Neil Aspinall

Talk about mystery figures – what do we know about Neil, easily the person most deserving of the title “5th Beatle”. Very little indeed. He boarded in Pete Best’s home and met the Beatles when they became the “house band” when the Casbah Club Pete’s mother built in the basement of their home opened. He obviously thought the Beatles were a great band. He preferred to spend an anticipated few years on adventure (and hard work) with them rather then the settled and secure life as an accountant, which he was well on his way to achieving. He is very intelligent and competent; he is well organized and could cope with evidently any amount of chaos. The only thing approaching a failure anywhere in what we do know about his was the first incarnation of Apple where he wasn’t given a sufficient warrant of authority to accomplish the job.

We know practically nothing about his personal life past August of 61 except that he gathered a wife, children and lived in London. We know very little about his personality except by deduction and observation of him both in appearances in the Anthology film and the film itself as he was the person who brought it together and to completion. What were his likes and dislikes; did he have a favorite Beatle (Geoffrey Ellis is/was of the opinion that John was Neil’s favorite among the Beatles;) did he prefer Klein to Eastman? We have no idea.

Neil is said to have made the initial arrangements for issuing Paul’s first solo album (by Miles,) which implies that he had not joined the fairly united “hate Paul” front led by John, George and Klein. Did Neil share any information about what was going on at Apple after Klein took over? I have seen no reason to think so. I do think that if Neil had shared any information, the fact that Spector had been chosen to produce Let It Be is something he would have told Paul. Since there is no hint that Paul knew this was happening in advance, it makes it seems unlikely that Neil was passing on any information to Paul.

Klein did try to fire Neil and Mal but John, George and Ringo evidently overruled him in these two cases though that appears to be the only time they did so. Neil must have kept his head down very carefully though while Klein was running things. We can safely assume he did so out of loyalty to the Beatles, perhaps as they were, rather then what was happening between them. Certainly he would have had no problem getting good offers to leave – he undoubtedly would have succeeded if he’d set up as an independent manager.

Some people have criticized his management of Apple accusing him of delaying release of remixes made for CD and/or for MP3 and surround sound. I figure that the Beatles and their relicts (an old word for “widow”) have had a lot to say about what is and isn’t released and when. Certainly it’s clear that he’s taken very good care of their reputation and money all those years. I suspect he retired as much because he was tired and had some things he wanted to do with his time that didn’t include keeping a complicated corporation going. Perhaps he’ll even write a book – although I’m not counting on it.

Reporters

The current lack of intelligence and accuracy in print and broadcast media is less surprising and depressing if you are aware of the very high degree of ignorance, stupidity and prejudice that greeted the Beatles at almost every news conference in 1964. The reporters – most were “hard news” reporters resentful at being taken off the current story of graft in city hall and neither they nor anyone else had any idea of why pop singers would be holding a news conference anyway – had any clue why they were there. Elvis didn’t do news conferences except for the one when he got drafted (at which Tom Parker did all the talking.) It is pretty obvious that their editors hadn’t given them much background and evidently none of the reporters had even read the features in Life and Newsweek that had appeared a few weeks earlier nor seen the brief, patronizing mentions by Cronkite or Jack Parr. Actually, Beatlemania WAS “hard news” but they never seemed to be able to catch on to that.

For the entire three years the Beatles toured America, some reporters retained a belief that the Beatles wore wigs, presumably because it was impossible to bathe or sleep with hair so long. Going by some of the questions, American men at that time believed that having a penis prevented hair from growing even though it’s obvious that the reporters themselves paid somebody to cut theirs off every few weeks (hair that is).

The unpalatable fact is that very few American reporters ever managed to improve their side of the exchange. The Beatles themselves made of their news conferences very good theater indeed – so good that it is still quite amusing to watch them make complete fools of the reporters and their inability to think of a single new question. Once the Beatles made a huge success around the world, British reporters by and large realized that they had more then a tongue-tied pop star in the Beatles and fewer and fewer of them neglected to educate themselves at least a little, at least enough to think up one or two questions that hadn’t been asked at least 1,000 times before.

You’d think the American press might have wised up after the multitudes of really great shots the Beatles had scored on them but somehow it never really happened. I suspect that 50 years later Ringo and Paul still get asked what they will do when the “bubble bursts” despite the fact that they are not only rich but also qualified to draw their old age pensions. They still get asked if the Beatles are going to get together again and although Paul’s divorce isn’t yet final, they are asking him if he’s going to marry any woman who managed to get caught by a photographer standing next to him.

Between the questions nobody can answer – “What made them so much more popular then any other group?” – and the questions they’d answered everyday for years – “Which one of you writes the songs?” and the questions too silly to answer – “How do you sleep with all that hair?” – they finally even got tired of showing everyone which side of the microphone the fools were. The mindless stories these reporters produced may have satisfied editors as ignorant as the reporters but they couldn’t possibly have drawn much approval from the fans. This has no doubt contributed to the general lack of respect for a once admirable and admired profession now unembarrassed to ask stupid politicians even more pointless questions then they asked the Beatles! Unfortunately, politicians have perfected their ability to give answers even more stupid then the questions!