THE BIRTH OF APPLE
1. Press Conference, Americana Hotel. 05-14-1968
2. WNET Newsfront. taped 05-14-1968, aired 05-15-1968
3. The Tonight Show. 05-14-1968
4. David Frost Presents... Paul McCartney with Mary Hopkin, London, 06-16-1968
Apple, you may recall, was meant to be the Beatles’ – and in a way, the world’s --
creative playground. It was to be a manifestly non-corporate place where artists and
dreamers could find the support for projects that establishment companies turned down.
And in a small way, for the briefest time, it was. Its record division got off to a promising
start with Mary Hopkin, Badfinger, the Modern Jazz Quartet, James Taylor and the
composer John Tavener – not a bad roster. Apple Films produced the weird cult classic El
Topo. And okay, so Magic Alex’s electronics division ran mainly on fumes and
hemorrhaged money – it was a great concept.
That was, of course, long before Apple became what it is today -- one of the
world’s leading employers of attorneys, barristers, solicitors and lawyers, creatures Apple
has unleashed unsparingly, like the bulldogs in the scene recently restored to Yellow
Submarine, on everything from similarly named computer companies, Broadway
musicals, fans who hoped to celebrate the Beatles on their websites, and scholars working
on books about the group and its music.
But let us forget all that for an hour or so, and look back to the halcyon days when
Apple was a fresh, pure and wonderfully naïve idea.
This CD begins with a few important mementos of John Lennon’s and Paul
McCartney’s May 1968 visit to New York to announce their new company. The first is a
reconstruction of the May 14 press conference, compiled from excerpts broadcast on
WABC radio, with additions from The Compleat Beatles and The Beatles Anthology
stitched in when they were more complete than the WABC versions, or included material
that WABC didn’t air at all.
The two major appearances of the week – the Newsfront interview, from WNET
television, and the visit to The Tonight Show – are included in their entirety. And filling
out the disc is an appearance by McCartney, with protégé Mary Hopkin, on David Frost
Presents….
--Neo, 2001
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