The salad days of Apple Records : NewsTime : Mervyn Dendy : Only Rock 'n Roll
Everyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the history of rock music will know Apple Records as being the record-publishing company set up by the Beatles in 1967, and the label on which the Beatles’ singles and albums appeared from mid-1968 onwards. What is sometimes forgotten, though, is that Apple Records was also the label through which a number of other artistes discovered by the Beatles released singles or albums between 1968 and 1974. The legacy of Apple Records, other than recordings by the Beatles as a group or by individual members of the Beatles as solo artistes, has been celebrated – indeed resurrected – by the release of a 17-CD box set late last year. Designated simply Apple Records Box Set, the new collection contains no tracks by the Beatles themselves – although all four Beatles play on a number of the tracks, as session musicians backing their other signings to the label. As in the case of the Beatles stereo remasters (released in 2009) and the John Lennon Signature Box set (released in 2010), each album in the box is beautifully packaged, with its own booklet containing extensive liner notes and a host of previously unseen photographs. Apple Records first came to worldwide attention upon the release of the Beatles’ monumental single “Hey Jude” in England on 30 August 1968, which was the first of the Beatles’ singles not to appear on the Parlophone label. A few months later, on 22 November 1968, The Beatles (popularly known as the “White Album”) appeared on the Apple label, becoming the first Beatle album to do so. Although the Yellow Submarine soundtrack, Abbey Road and Let It Be followed suit, contractual arrangements between Apple Records and EMI have resulted in Beatle material subsequent to mid-1968 appearing also on their old Parlophone label: on the Hey Jude American compilation album (also sometimes known as The Beatles Again – I have a very rare copy on CD which contains both titles), released on 26 February 1970, there is material which predates and postdates “Hey Jude”, yet the album first appeared on Parlophone (and only later on the Apple and Odeon labels). To further complicate matters, popular reissues of pre-1968 Beatle recordings, such as on the famous red and blue albums – The Beatles 1962-1966 and The Beatles 1967-1970, have appeared on the Apple Records label, which of course did not even exist at the time when most of the songs featured on those compilations first appeared. After the formation of Apple Records the Beatles set about recruiting other talented artistes to the label and releasing their material on it, with varying degrees of commercial success. The first massive hit the label enjoyed by an artiste other than the Beatles was “Those Were the Days”, sung by 18-year-old Mary Hopkin, who went on to marry record producer Tony Visconti. The song (including foreign-language versions of it) eventually sold some 8 million copies, knocking “Hey Jude” itself off the top spot on the British singles chart after three weeks (two weeks, according to some accounts) and staying there for even longer. (In the United States, though, “Hey Jude” hung on to the top slot for nine weeks, equalling the combined run of “Hey Jude”, “Those Were the Days” and Joe Cocker’s version of “With a Little Help from My Friends”, which were consecutive Number One hits in Britain during the second half of 1968.) Further hits by Mary Hopkin followed – “Goodbye”, “Temma Harbour” and “Knock, Knock, Who’s There” – as well as two albums, Post Card and Earth Song/Ocean Song. The next big hit artistes signed by Apple Records were Badfinger (originally known as the Iveys), who scored a series of extremely good hit singles commencing with “Come and Get It”, written by Paul McCartney for the 1970 movie The Magic Christian, which starred Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr. The single appears on the group’s first Apple album Magic Christian Music. Other important singles released by Badfinger on Apple Records include “No Matter What” from their second album No Dice (also released in 1970), “Day After Day” and “Baby Blue” from their third album Straight Up (released in America in late 1971 and England in early 1972, and considered by many to be the group’s best effort), and their final hit single for Apple, “Apple of My Eye” (from Badfinger’s last Apple album Ass, which appeared in the United States in November 1973 but was held over for release in Britain until March 1974). Ass, incidentally, has the distinction of being the last album Apple Records ever released by an artiste or group other than the Beatles or individual members of the Beatles. In between “Those Were the Days” and Ass, Apple Records released material by a couple of others who have found lasting fame as musicians within the rock or pop genre. James Taylor got his start on Apple Records, with his 1968 self-titled debut album that included the well-known songs “Carolina in My Mind” and “Something in the Way She Moves”, the latter of which is famous for having inspired George Harrison to write “Something” and for having given George the opening line of that song. (Presumably James Taylor felt flattered; certainly, he never sued George for copyright infringement – it took the release of “My Sweet Lord”, which was alleged to have copied the Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine”, for that to happen. But that is another story.) Another famous musician discovered by the Beatles and signed up to Apple Records was Billy Preston, who of course played the organ solo on the group’s 1969 hit “Get Back”, and became the only artiste ever to receive a record-label credit as a co-performer with the Beatles (although he was certainly not the only outside musician to make an important contribution to a Beatle track – the other particularly famous example is Eric Clapton on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” from the White Album). Preston gave Apple Records two albums, That’s the Way God Planned It (1969) and Encouraging Words (1970), and memorably performed the title track of the former at The Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. Other artistes whose work was released by Apple Records between 1968 and 1974 are less well known and today have been largely forgotten. They include R& B singer and early Beatle associate Jackie Lomax, who turned in an interesting performance of the song “Sour Milk Sea”, written by George Harrison in Rishikesh, India during the Beatles’ stay there in early 1968. Paul McCartney plays bass on it, Ringo Starr drums and George plays rhythm guitar; Nicky Hopkins plays keyboards and one Eric Clapton plays lead guitar. One of the booklets in the Apple Records Box Set bills this song as “the greatest record The Beatles never made”. The song appeared on a Jackie Lomax album entitled Is This What You Want?, which was also produced by George Harrison. The Apple Records Box Set includes the four Badfinger albums, the two Mary Hopkin albums, the two Billy Preston albums and the Jackie Lomax album, as well as records by some of the more esoteric (and less commercially successful) artistes signed to the label at the behest of one or other of the Beatles. They include: The Modern Jazz Quartet, whose albums Under the Jasmin Tree (1968) and Space (1969) appear together on one CD; The Radha Krishna Temple (singing in Sanskrit!) on a 1971 self-titled album, which included (amazingly) two minor hit singles, “Hare Krishna Mantra” (1969) and “Govinda” (1970); “underground classical” composer John Tavener, whose (rather bizarre) mid-sixties classical/operatic work The Whale (a musical depiction of the story of the biblical prophet Jonah, who fled on board ship from his appointed task of prophesying to Nineveh, only to be swallowed and then spat out on shore by a whale) is combined on one CD with his later Celtic Requiem (1969) and two other supporting works; and soul singer Doris Troy who wrote the song “Just One Look” (not featured in the Apple Records Box Set), which was covered by the Hollies, who took it to Number Two in England. Troy, who also sang on the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” and “The Great Gig in the Sky” from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon (1973), is featured in the box set by virtue of the inclusion of her second (eponymously titled) album, which includes a soulful rendition of the Joe South song “Games People Play”, the Beatles’ own “Get Back” and several songs co-written by her with George Harrison and (in one instance) also with Ringo Starr. George, Ringo, Eric Clapton, bassist Klaus Voormann, Peter Frampton, Stephen Stills and Delaney and Bonnie all play on the album, which was released in September 1970. Completing the box set are a new “Best Of” CD entitled Come and Get It and a double-CD of extras and leftovers from Badfinger (disc one), Mary Hopkin (disc two, seven tracks, including an Italian and a Spanish version of “Those Were the Days”) and Jackie Lomax (disc two, five tracks). Come and Get It is available as a separate purchase from the remainder of the box set, and contains not only a selection of hits from the other CDs (including “Those Were the Days”, “Sour Milk Sea”, “That’s the Way God Planned It” and “Day After Day”), but also such interesting curiosities as Billy Preston’s version of “My Sweet Lord” (released before George Harrison’s own recording of the song), “God Save Us” (written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono to raise funds for the defence in the Oz magazine obscenity trial in 1971 – listen carefully at the start, and you will hear John counting in the song, although he doesn’t sing the lead vocal on it), and Ronnie Spector singing George Harrison’s “Try Some, Buy Some” (which George himself later recorded for release on his 1973 album Living in the Material World, using the identical backing track). After the release of Ass in late 1973/early 1974, Apple Records confined itself to issuing new solo albums by individual members of the Beatles until 1976, when the label closed down (until the start of the CD era) after the release of George Harrison’s album Extra Texture and its second single “This Guitar (Can’t Keep From Crying)”. The Apple Records Box Set may be eclectic, sometimes esoteric and at times downright strange, but it is essential listening for Beatle completists and fanatics, documenting as it does the involvement of individual members of the Beatles as session musicians, backing other artistes on the Apple Records roster during the break-up of the Beatles and in its immediate aftermath. -- http://www.newstime.co.za/column/MervynDendy/The_salad_days_of_Apple_Records/87/3034/ Via InstaFetch -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. 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