N


UMBER NINE SAVILE ROW is a Georgian house in the heart


of Mayfair’s bespoke tailoring district. Nowadays,


it’s a trendy children’s clothing store, but 50 years ago it became one of London’s most famous buildings as the HQ of the Beatles’ Apple organisation. Here, John, Paul, George and Ringo made their brief, disastrous attempt to become business tycoons; here, too, they effectively broke up in 1969, although the official split didn’t come until two years later. And, while the double crisis unfolded and those closest of friends turned to bitter boardroom opponents, I was inside the house, watching it happen. I sat with John and Yoko Ono — then


playing her own not inconsiderable part in breaking up the Beatles — while they planned to give their next press conference with sacks over their heads.


52 SAVILE ROW STYLE MAGAZINE


I talked to George as he tried on expensive Mr Fish shirts for a photo session, and was presented by Ringo with a jar of apple jam made by his then wife (and George’s future lover), Maureen. I had breakfast with the Beatles’ terrifying new American manager, Allen Klein, as he fought to keep the band together until he could sign them to a massive new recording contract. And every day I witnessed the Beatles’ business being plundered by swarms of con artists and freeloaders like wasps around a Grade II-listed honeypot. Apple sprang from their desire to have their own record label, rather than be tied to the elephantine EMI organisation, and take control of the many other commercial activities being carried on in their name, like music publishing, filmmaking and merchandising. Fortuitously, EMI owed them £2million in back royalties (multiply


by 10 for today’s value) which was to be paid in a single instalment. The only way to avoid losing almost all of it under the then Labour government’s punitive tax regime was to invest it in a business. But they were the Beatles, so it couldn’t be just your everyday grim, grasping kind of business. Paul McCartney defined their aim as


“a kind of Western Communism … We’re in the happy position of not needing any more money,” he said, “so for the first time the bosses aren’t in it for profit.” Befitting the hippy era of love and peace, there was to be a strong philanthropic and what today would be called mentoring element. “We want to help people but without doing it as a charity. We always had to go to the big men and touch our forelocks and say: ‘Please can we do so and so.’ If you come to me and say: ‘I’ve had such and such a dream,’ I’ll say to you:


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