The Beatles pioneered so much in the recording studio during their short time together that it's easy to forget that they formed their own record company in April 1968. Their business plan was to find and fund new musical talent. By the end of the year, Apple had signed James Taylor and struck lucky with Mary Hopkin. The much-admired Badfinger followed, along with albums by obvious associates including Billy Preston, Ravi Shankar and Yoko Ono and the not-so-obvious like John Tavener, Modern Jazz Quartet and Radha Krishna Temple, with mixed financial and artistic success.
But The Beatles were not businessmen and the early optimism of shiny newness soon soured into chaos as major acts such as 10cc and Crosby, Stills & Nash slipped through their fingers. Allen Klein was appointed to sort out the mess, but disenfranchised nearly everybody. Paul left The Beatles and sued the others and in 1975, The Beatles' partnership was legally terminated and Apple Records, a vanity label in all but name, was quietly put to sleep.
Apple Of My Eye revisits each of the albums and singles released by Apple between 1968 and 1975, underpinned by the business and legal context of the last days of the world's greatest band.
Andrew Wild is a British writer, collector and long-time Beatles fan who recalls hearing the Red and Blue albums in the mid-1970s and has been in love with their music ever since. He has copies of every known Beatles outtake and live concert recording. His thorough and exhaustive study of every song performed or recorded by the band Four Sides Of The Circle was republished in 2024 and he has written numerous music-related books, including several in the On Track series, about artists as diverse as The Allman Brothers Band, Phil Collins and Dire Straits. He lives in Rainow, Cheshire, UK.
