The popular view in our business is that pop stars who set out as ordinary decent people are corrupted into becoming grasping monsters by fame and fortune. That may be true of some band members or solo singers, but in my experience the Beatles were toughies from the start. That’s not to say they couldn’t be kind or funny or anything else if the mood took them. But when I first met them, they were already a tight unit determined to take on the world and get as much as they could out of it.
I was not just an employee. I was a friend. Of course, it was all because I worked for Brian but through that I thought came a good relationship. I’ve been to their homes and they have been to mine. I’ve worked through the night to make sure some flight or other was diverted to accommodate their travel plans. We were mates and suddenly, just like switching off the lights as you leave the room, it was over.
I had been pushing the Beatles to get someone in to sort out the mess that Apple had become. Money was draining from the company in all directions and no one seemed to be effectively dealing with it. I suggested that they got someone like Lord Beeching in. At the time, he was making himself famous for cutting back British Railways. I really was just using him as an example, but the next time I saw John he told me that he and Yoko had asked him to take over and he had turned the job down. I can’t say I blamed him. By then, Apple was in a mess. The Beatles were drifting apart and I was already expecting the worst.
The American accountant, Allen Klein, took over. He had all the charm of a broken lavatory seat but he did have a reputation for being a ruthless businessman. I only ever once had a conversation with Mr Klein. I met him on the stairs one morning and I said, ‘Good morning, Mr Klein.’ And he grunted. It was not a lot to base your opinion on, I know, but could this curt, unshaven, overweight guy really be the new Brian Epstein? I thought not.
However I decided I could best serve the Beatles by keeping my head down and carrying on with my job. When the axe arrived I was in the Capri, one of my favourite restaurants, lunching with a man from Hawaii who wanted to book the Beatles for a farewell concert. He was offering $1 million, but it might as well have been $100 million. But he was a pleasant chap and he was also a top American football official. As the Beatles had a knack of demanding FA Cup Final tickets just as the teams were travelling down Wembley Way, I thought I would at least try to be prepared. My lunch partner cheerily agreed to let me have four tickets when Gerry the proprietor called me away to the telephone. I heard Peter Brown’s voice and he did not sound happy.
‘Can you come over to the office, right away, Alistair?’ said Peter. I explained the delicacy of my negotiations but he was not interested. It was a crisis and I should return to the office now. When I got back to his office Peter Brown was sitting in his swivel chair and talking on the telephone to Ron Kass. In his hand was a piece of paper with a list of names on it.
‘Yes, Ron, I’m afraid they are both sacked,’ said Peter tersely. All of a sudden, the penny started to drop. I realised why I had been summoned. The expression on Peter’s face confirmed my fears. I asked, ‘Me as well?’
‘Yes,’ he answered. He handed me the list which had over a dozen names on it, all numbered, with mine at the top.
‘Today,’ said Peter.
I was shocked, but I was not surprised. ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’ I gasped as I struggled to come to terms with my life being turned upside-down.
‘No, I’m not,’ replied Peter sadly. ‘Alistair, I wanted to tell you myself before one of Allen Klein’s people told you.’
I tried to pull myself together and heard myself responding, ‘Fair enough, Peter, but I’ll tell you one thing. If I go today watch out for the bonfire where I’ll be burning all the private papers and documents I keep for the boys in the safe box in my flat. I’m not coming back in here with them!’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t do that, would you?’ he asked. ‘Anyway the boys have said they want me to take special care of you.’
‘What does that mean?’ I said, starting to feel like a race-horse being put out to grass instead of being shot. ‘Three months’ salary and you keep the flat for three months, while you find something else,’ he said.
The sheer unfairness of it all start to boil up in me. I was suffering from glandular fever brought on by overwork, and I’d booked to go to Ibiza on a trip to try to get over it. I snorted, ‘I am not leaving today, Peter. I will come in tomorrow and clear up all my outstanding work. I will go, but I will go when I’m ready.’
I went back to my office to ring the boys. Not to plead for my job back but just to make sure that they knew what was going on. The whole philosophy of Apple was taking care of people, so I felt sure they would want information. I rang each of them: Paul, John, George and Ringo, in that order. And not one of them took my call. I got excuses from embarrassed wives and secretaries. I heard nervous Beatle voices in the background. But not one of my four famous friends came to the phone. And that hurt a hell of a lot more than getting the sack.
I walked round the building in a daze. Everywhere I went, I kept meeting other unfortunates who had just received their own bad news. Some of them were already clearing out their personal things. Others were staring hopelessly into space. Apple, the company that was going to put the fun back into the workplace, was under a cloud that day.
Like a man on automatic pilot, I somehow got through the rest of the day. I cleared my desk and wondered how on earth I was going to tell Lesley the news. We had some American friends coming round for dinner and I couldn’t spoil the evening. Instead, I drank too much and put on an act to entertain them and said nothing at all about getting the sack. How I got through the meal I’ll never really know, but I did and I went back to the office to do my final clearing up on the next day – Friday. I was determined not to leave anything undone.
When I got home, Lesley was in the bedroom sorting some clothes out in the big walk-in wardrobe. I said, ‘Come here, love, I’ve got something to tell you.’ She knew from the sombre tone exactly what I was going to tell her and said, ‘I know. You’ve been fired.’
I said simply, ‘Yeah.’
She put her head round the wardrobe door, ‘In that case, we’ll show them, won’t we?’
That was when I broke down and burst into tears. She came to comfort me, sitting on the arm of the chair with her arm around me.
‘Let it go, love. Don’t bottle it up.’
I got the sack in 1969 and it still hurts. It’s not the sacking. Obviously, if you give someone carte blanche to organise your business you have to accept their decisions. I understand that. But after all we had been through, for the Beatles not to even return my telephone calls was very difficult to accept. It sounds like whingeing, I know, but I was only the general manager of Apple anyway because John rang up and asked me to take over.
Neil Aspinall works for Apple full time now – he’s the sole survivor, but he spends some of his time in court fighting to stop unauthorised use of material associated with the Beatles.
After being sacked, I tried to set up my own little management company. It was too late to go back to Robert Stigwood. That was another of my brilliant decisions in life. I found a little Welsh girl singer who appeared on Hughie Green’s Opportunity Knocks, but I didn’t have enough money to do it properly. I rang all sorts of people and nobody would really talk to me. They were all in a meeting. I found out later that they all thought I was earning a fortune so they thought they couldn’t afford me.
Then I went to work for Dick James. He appointed me Press Officer for DJM Records and he put me in this room and said, ‘I’ve got two young lads who are both very promising but listen to their stuff and tell me what you think. One was a guy called Sean Phillips, a very talented American boy, and the other one was this guy called Elton John. Well, to be honest, he was really called Reg Dwight, but both names were completely unknown in those days. I know it sounds glib and smug to say so, but he really bowled me over straight away. Not since I’d first heard the Beatles in The Cavern all those years ago had I heard such an original talent. Sean Phillips quickly moved back to America so I was left trying to get Reg or Elton into the papers. In those days it was very hard to get a break, even with the sort of ability Elton had. He and Bernie Taupin used to sit working together day after day and they were just desperate to make it.
Elton used to beg me to come to some of his gigs – he was only singing in pubs in those days – just to fill out the audience a little. He was that keen to get started, he even thought one or two more people would help swell the crowds. ‘Bring the missus and bring some friends,’ he’d say. Elton deserves all the success he’s had since then, because he really worked hard. He wasn’t proud. If I had any guests in the office, he was always happy enough to go and make the coffee without being asked.
My big idea was to advertise Elton on London buses. He had this wonderful album called Skyline Pigeon and I took advertising space on the back of 100 London buses. I thought it looked pretty dramatic but it was some time later before Elton John became a household name.
It was virtually hopeless trying to get publicity for unknown artists and I didn’t seem to have any discernible gift for PR work. Dick only gave me the job out of kindness. But it wasn’t working out and Dick and I had a friendly meeting and decided it was time for me to move on. I then worked for Saga Records with a guy called Marcel Rodd who I found too difficult to work for.
I saw a job advertised working for Morgan Grampian magazines as a project manager and I did that for a long time until Lesley and I spotted a chance to get out of London altogether running a craft centre and tea rooms in Derbyshire.
We saw an advert in the Times for a middle-aged couple to run this nice little profit-sharing business. We got the job and worked our fingers to the bone but it wasn’t financially worthwhile.
We scraped enough money together to buy a house thanks to a loan from my father-in-law and I began a round of depressing labouring jobs. I’ve shovelled lead, made machine knives, washed pots in pubs. I’m not proud or very well qualified.
The Beatles were my life as a young man. I loved them all and I’m still trying not to be bitter about how I was treated in the end. I risked my marriage and I ruined my health. I was so determined to get the job done I wouldn’t take a holiday, and I will always believe it is because of that that I contracted glandular fever, which laid me really low for a long time. But I still wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
The Beatles took the piss out of the world for eight-and-a-half years. And when it stopped, I think a lot of fun went out of many people’s lives. There is no question that as pop musicians, the Beatles were the best there has ever been, but as people it was difficult for them to live up to that accolade.