The Beatles - The Birth Of Apple

Label: DarthDisc, DD 013

John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the Big Apple, to announce Apple Corps. to the world. May, 1968

1) Press Conference at the Americana Hotel to announce Apple Corps. 1:30 P.M. - 5/14/68
2) WNET Newsfront taped 5/14/68 at E. 46th St. Studio (or was it at W. 55th St. and 9th Ave.). Broadcast 5/15/68 at 10:00-11:00 P.M. on Channel 13.
3) The Tonight Show taped early evening on 5/14/68 at Studio 6B, Rockefeller Center and broadcast between 11:30 and 1:00, later that night, on Channel 4.
4) David Frost Presents...Frankie Howerd taped 6/16/68 at Intertel TV Studios, Wembley. Paul explains Apple to Frankie and introduces budding songstress, Mary Hopkin (Mary sings "House of the Rising Sun"). Shown in U.S. - 10/9/68.

Liner Notes

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 naive 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 protege Mary Hopkin, on David Frost Presents...

--Neo, 2001