May 18–20, 1968
I arrived on a Saturday morning, took a taxi to a bed and breakfast in the Shepherd’s Bush district of London, visited all the big tourist sights on Sunday, and called Apple first thing Monday morning.
“Good morning,” a cheerful female voice answered. “Apple Corps Limited.”
“Hello,” I said in my most confident voice, “is Derek Taylor there?”
“One moment, please.” I waited for Derek’s familiar voice, my heart racing, all sorts of questions running through my mind. Was I dressed right? That was my big question. I’d spent a good hour that morning trying to decide what to wear for my first appearance at Apple. I’d packed four outfits that I considered appropriate for a London workday, and I tried them all on, finally settling on a shocking pink A-line dress with white tights and pink shoes with chunky block heels. From what I’d seen of London fashion, I felt as if I’d fit right in.
A second female voice came on the line. “Reception. May I help you?”
“Is Derek Taylor there?” I repeated.
“I’m sorry, he hasn’t arrived as of yet, but I do believe he’s on his way. Would you care to leave a message?”
“Yes, thank you. My name is Chris O’Dell, and I’m a friend of Derek’s from Los Angeles.”
“Well, it’s hard to reach me because I’m calling from a pay phone,” I said. “Do you think it would be all right if I just came over?”
“Of course,” she said in a very chipper voice with a lovely English accent. “If Derek arrives before you, I’ll tell him you’re in transit.”
The “in transit” part was a little unnerving, mostly because they drove on the opposite side of the road, and the taxi driver was so laid back, one hand holding the steering wheel as he turned around to talk to me, then braking or swerving suddenly to avoid a pedestrian or a bus loaded with tourists. But I didn’t care, I was in London and I was going to Apple Corps Ltd., headquarters of the Beatle’s new business ventures. What would Derek do when he saw me? Would I meet one of the Beatles? Would people at Apple be friendly? So many thoughts were running through my mind and I was so nervous—or was I excited? I’ve never been good at distinguishing between the two.
“This is 95 Wigmore Street, madam.” The taxi driver looked at me in his rearview mirror as I counted out shillings, pounds, and pennies, eventually giving up the attempt to pretend I knew what I was doing and dumping the whole lot in his outstretched hand. When he gave me a huge smile, I realized I had probably given him the biggest tip of his life.
The drab modern building surprised me. I’d imagined that Apple would be housed in an elegant, old, stone London building with gargoyles and graceful arches. The only bright spot was a poster hanging outside the door of the building showing a nerdy-looking man playing a guitar and singing his heart out to a microphone. “THIS MAN HAS TALENT …” the poster announced in lime green print. In smaller letters the poster encouraged people to send their tapes, letters, and photographs to Apple Music. “DO IT NOW! THIS MAN NOW OWNS A BENTLEY!”
That poster put a smile on my face. I remembered that Derek had told me about Apple’s mission to help all the struggling musicians and artists who couldn’t get anyone to pay attention to them at the big record companies. This poster said it all—if that funny-looking man in the poster could make it big at Apple, then so could anyone—even me!
I noticed a group of young women about my age standing off to the side of the entrance, and I knew immediately from their fresh, hopeful faces that they were Beatles fans. Later I’d learn that the Beatles called these ultraloyal fans the Apple Scruffs. Every day they waited outside Apple and EMI’s Abbey Road Studios, hoping to see one of the Beatles.
“Good morning, miss. May I help you?” the uniformed doorman asked as I walked in the front door.
“Yes, thank you, I’m meeting Derek Taylor with Apple.”
“Fourth floor, madam,” he said, showing me to the elevator.
I walked into the Apple reception area, a large windowless room with a half dozen doors leading into various offices. The walls were white and empty except for a few photos of the Beatles and some framed gold records.
“Hi, I’m Chris O’Dell,” I said to the receptionist, hoping that my voice didn’t betray my nervousness. “I’m here to see Derek Taylor. Has he arrived yet?”
“Yes, he’s in a meeting with Neil Aspinall,” she said with a warm smile and a welcoming voice. “Why don’t you have a seat, and I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Neil Aspinall. Derek had often spoken about Neil, the once-upon-a-time Beatles’ road manager who was now the managing director of Apple. I sat down on one of the chairs lined up against the wall (I chose the chair that sat directly under a black-and-white photograph of John and Paul), crossed my legs in a demure way, and tried to look calm and composed. I leafed through a copy of Billboard magazine and surreptitiously watched the people walking through the reception area. Who were they and what were they doing at Apple? Feeling a little conspicuous as the only person in the reception area, I buried my nose in the magazine and pretended to be absorbed in the new Top 100 list.
One of the office doors opened, and I looked up from my pretend reading to see Derek walking toward me.
“Chris, my luv!” he said, giving me a big hug. “You made it, my goodness, you really are here, aren’t you, don’t you look wonderful, I can’t believe you are actually here.”
I laughed, filled with happiness just to hear Derek’s voice and his run-on sentences, hearing the warmth and reassurance in his voice, knowing right then that I had done exactly the right thing by coming to London.
Derek’s office was as plain and ordinary as the building itself. Photos of the Beatles appeared in haphazard places on the stark white walls, but there was Derek’s high-backed, white wicker chair, shipped all the way from his office in Los Angeles. “The throne of Apple,” he lovingly called it. “If you didn’t know what it had seen and where it had been,” he wrote many years later, “you wouldn’t give fifty dollars for it.” I wonder where that chair is now. I hope it’s somewhere, and I hope whoever owns it appreciates where it’s been.
“Sit down, luv, tell me about your trip, did everything go well, how was the flight, when did you arrive, did you find your way around London, how is your room, are people treating you well?” Derek said, lighting up a cigarette, his eyes inviting me to tell him every detail. I was entertaining him with my description of the truly awful bacon served by the Indian couple who owned the B&B when a middle-aged woman dressed in an apron walked into the room pushing a trolley filled with pots of tea and coffee, china cups and saucers, a pitcher of milk, a bowl of sugar, and assorted English tea cookies.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked in the sweetest voice. Imagine! A tea lady! After pouring each of us a steaming cup of strong, dark tea, she disappeared with a little squeak of the trolley wheels.
Derek and I gratefully sipped our milk-filled tea as I continued my story about my first two days in London.
“Very adventurous of you!” Derek said, tapping his cigarette in the ashtray with one hand and playing with the cigarette box with his other hand, flipping it up and over, up and over. “So, Chris, do you really want to work at Apple?”
“Well, yes, of course, I’d love to work here,” I said, laughing nervously.
Derek sat back in his throne, lacing his fingers together and smiling, the beneficent Prince of Appledom. “Well, I think we should be able to do something. But first things first—you can’t stay in that bed and breakfast, it sounds depressing and besides, it’s too far from the office. I’ll get one of the secretaries to book you into a hotel nearby.”
Derek had work to do, but he invited me to sit in his office and observe the goings-on. The action seemed never to stop. In walked the man from the “This man has talent!” poster. His name was Alistair Taylor, and he was Apple’s general manager. Derek told me that Alistair had been with the Beatles since 1961 when he was working as Brian Epstein’s assistant at NEMS (North End Music Store) in Liverpool and accompanied him to the Cavern to hear a new band called the Beatles play to wildly enthusiastic crowds; weeks later Alistair witnessed the first contract signed between the Beatles and Brian, their new manager.
Following right on Alistair’s heels was Peter Brown, an executive director at Apple and personal assistant to the Beatles. Peter Brown (nobody ever called him just Peter) was one of the most distinguished-looking men I had ever met—tall and lean with a full neatly trimmed beard, polished English manners, and eyes that literally twinkled when he laughed, revealing the distinctive human being under the distinguished exterior. Every few minutes he’d pull at the sleeves of his freshly ironed shirt to make sure they extended the perfect inch below the cuffs of his tailor-made Tommy Nutter suit. Everyone at Apple had enormous respect for Peter Brown, who was one of the only people at Apple with direct and immediate access to the Beatles and their wives or girlfriends, and the only person at Apple who knew exactly what they were doing at any particular moment of the day or night.
Sometime in midafternoon I was leafing through a magazine, feeling a little sleepy, when Derek suddenly jumped up from his desk.
“It sounds like Paul’s here,” he said on his way out of the office. “I need to have a word with him. I’ll be right back.”
I could hear people talking through the wall, and I had to restrain myself from jumping up and peeking out the door to see who it was. Paul? Was Paul McCartney on the other side of that wall? My heart was thumping and my palms were sweating. I could not believe that I was this close to Paul McCartney. I could hear that famous voice and I couldn’t grasp the fact that he was right here, in the same building as me. It seemed so unreal.
“Paul, this just came in the post,” a female voice called out. I could sense the excitement in the reception area as doors opened and closed and more people joined the conversation.
“What do you think of this jacket for the Apple Boutique?” someone said.
“Well, that’s not bad, is it?” That was Paul’s voice. “Yes. Lovely. That will do, eh?”
Several minutes passed before Derek came back into his office chatting amiably with someone, and my heart did a little flip-flop thinking it was Paul. I was sitting with my back to the door, facing Derek’s desk, and I kept staring straight ahead at the only wall with a window, not wanting to be rude or presumptuous by turning around and interrupting the conversation.
“Chris, meet Neil Aspinall,” Derek said. Phew, I thought. I wasn’t quite ready to meet one of the Beatles, but I knew from everything Derek had told me that Neil wasn’t far removed. He’d been with the band since they were just a local Liverpool group, even before Ringo became the drummer. George Harrison called Neil “the fifth Beatle.”
“Any friend of Derek’s is a friend of ours,” Neil said. A ruggedly handsome man with prematurely thinning hair and gentle eyes, Neil always had a half smile on his face even in the most serious moments. Sometimes I thought it was his way of encouraging the rest of us to loosen up and take things lightly, and other times I wondered if he was masking his real feelings with a disarming grin. I’d soon discover that Neil could be a toughie at times.
Derek was telling Neil how I had helped chauffeur him around Los Angeles when I heard a voice behind me and felt someone brush past my chair.
“Neil, have you any idea if John is coming in today?” Paul said.
“John and Yoko are in my office now,” Neil said.
The conversation continued between Derek, Neil, and Paul McCartney, but I can’t remember one word of it. All I could think about was the fact that Paul McCartney was standing right in front of me, close enough that I could have reached out and touched him, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono were a few steps away. Was this really happening?
“Paul, this is Chris O’Dell,” Derek was saying, “a friend from Los Angeles.”
“Hullo, Chris,” Paul said, smiling down at me.
“Hi,” I said, smiling up at him. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get that stupid smile off my face. It was frozen there.
Paul, Neil, and Derek returned to their conversation while I quietly excused myself, giving Derek a little wave as I left the office. It was all too much for me. I walked into the reception area, expecting to be alone and hoping to pull myself back together, but sitting on a small sofa, as close together as they could be without sitting right on top of each other, were John and Yoko. They both turned at the same time to see who had entered the room. I smiled. They smiled back.
I stayed at the Apple offices until eight o’clock that night, when Derek left to catch the train to his country home and I jumped in a taxi for my last night in the bed and breakfast. I didn’t have a job yet, but I had already made up my mind that I would show up for work every day until someone gave me something to do.
I had walked into that building a fan, just like the rest of the world, adoring the Beatles from afar. They had been pictures in magazines, images on the television screen, or at the cinema, voices on vinyl, all fitting into my own little fantasy. But that had all changed in a matter of hours. I had seen them, talked to them, occupied the same space they did. And they, perhaps only for a second, knew who I was. Never again would my life be the same. I had crossed the line and entered into their world. I knew instantly that I belonged there.