Author: liddypool

Inside No. 3 – The Story Event of Apple Records

The Date: Saturday March 7^th 2026

Venue: The Orangery

Address: The Colman Building, Norwich, Norfolk

Time: 5.30pm  – 9pm

Yes Indeed the doors to Inside No3 are to be opened once again to bring you a memorable experience of music, photographs, memorabilia and videos along with some of my Apple artefacts, in an all consuming  evening and presentation of the greatest music revolution of all, Apple Records.

After taking your seat you will be whisked back in time to 1966 and once again be immersed in the Beatles happenings of Revolver and what it meant for the music world, You will be guided through this by Nigel Pearce, and ex-BBC Presenter Alan Thompson, with discussion, questions and remembrances that will bring alive those times.

So if  you actually experienced those times then you can once again re-live those halycon, colourful days, and if you never experienced those wonderful times here is your chance to go back and at last feel part of that cultural revolution that still resonates around the world today in 2026, and will never fade away.

Performances from Badfinger, James Taylor, Mary Hopkin as well as the Fab Four and others will blow your mind along with music and “Time Pops” to take you through those experiences and bring you back to 2026, without even moving from your chair!!

You can experience all this and at the same time help Future Projects in their never ending quest to ease disadvantage in and around the Norwich  area. What could be better than that, by having a great time and helping others.

Tickets cost only £13.50  with a small booking charge, with light refreshments included as well, to cover admin costs, and can be purchased at www.futureradio.co.uk/ events. So get your tickets for a great journey, there will be no entry at the door as we believe it will be fully booked for the trip.            

So please book your tickets and experience what happened behind that white door at No 3 Savile Row, all those years ago.

IF YOU ARE IN THE AREA, THEN GET YOUR TICKETS NOW – DON’T MISS IT AS TICKETS ARE LIMITED!

It is a fantastic presentation!!

GET YOUR TICKETS HERE: www.futureradio.co.uk/

NIGEL PEARCE

The two enclosed pictures are of the album by Sounds Nice released in 1969. The sessions were recorded at Abbey Road Studios whilst the Fab Four were at times in residence working on Abbey Road. The album is an instrumental offering, and there are some superb pieces within the grooves, namely “Love At First Sight”, “I Heard it Through The Grapevine”, “Summer Night”, “Galouise”, and “Love You Too”, plus one other track, which we shall come to just a bit later.

That Sounds Nice – Paul McCartney

The two people really behind the group Sounds Nice were Paul Buckmaster and Tim Mycroft, The Abbey Road Studio team were suitably impressed and apparently so, was a certain Mr Paul McCartney. He heard one of the demo tapes of “Love At First Sight”, and the reply from him was “that  Sounds Nice”. That became the group’s name for the duration of their tenure.

Sounds Nice had “Love at First Sight” issued as a single on the Parlophone Label in the UK, and it was played frequently on Radio 1 and they  also appeared on Top of the Pops, which had the result of sending the song into the British Top 20. This was indeed the instrumental track to Serge Gainsberg’s and Jane Birkin’s “Je T’aime Moi Non Plus”, the  French language-based single which, due to its high sexual content, was banned by the BBC from the UK airwaves. It still draws comment today, (yet it is a most beautiful recording indeed). It is still indeed banned from BBC airwaves, but not commercial stations. (Yes, this was 1969, believe it or not!!).

It only enhanced the sales of the single still further, as it reached No 1 in 1969 on the Major Minor record label, the playing of the instrumental track must have really helped sales, because just a little later it again attained a No 1 position being issued by the Fontana label. It was the first time a banned song had reached number 1, and it did it twice in the same year as well!

Another rumour gaining strength at the time was that the group were going to be signed to Apple, but the policy towards new and emerging talent had changed, (maybe Allen Klein’s mode of operation nipped that into the bud). We may never be in a position to ever know, but the thought certainly does indeed carry some weight.

The links went still further as the album was issued in the USA on the Rare Earth Label via the Tamla Motown Outfit in Detroit. My copy is the USA album version, and I said then and do now, that the UK packaging is far superior, and I am amazed that it has kept so well, maybe keeping it in a plastic outer sleeve, and out of the sunlight is good for it. It still plays excellently too as a matter of fact !! 

Any way it is certainly a nice piece of pop history with links to the fab four, and has been very hard to obtain in its original form. I am glad to say I have this copy, and these photographs show what a typical 1969 EMI based pop production looked like. CD Copies of the album with a different cover have started turning up on eBay and are sometimes listed at about £95-00 a throw, so I will continue to look after my original 1969 copy.

FLYING

Amongst the grooves contained within the sleeve there is a cover version of The Beatles track – “Flying”, from The Magical Mystery Tour. They even at times kept the groups original aerial feel to their cover and I have to say that it works quite well. For the inquisitive ones, “Flying” is on Side 1, track 4, so that takes all the hard work away for you.

The album works quite well in 2026, and shows what a 1969 pop album look and sounded like. The attractive lady on the front cover was a well – known model and pretty face at the time, and she appeared on a huge amount of magazine and fashion shots then. So when you look at the cover now, she seems like an old friend that you used to know.

So there is another interesting link to the fab four, and one that draws some interest, and maybe will draw more now, enjoy.

Nigel Pearce

OUR FEATURED BOOK – CAVERN CLUB – THE INSIDE STORY

The Apple Films’ 1968 release of Yellow Submarine was an event that at the time seemed at first not to be of any relevant importance. It was another Beatles film, and the fact seemed to diminish, when it was hailed as a cartoon film and not even using their own voices !!

It seemed to reflect the Beatles’ attitude towards the film was that it was a cheap way to go along with the contract to supply another cinema release, all be it without putting too much time and effort into the project. Again, to back this up, further reports and news articles surfaced where musicians and orchestras were left waiting, while various group members went into a back room and knocked off another song composition to fill a required spot, and hey presto, after about half an hour a song was done.

It is very true, that The Beatles were not too enamoured with the project, and Al Brodax, the creator of the cartoon Popeye was entrusted to do the film, and apparently was left largely alone with his team to do just that. In 1968, cartoons were labelled as Disney and mere fillers in a kiddies cinema programme, and there that concept seemed to have ended any proper work or studio input. The group thought that it would only be moderately successful at that, and the newly submitted songs were also seen as largely second-rate.

Time has proved  the exact opposite in fact and somewhat different, as the film was the first full length cartoon pop film, and one envied by so called experts as being absolutely brilliant!! Even the staff at Disney doffed their caps in respect at this cartoon from little England. It is now seen as a brilliant concept of ‘The Trip’ using colour and images as a harmless and a beautiful effect of being under the influence of a trip, yet retaining the image and concept of being a children’s cartoon story and film. It is now seen as groundbreaking and innovative, something that the group have always been. Many of the tricks used then have been imitated and used by others, and it can clearly be seen as being the cornerstone and catalyst of the world respected British cartoon and animation industry.

But what of the music?

Well that’s a completely different story, and one that needs telling. The Beatles themselves submitted finally just 4 new songs for the film, leaving George Martin to score the picture, too which he did a brilliant job! The group added the now familiar title track again to give Ringo a spot, and adapted “All You Need Is Love”, into this cartoon fairly tale of good overcoming and reforming the bad. 

The issued formula was indeed a soundtrack album issued in January 1969, containing those 4 new songs and the other two tracks on side 1, with side 2 given over to the soundtrack in nearly full timing. This concept was slated as being cheap and dismissive of Beatle quality to the fans, and gained so much traction in certain parts that critics virtually dismissed the entire project at the time.

Nowadays we know, feel and understand so much more, and it can be seen again as a brave and innovative step, that other artists now follow in the same vein. However, that was not the way that the group wanted the music offering to be. The original concept was to be an EP, recorded at first 45 rpm, then altered to 33-1/3rd rpm for better fidelity. Also they had at the time the recording of “Across The Universe” completed at Abbey Road in 1968, and considered at one time to be the new single. This was then discussed to be added to the package to fill the recording quotas from their contract with EMI.

So one can see that actually Yellow Submarine took up quite a large chunk of the group’s time and effort, not withstanding the many other things that were swirling around at that time, A Clockwork Orange, The Get Back Sessions, John and Yoko Peace trips and associated legal quandaries that the couple were embroiled in.

Again the idea of a film soundtrack double album was discussed, but having just asked fans to fork out for the double “White Album”, it was considered to be too much to ask fans to pay for another. So many factors were at play, so that hopefully even after 60+  years, the process and play has come to be explained in a lot clearer fashion.

The enclosed photographs are concept copies, of the EP concept in full, and again they sit very comfortably in my Apple collection, so please enjoy.

By the way, the film is brilliant and deserves to be lauded as such, and even Her late and much missed Majesty Queen Elizabeth has often being quoted as saying that Yellow Submarine was one of her all time favourite films showing how good can overcome huge odds. 

Thank you ma’am,. . .  you always had a grasp on things!!

Nigel Pearce

The start of Apple Corps came about with many different episodes that occurred during 1966.

The group were becoming tired of touring which added so much pressure to their lives as a creative unit, and to them as a whole, that things had to change as they saw it. So the touring was brought to an end with that now famous gig at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

The next item was the recording technology at EMI in Abbey Road Studios which, in their minds, was inferior to equipment being used in the USA. John was most insistent that the bass sound on Motown Recordings was superior than The Beatles and demanded in a not too friendly fashion, that EMI had better pull their fingers out and the phrasing went something along the lines of ‘If you won’t do it, we will do it ourselves’. This one statement caused much uncertainty within the Boardroom at EMI.

Earlier in the year the group’s activities had come under the exacting scrutiny of the then present Labour Government who were trying extremely hard to obtain more tax revenues from the band and their companies. This came to a head in the studio while putting together the Revolver album to be issued  on August 1^st of that year.

The discussion again went along these lines, between John and Brian Epstein , ‘John, wasn’t that treble a little too high there?’ John replied with some sarcasm, ‘Brian, let us look after the music, you look after the money’. Exit from the studio, a very chastened Brian.

TAXMAN

The band were paying 95 pence in the pound tax (19 shillings from every 20 shillings or pound earned), by then, and were seriously thinking of moving abroad after speaking to the Chancellor, who stated that The Beatles are this country’s biggest currency earners and the Government wants more from you and that we are looking at your foreign earnings as well. We will get it one way or another was the final remark. 

Ever since that conversation, The Beatles have always been a tax issue, and that still resides today in 2025 !! 

So quite clearly something had to be done very quickly to offset this completely.

Finally, the last straw was the impending release in November of the Album ‘ A Collection of Beatles Oldies, but Goldies’. The group were incensed by this move and wanted nothing to do with it and even wanted the release curtailed. The EMI Board replied that the Beatles recordings were in fact totally owned by EMI, and they will be issued in that collection.

We know the rest, so the battle lines had been drawn, literally into the concrete!!

So the plan to start Apple was now laid, but things had to take their time to come to fruition, so the introduction of Apple was to be a stage managed affair, taking some nearly two years from August 1966 to August 1968 to become the fully fledged company that was unveiled to the public.

Brian began the process by forming a film company to sell The Beatles performances around the world on video tape and this began in 1966.

The Beatles Ltd.

The Beatles had become so big that their present organisational framework could not effectively manage it, and so an entirely new one now had to be formed, which meant leaving The Beatles Ltd company. Letters had to be drafted and signed and sent to EMI, Themselves, Brian and his management, and all interested parties. It is these letters which are shown here in the Blog. 

They have been very well cared for, and they serve as very important documents in the history of Apple. They may have been simple letters, but as a cornerstone to the groups future activities, they are priceless documents.

These are not cheap photocopies of those individual letters, but typewritten copies, so they are a direct copy of those original 1966 letters.

For many of you this is probably the very first time that these have been seen. Enjoy them please, as they are part of my  personal archives, and will as said,…. be continued to be kept out of the sun in protective files, and away from public view.

Nigel Pearce

Author of Inside No 3

Radio Broadcaster, and Host Future Radio – Norwich 107.8FM – Swindon 105.5FM – Poppyland Radio FM

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