December 1968
The Hells Angels’ arrival at Savile Row in December 1968 was only the first takeover of Apple—Allen Klein, who was already lurking behind the scenes, waged the second and final battle for Apple’s soul. So, in retrospect, maybe those three weeks when the Hells Angels took us hostage weren’t really so bad. At least you knew, right from the start, exactly who they were. And it wasn’t as if we weren’t prepared.
On December 4, 1968, George Harrison sent out the following memo to all Apple staff members. I was sitting at my purple desk enjoying my morning cup of tea when I read about the motorcycle gang’s imminent arrival.
Hells Angels will be in London within the next week on their way to straighten out Czechoslovakia. There will be 12 in number, complete with black leather jackets and motorcycles. They will undoubtedly arrive at Apple’s facilities. They may look as though they are going to do you in but are very straight and do good things; so don’t fear them or uptight them. Try to assist them without neglecting your Apple business and without letting them take control of Savile Row.
Like everyone else at Apple I was a little nervous about twelve Hells Angels wandering the hallways looking as if they might do me in, but at the same time I thought a visit from the famous motorcycle gang might be kind of fun, another wild adventure to add to the experiences I’d had at Apple. The wording of George’s memo made me laugh because it was so quintessentially Liverpudlian, with its downplaying of the potential drama. Don’t uptight them! I loved that! In fact, I liked the memo so much that I made several dozen copies, added a little note in red and green, and sent them out as my Christmas cards that year.
Life was always unpredictable at Apple. Magic Alex, head of Apple Electronics, lurked in the basement of Savile Row looking like a mad scientist in a white coat as he worked like crazy on his futuristic twenty-four-track studio, planning to get it ready for the Get Back album. George peeked his head in the day before they were scheduled to start recording and was flabbergasted to see twenty-four individual speakers nailed up on the basement walls. George Martin saved the day, but the word around Apple was that Alex’s state of the art recording studio was a major disaster.
The Beatles’ personal lives were also in upheaval. In October 1968 John and Yoko were busted by the London Drugs Squad for possession of “cannabis resin” (hash). A month later Yoko had a miscarriage. The full-frontal nude photograph of John and Yoko on the Two Virgins album, released in late November, offended just about everyone—even Derek said the picture gave him “a terrible shock” and EMI and Capitol refused to distribute the album. And Paul met Linda, which put an end to any fantasies I might have had about a relationship with the only available Beatle.
Paul stopped by the offices almost every day, checking in on all of us in his friendly way but also, I was soon to learn, trying to get a handle on the financial mess at Apple. One day he called all the staff into the sparsely furnished “Beatle office” on the third floor. We all dutifully appeared at the appointed time and took seats at the large conference table or found places on the floor.
“First of all, you’re doing a great job and we appreciate it,” Paul said in his most diplomatic fashion. “But we’re also losing a lot of money on things we don’t need.”
I listened half-heartedly as Paul talked about the need to cut unnecessary costs, such as taking minicabs home after work and charging the bill to Apple. And from now on, Paul continued, no more in-house Cordon Bleu lunches for anyone but the executives. But when Paul mentioned the amount of Scotch being consumed on a weekly basis, I realized that we’d all been taking Apple’s generosity for granted, and it was time, as Paul warned, to cut back on our extravagant ways.
“We’re going through cases of Scotch every week,” Paul said. “We’re the pub of choice and it has to stop.”
Fat chance! I thought. Everyone went to the press office after work and we all kept Scotch in our offices to entertain guests (and each other). But little did I know that Scotch was only part of the problem—in a two-week period, according to a “drinks list” Richard showed me later, the press office consumed eight bottles of J&B Scotch, four bottles of Courvoisier, three bottles of vodka, four dozen lagers, eight dozen Cokes, two dozen ginger ales, two dozen bitter lemons, one dozen tonic waters, one dozen tomato juices, three bottles of lime juice, and six hundred cigarettes.
Apple’s legendary hospitality wasn’t reserved for just the famous guests who stopped by for a visit—Lauren Bacall, Duane Eddy, and Mick Jagger, for example. One day a hippie family walked into reception and announced their desire to peacefully kidnap John and Yoko and whisk them off to an island off Fiji. We let them stay, of course, and they set up camp on the fourth floor, ate our food, and walked our hallways as if they owned the place. If we couldn’t say no to a peace-loving family with a breast-feeding mother who liked to walk around naked and her fifteen-year-old daughter who kept asking Derek if she could ball George, then how were we going to say no to the Hells Angels?
When the call came from customs that the Hells Angels had arrived at the airport—Hello? Apple Corps Limited? Well, these people say they’re in your care, and they’ve got motorcycles, are you going to take responsibility for them?—the news traveled fast.
“Did you hear?” Barbara whispered to Laurie.
“Yeah. They’re here.” Laurie looked at Richard.
“Customs impounded their motorcycles,” Richard told Chris.
“They won’t release them until Apple pays the shipping costs,” Derek said to no one in particular.
“Apple pays for the motorcycles?” Mal stuck his head in the room.
“Right.”
“Shit,” we all said in unison.
We were lucky. Only two Hells Angels showed up—Frisco Pete and Bill “Sweet William” Fritsch—but they brought along with them “the California Pleasure Crew,” which included Grateful Dead manager Rock Scully, writer Ken Kesey, and San Francisco hippie Frankie Hart.
I was upstairs in my safe little haven under the roof when they walked into the press office and, according to Richard DiLello, sent “waves of fear” through the room. Peter Brown and Derek were speechless, or so I heard, but eventually Derek found his voice and his run-on sentences in this little welcoming speech, recounted by Richard DiLello in his book The Longest Cocktail Party:
“Well!” Derek boomed. “You are here and so are we and this is Sally who has just joined us and that is Carol who has always been with us and Richard you know, and if you would like a cup of tea then a cup of tea it is, but if you would rather have a glass of beer or a bottle of wine or a Scotch and Coke or a gin and tonic or a vodka and lime, then that it is because it is all here and if it is not then we will come up with something, but have a seat or have a cigarette or have a joint, and I will be back in three minutes so please don’t go away because there is a lot to talk about and more to find out and stranger days to come!”
“Beer!” they bellowed, and beer they got.
Sufficiently juiced, the Angels started casing the joint, peeking behind doors, opening closets, running up and down the stairs, playing with the elevator, and before long they found their way up to my office on the fifth floor. I was prepared, having decided that the best way to deal with them was to hide any anxiety I might be feeling and make friends with them. I didn’t know much about the Hells Angels, but I intuitively understood that their barbarian bluster was intended primarily to cut through any extraneous bullshit. With their leather pants creaking, hips jutted out, eyes narrowed, and big steel-toed shoes tapping the floor, they looked right into your eyes, trying to figure out what kind of person you were. Were you afraid of them? Did you cower and cringe and say Yes, Sir, No, Sir? Or did you stand your ground, smile in a friendly but not sycophantic way, calmly invite them in for a cup of tea or another beer, and prepare to endure their feet on your desk for however long it took before they tired of you and went on to their next victim? If you were afraid, they lost all respect for you; if you were fearless, you might pass the first test. Or so I figured.
“Hi!” I said when they showed up at my office.
“I need a stapler,” Pete said while Sweet William hung back at the door.
“Okay,” I said, reaching for my stapler and pushing it across my purple desk. “Come on in.”
“Hey, are you American?” Pete asked, taking a seat in the cane rocking chair and rocking slowly back and forth, checking me out.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Where ya from?” Sweet William finally muttered from the doorway.
“Tucson, Arizona.” I replied.
“Cool.” They both smiled, and kinship was established.
Later that day Frankie Hart, the only female in the entourage, showed up in my office and we became instant pals. Dressed in a long, flowing skirt and loose top, she regaled me with stories about the San Francisco hippie scene, Owsley’s high-grade LSD, the Black Power movement, and the anti-Vietnam War student protests. I listened to her stories with something approaching awe. What a different world! Frankie was a ball of fire, always looking for the next adventure. Someone had let her loose in Wonderland, and Frankie wasn’t going to waste a minute.
She was, I realize now, an awful lot like me.
I’d never taken acid, but I’d had some experience with amphetamines. Neil kept a stash of black bombers in the unlocked desk in his unlocked office and for several weeks that first summer, I’d come in on a Saturday or Sunday (I had my own key to the building), take a few bombers from the baggie in his desk, and get an amazing amount of work done. I knew the pills weren’t for anyone to take, it wasn’t like jelly beans (or Scotch, for that matter), but things were so loose around the office that I was sure Neil didn’t keep track. And I figured that I was working on a weekend, so in a way I was entitled to an extra little something. I called them Magic Pills because I could work for hours without stopping, and when I ran out of work, I’d write letters back home describing my incredibly wonderful, amazing life in London. Eventually I realized that I was wearing myself down by taking too many amphetamines, not eating or sleeping enough, and drinking more than usual in an attempt to cut down the amphetamine buzz to a manageable drone. I decided to leave those black bombers in Neil’s desk where they belonged.
I was always up for a new experience, though, and when Frankie suggested an acid trip, I figured it was about time I tried it. After all, the Beatles were going through an acid period, Derek had dropped LSD numerous times and raved about the experience (“there is nothing like a ride in a Rolls on a little acid on a Saturday afternoon in June in the lanes of Surrey,” he wrote in one of his memoirs), and Frankie convinced me that she had some good shit (although it wasn’t Owsley’s acid that we took that night).
I was also hoping that an LSD trip might change me somehow, expand my horizons, and offer me a new perspective on life. I wanted to be more confident, more comfortable in my own skin. I believed in magic. My life in London was magical, Apple was magical, the Beatles were pure magic, amphetamines were, for a time, magical. I thought LSD might provide the magical lightning-bolt moment that would illuminate my inner strengths and light up the pathway to greater happiness.
So one snowy magical December night Frankie, Sweet William, Frisco Pete, and I dropped acid in my apartment. I waited. And waited. Nothing much happened. I watched the snow fall and it looked like snow falling. I had a few more drinks, figuring maybe the combination of alcohol and LSD would jump-start the process of awe and wonder. But not much happened, just a little tingling. Sitting there waiting, I thought about the first time I tried marijuana. I never got high, but I ate a whole loaf of white bread.
“Hey, Chris,” Sweet William said, a big smile on his face. I think he was feeling it, but he probably took a lot more than I did. “Let’s go for a ride in the snow.”
“Yeah, that would be cool,” I said. How could I say no to the opportunity to ride on a Harley with a Hells Angel—and not just any Hells Angel, but the famous Bill “Sweet William” Fritsch—on a snowy night in London, both of us high on acid? I couldn’t. It was just so—well, so trippy.
The wind was whipping my hair, the snow stung my face, and I clung to Sweet William, my arms around his leather-jacketed waist as we traveled the Old Brompton Road to Knightsbridge. Wow, there’s harrods, I thought, gazing in awe at the holiday decorations in the huge glass windows flashing past. But at the traffic light, we made a U-turn, the back tire of the Harley spun out, and Sweet William fought for several terrible seconds to maintain control.
Oh shit, I thought, watching the world spin around me. I’m going to die right here in front of Harrods just two days before Christmas, buried in the snow with a Hells Angel.
We skidded to a stop, and Sweet William turned around to look at me. He looked like he also had watched his life pass before his eyes.
“Are you okay?” he said.
I couldn’t speak. I just nodded my head.
When I woke up the next day, I was so disappointed. I was tired. I felt like shit. And I was the same person I had been the day before.
John and Yoko dressed up as Father and Mother Christmas for the Apple Christmas party on December 23, 1968, and all was going well until Sweet William and Frisco Pete showed up, drunk and stoned and high out of their minds. I was standing in the press office, drinking my third or fourth Scotch and laughing about something with Richard DiLello, when Frisco Pete walked in and demanded some fucking food. “Let’s have a little consideration here,” one of the secretaries’ husbands said, at which point Frisco Pete punched him full in the face. It was madness for a time in the press office, and I backed into a corner, staying as far away as I could, knowing that even though the Angels liked me, all hell could break loose at any moment.
Finally it was over, and several days after Christmas Sweet William and Frisco Pete left London and off they went to do whatever it was they were going to do in Czechoslovakia. I think it had to do with straightening out the political situation, probably by staring down some dictator or taking over a public square. Maybe they were just hoping to spread around some love and good cheer.
Peace be with them.