on the action. But the real money was – and always has been – in music publishing. Where labels typically have a low hit to miss ratio, having to pay for artist advances as well as recording and promotion costs, music publishers – the organization that owns the “song” copyrights and collects royalties from record sales and radio play on behalf of themselves and the songwriter – could at that time get into the pop game for little or no cost to themselves.
T
Music publishing was where the smart money was to be found in the ’60s. Dick James became an overnight millionaire on the strength of signing The Beatles to a no- advance publishing deal in 1962 and Brian Morrison would fund his subsequent lifestyle of playing polo with Prince Charles by signing Pink Floyd, The Pretty Things and others to his publishing company. The notorious American record and publishing entrepreneur/alleged mobster Morris Levy summed it up succinctly when he noted that with music publishing: “It’s always pennies. Nickels and pennies. But it accumulates into nice money. It works for itself and it never talks back to you.”
All of this easy money was not lost on the musicians who were making the records.
It was 40 years ago today, give or take a few months, that The Beatles decided to try their hand at the record and publishing business and famously took out ads in the English music papers that featured Alistair Taylor – the general manager of their new Apple organisation – dressed up as a one man band, imploring the youth of Britain to send tapes of their music to “Apple Music at 94 Baker Street.”
It is unlikely that the (non-Beatles) Apple Records catalogue broke even during its ’68-73 heyday, but Apple Publishing ultimately proved to be a big money maker for The Beatles. In addition to the financial rewards it reaped for its four owners, Apple Publishing was remarkably consistent in the quality of the writers that they put under contract. Looking at the publishing catalogue they cultivated between the short span of ’67 to ’69, it is astounding to see how many landmark pop- psych songs are owned by The Beatles via Apple Publishing to this day. While some – including Sands’ ‘Listen To The Sky’ – ended up in the Apple catalogue via backroom shenanigans, the majority of the catalogue was built through the discovery and development of an exceptional group of young songwriters. George Alexander of Grapefruit, Paul Tennant and Dave Rhodes of Focal Point, Pete Ham and Tom Evans of The Iveys/Badfinger, Dave Lambert of Fire/The Strawbs and Gallagher & Lyle were but a few of the song writers under contract to Apple Music.
he 1960s was an unprecedented boom time for the music business, with record labels around the world doing whatever they could to get in
Apple Publishing opened for business in the summer of ’67, initially operating out of a one room office in Curzon Street, before moving to a nondescript building on Baker Street that autumn.
Apple Publishing was managed by the colourful Terry Doran, a former car dealer and long time associate of The Beatles and Brian Epstein whom Paul McCartney had immortalised in song as the “man from the motor trade”. With the advent of the psychedelic era, Doran embraced the spirit of the times with great enthusiasm. “The meeting we had with Terry Doran was something that you would see if you were making a ’60s movie,” remembers Jeff Peters of Turquoise, who signed to Apple Publishing
Doran’s initial plan for Apple was to fund groups that would write and record their own material. Liverpool songwriters Paul Tennant and Dave Rhodes were signed in September ’67 and were instructed by Doran to go back to Liverpool to assemble a group that would be known as Focal Point.
Doran was also responsible for pairing early Apple Publishing songwriter George Alexander with three members of Tony Rivers & The Castaways to create the new group, Grapefruit (a name suggested by John Lennon after Yoko Ono’s book). Scottish songwriters Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle were also among the early signings to Apple. Following a single for Polydor in ’67 (the excellent ‘Trees’) the duo only cut one single while at Apple –a one-off single as The Cups in ’69. Gallagher and Lyle were strictly a song writing team and would not venture further into performing until they left Apple to join McGuinness Flint in late ’69.
Apple spent lavishly on their two new groups. “Apple put us on a retainer and also gave us a car and accounts in various restaurants and clubs,” remembers Grapefruit’s John Perry. “They also got us a flat.” Focal Point were also given the keys to an Apple rented flat. The formula for Gallagher and Lyle – who were not performers and who already had flats – was slightly different. “They paid us £25 a week each and we’d go in and get cheques signed by Ringo or George every week,” remembers Graham Lyle. “We would go in and deliver whatever songs we had written that week.”
Such largesse wouldn’t – and obviously couldn’t – last. The next wave of writers signed to Apple – including Dave Lambert of Fire, Pete Ham, Tom Evans and Ron Griffiths of The Iveys, and Denis Couldry were not given flats or put on salary. In fact, none of these writers can even recall getting advances for the songs they assigned to Apple. “There was never any financial advance,” recalls Fire’s Dave Lambert. “But there was always a bit of help if you needed it. I never would have thought to ask for an advance to be honest.”
“It’s an apple!”. John and Paul (top) and Apple Publishing boss Terry Doran (above).
in the summer of ’68. “We were sent up to the Apple building at 94 Baker St. and went upstairs to the office and met Terry, who was dressed in all this psychedelic gear which he probably got from the Apple Boutique which was downstairs on the ground floor. He had the wild Afro haircut, the little round glasses like John Lennon, a sheepskin afghan coat and psychedelic pants. He listened to a couple of our songs and then we signed to Apple. If you watched that scene now and saw that Terry was having a meeting dressed like that, you would think it was a ’60s spoof.”
Fire had been signed to Apple in early ’68 by Mike Berry, a recent addition to the staff who had come to Apple from
Sparta Music Publishing. “Mike Berry had been out to see us play live and then invited us up to the offices where Neil Aspinall brought some contracts in for me to sign,” remembers Lambert. “For a while, Mike Berry and Fire were very much a team. He was involved in guiding us and helping us. I used to go up to Baker Street on an almost daily basis at one point. We were there to do business, planning records and stuff but we would also go there to hang out. We would hang around with Grapefruit as well as there was not a lot going on for them at that time, so they were around the office. I remember The Iveys being around too, but not too much as they were extremely busy. They were a working band.”
35
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84