops
not unlike Woolworth's in concept-Apple boutiques, Apple
posters, Apple records. Brian needed an outlet for his
boundless energy (Lennon, Cynthia. Twist p. 146).
•Ringo: We tried to form Apple with Clive Epstein, but
he wouldn't have it...he didn't believe in us I suppose...he
didn't think we could do it. He thought we were four wild
men and we were going to spend all his money and make
him broke. But that was the original idea of Apple-to
form it with NEMS...we thought now Brian's gone let's
really amalgamate and get this thing going, let's make
records and get people on our label and things like that.
So we formed Apple and they formed NEMS, which is exactly
the same thing as we are doing. It was a family tie and
we thought it would be a good idea to keep it in, and
then we saw how the land lay and we tried to get out (Granados,
M. Those Were the Days. p. 11).
•Although a few artists like The Tokens and Frank Sinatra
had formed their own labels long before, Beatles were
the group that started the trend toward artist companies
in the sixties. They used Apple as the economic unit sp
ring
their ideas on the world. Set up with $2 million after
Brian Epstein's death in 1967, it had five divisions:
records, music publishing, films, electronics, and retailing
(Chapple and Garofalo. Rock and Roll is here to Pay, p.
81).
•The Apple label was distributed by Capitol from the
beginning. As Phil Spector pointed out the group would
have been "fighting their old Capitol product" if they
had chosen to distribute with another company. Capitol
would even have been able to release tapes from sessions
that the Beatles judged inferior (Chapple and Garofalo.
Rock and Roll is here to Pay, p. 82).
•To promote Apple's inaugural singles, Apple hired the
prestigious Wolfe and Ollins advertising agency to develop
a campaign to introduce Apple to industry VIPs and the
press (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 49).
•It would have been very easy for Apple to have barred
these people [a band of hippies called Emily's Family]
from the building, but instead, they were given day time
use of the fourth floor guest lounge and access to the
Apple kitchen (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 51).
•Establishing Apple Publishing in the United States was
another priority project for Kass. In late 1968, he hired
an American named Mike O'Connor to oversee Apple's American
publishing operations (Granados, S. Those Were the Days.
p. 54).
•Mortimer's Guy Masson: So we told our manager and he
followed up, and the next thing you know, they bought
us off Mercury, and we're signing contracts with Apple
Publishing and Recording (Granados, S. Those Were the
Days. p. 59).
•Since Harrison-like the other three Beatles-was unable
to read or write music notation, he had to hire an outside
music arranger to assist him with the "Wonderwall" recording
sessions. His arranger of choice was London native John
Barnham (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 59).
•Concerning the move in 1969 from Wigmore Street to Saville
Row: While most of the furniture and files from the Wigmore
Street office would arrive intact at Savile Row, important
paperwork was mislaid and some even lost. Terry Doran
recalls that he and other Apple employees simply dumped
all of their paperwork into the back of a black cab and
had it driven over to Savile Row (Granados, S. Those Were
the Days. p. 65).
•All of them left with some choice merchandise [from
the boutiques free giveaway], except for Ringo Starr,
who lamented to Rolling Stone that he had been unable
to find anything in his size (Granados, S. Those Were
the Days. p. 44).
•Apple Books would actually put out one book in early
1970, which was the book that accompanied the initial
pressing of the Let It Be album. Although the book was
credited to Apple Publishing, all of the work on the project
was actually done by freelancers (Granados, S. Those Were
the Days. p. 44).
•After several months of negotiations, Apple finally
signed a worldwide manufacturing and distribution deal
with EMI in late June of 1968. Under this agreement, Capitol
Records would distribute and promote Apple in the United
States and EMI would handle the distribution and promotion
for the rest of the world (Granados, S. Those Were the
Days. p. 44).
•Ken Kessey was supplied with a typewriter, a tape recorder,and
a small back office in the Apple building to record his
thoughts on the sixties. The tape was allegedly submitted
to Peter Asher, but no further work was done on the project.
The tape remains unreleased (Granados, S. Those Were the
Days. p. 77).
•The group's decision to lay the foundation of this ambitious
project was twofold. The first was purely financial. The
Beatles, like all top earners in sixties Britain, were
extremely highly taxed...The second reason for the creation
of Apple was at once personal and philanthropic. In the
wake of Brian's death, the Beatles thought they should
take a greater part in managing their affairs and artistic
output. They envisioned that founding their own company
with a number of different departments would do just that
(O'Dell, Denis. At the Apple's Core, p.62-63).
•Stephen Friedland (Brute Force King of Fuh) claims
to have never signed a contract with either Apple Records
or Publishing (although he has a letter from Mal Evans
that mentions that Peter Asher had received his contract),
nor did he receive any money from Apple (Granados, S.
Those Were the Days. p. 75-76).
•Since Apple's inception, Paul McCartney and John Lennon
had been very interested in launching a budget-line label
to issue what would essentially be known three decades
later as "audio books". In October 1968, Apple hired Barry
Miles, who co-owned the Indica bookshop with John Dunbar
and Peter Asher, to manage the proposed spoken-word label.
The initial idea of Zapple was that it would release avant-garde
and spoken word records at a reduced price that would
be comparable to that of a paperback novel. While the
idea looked good on paper, the reality was that when the
few records actually put out by Zapple finally made it
into the shops, theywere priced like any other full-priced
music album (Granados, S. Those Were the Days. p. 76).
•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).
•Rockmine.com includes a well-written account on the
history of Apple Corps Ltd.
•The establishment of Apple involved the Beatles colatoralizing
themselves by buying and incorporating a stake in their
own worth for the same price at which their existing company,
The Beatles, Ltd., was valued. This meant no capital gains,
thus no capital gains tax (O'Del, Denis. At the Apple's
Core, p. 63).
•For the first few months of Apple's existence, it did
not even have an office-most Apple business was conducted
from the NEMS building. It was not until the autumn of
1967 that Apple finally opened a London office. Since
the Beatles already owned a four-story building at 94
Baker Street that had been purchased as an investment
property by their accountants, they decided that Baker
Street was as good a location as any for Apple. They set
up an office for Apple Publishing in the Baker Street
building in September (Granados, M. Those Were the Days.
p. 11-12).
•Denis O'Del: It turned out that the Beatles were in
the process of forming a new organization. The group's
decision to lay the foundations of this ambitious project
was twofold. The first was purely financial. The Beatles,
like all top earners in sixties' Britain, were extremely
highly taxed...The second reason for this creation of
Apple was at once personal and philanthropic. Apple was
conceived gradually but evolved gradually, on the principal
that it would be a multi-faceted master company with a
number of divisions encompassing records, films, clothes
retail, books and other sectors. It also meant that they
could diversify into other areas via a company that could
manage and finance aspiring artists from a range of formal
disciplines,including musicians, film makers, designers,
and writers. (O'Dell, Dennis. At the Apple's Core. p.
63).
•We set up an "Executive Board" of Apple before Brian
died, including Brian, the accountant, a solicitor, Neil
Aspinall, myself, and then sat down to work out ways of
spending the money. One big idea was to set up a chain
of shops designed only to sell cards; birthday cards,
Christmas cards, anniversary cards. When the boys heard
about that they all condemned the scheme as the most boring
yet. Sure that they could come up with much better brainwaves,
they began to get involved themselves. Their idea was
that business should be fun. Why should businessmen glare
at each other across desks? I quite agree (Taylor, A.
p. 108).
•Geoff Swettenham (Grapefruit): Apple paid for our house
and gave us a retainer every week. They kept us alive
basically. They got us a great flat just off Baker Street...except
for George, who got his own flat because he was married
with a kid, but the three of us lived there and Apple
paid for everything (Granados, M. Those Were the Days.
p. 15).
•John Perry (Grapefruit): Nems basically put us on a
retainer and also gave us a car and accounts in various
restaurants and clubs, so we could just sign for stuff.
It was help yourself to be honest. We were told to go
to Martin Wesson at Nems-who was the accountant-and we
were told to go tell him how much we wanted. Nems also
paid for our flats (Granados, M. p. 15).
•The property in Saville Row cost a fortune to renovate
and to install a recording studio. Luxurious furnishings
were ordered and delivered. Drink cabinets were filled
to overflowing. Every comfort was contained in that building,
but the whole venture lacked a man such as Brian to take
charge. It was like a ship without a captain and it sank
lower and lower supporting the dead weight of numerous
freeloaders. It became a Mecca for drop-outs and out-of-work
aspiring musicians. I could see us all being swallowed
up in a quagmire of inefficiency. Big business was not
their forte, and they had found themselves losing a game
that they didn't know how to play (Lennon, Cynthia. Twist
p. 152).
•Beatles: A Fab Four in Partnership. Dr. Andrew Jackson
1996 (First published Australian Doctor January 1996).
The Beatles embraced the management philosophy of incremental
and continuous improvement in quality, in critical areas
relating to output -Total Quality Management- long before
its acceptance and implementation outside of Japan in
the late 1980s.
•John: "The aim of the 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".
•Reporter in 1963-64: Would you ever have your own record
company?
John: We would never start our own label. It's too much
trouble you know.
•Beatles to record for their own Apple label: Apple Records,
a branch of the music division of the Beatles' Apple Corps.,
Ltd., announces that contracts have been signed between
Apple and Capitol Records (for the USA and Canada) for
Capitol to manufacture and distribute all record product
for North America in New York and Los Angeles. The deals
were concluded this week after prolonged negotiations
between the Beatles and their representatives and the
heads of Capitol. The Beatles will henceforth be released
on their own label, "Apple".
•Caleb, a psychic, reportedly authorized some business
deals for Apple.
•Although the Beatles were under contract to EMI, the
Beatles were free to align Apple with any label they wanted
(S. Granados. Those Were the Days. p. 32).
•Alistair Taylor: NEMS Enterprises has been decisively
upstaged by the Beatles' new company, Apple. Apparently,
the government takes a kindly view of new businesses being
set up and there are generous financial concessions. An
operation like this was planned well before Brian died,
but Brian wasn't interested in the workings of it at all,
although he approved of the idea in principal (Talyor,
A. p. 108).
•Apprentices Of The Beatles. From the Danish magazine
"Vi Unge" (We Young) Dec. 1974.
While Beatles still had big hopes to make Apple into a
company that were different, but still made a lot of money
for them, Badfinger were one of the groups they really
counted on. Badfinger made one good LP after another,
often sounding a lot like The Beatles. But Apple lost
Badfinger just as they were about to be a very big success.
Now Badfinger are recording for Warner Brothers, and has
lost every connection to George Harrison, who was the
Beatle that helped them the most. The biggest hit the
group has had is "Without You" a track that Harry Nilsson
also has recorded. But they are sure that the future is
bright and promising. They are now working hard to make
a record that will give them the final push to fame!
•John declared: "If we let Apple go on the way it is
we'll be broke in six months".
•John Lennon later told me that Apple was in reality
a product of management. "See", John said, "one thing
people never knew was that Apple was not our idea and
was certainly never Paul's idea, as he has gone on about.
Apple was presented to us as a reality by the Epsteins
in '67 before Brian died. Brian and his furniture salesman
brother Clive. And they hadn't the slightest f***ing idea
what they were doing. It was really just a loony tax scheme
in the end. They said we had all this cash about to come
in and the only way around paying the taxes was to invest
in businesses. But we never would have come up with the
notion of running a clothes store. The Beatles pushing
rags? Right. Right. No, it was pure and simple a tax kite.
Our incomes would be hidden inside Apple. Then the money
would be moved around" (Flippo, p. 248).
•Alex Millen, a 'loitering pavement fixture', said that
the Beatles "did strengthen the belief that Joe Soap was
important and, yes, you too could have something to say"
(Sunday Times and Clayson).
•At one point it was suggested that this be a real estate
company: That was the original idea for lack of anything
else (Granados, M. Those were the Days. p. 7).
•One of the early ideas for the Beatles' new company
was to set up a chain of record shops across England,
the idea that the Beatles would be able to amass sizable
property holdings under the pretext of purchasing shop
space (Granados, M. Those Were the Days. p. 7).
•Derek Taylor: "Instead of paying nineteen and six on
the pound. We paid only sixteen shilling...Apple was set
up purely and simple as a tax saving project...Apple was
never meant to try to save the world despite popular myth".
•Dennis: You went with Warner Bros. because Apple was
folding at the time?
Mike: Yeah. It had nothing to do with me, I was just the
drummer. I wanted to stay with Apple just "cause we were
Apple. I didn't give a fuck who was managing Apple, as
long as it was our statement. I think we should've. Allen
Klein, or ... I didn't give a shit! The actual figurehead
was Apple and The Beatles. And Warner Bros. was like dangling
the big carrot. They really dangled the big carrot for
3 1/2 million dollars. It was good in those days (interview
with Mike Gibbins of Badfinger by Dennis Dalcin).
