BEATLEMANIA
The centre of the house was the second-
floor press office, where Derek Taylor held court to journalists, music industry figures and an immense variety of less relevant callers, from a wicker chair with a huge scalloped back, liberally dispensing Scotch and Coke and Benson & Hedges Gold cigarettes. The room was kept in perpetual darkness, with the spermatozoa shapes of a psychedelic light show wriggling over the walls and ceiling. Every surface was littered with expensive, pointless executive toys, like a row of little plastic birds endlessly dipping their beaks into a water tray.
Once, I heard a voice on Taylor’s
intercom say: “Derek…Jesus Christ is in reception.” “Oh, God, not that asshole again,” he sighed. “OK, send him up.” The press office reeked of pot — a major risk with Savile Row police station only a couple of hundred yards away. Taylor’s secretary had been trained to flush the
whole lot down the toilet at the slightest sign of a raid. One afternoon when I called, Taylor was trying to arrange a visa for John to take Yoko and their Plastic Ono Band to Toronto to appear in a festival. It was tricky as he had a conviction for possessing cannabis, or “a crime of moral turpitude” as the immigration authorities termed it. After the Toronto show, John told the London Evening Standard’s Ray Connolly
With John’s murder, a second wave of Beatlemania began
he was leaving the Beatles but made Connolly agree not to run the story for the present. On the flight back to Britain, John also told Klein. So Klein did re-sign them to Capitol Records at a munificent new royalty rate, only to have them disintegrate in his hands. In those days, it was inconceivable that a band could break up, yet still go on selling more and more
records with each passing year. But now it was to happen. In the Seventies, all the ex-Beatles pursued solo careers while the world waited patiently for them to get over it and reunite. That hope finally ended with John’s murder in 1980, after which a second wave of Beatlemania began that still shows no sign of abating. Almost as great an asset as the Beatles’
music was their company’s name. When Steve Jobs wanted to use it for his computer corporation, he had to make several multi-million dollar payments to Apple Corps.
Among those who passed through 3
Savile Row in the 1960s was an 18-year-old with a toothy smile, seeking Beatle cash to start a national student newspaper. Later, he was to seize on their idea of a multi- stranded corporation run in a seemingly rock ‘n’ roll way, and take it further than they’d ever dreamed. His name was Richard Branson. n © Daily Mail
SAVILE ROW STYLE MAGAZINE 55
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