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.

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