Friday, December 23, 2011

Photograph by Ringo Starr


PHOTOGRAPH BY RINGO STARR


Every day I used to walk to and from school down a little side street named Boston Place which runs alongside the back wall of Marylebone Station.  In 1968, The Beatles had leased a building in this street and housed Apple Electronics in it – presided over by the notorious Magic Alex. But by the 70s, he had long gone and the building seemed to be completely deserted. Every day I would look at the Apple logo on the bellpush and wonder if I would ever see a Beatle coming in or out. It seemed like a pretty remote possibility but I was very excited once when I saw a note in the window that said: “Have gom to the Apple” signed J. Of course, I was convinced that J stood for John – even though he was in New York. But the most exciting thing that ever happened was one day in Autumn 1973 when I walked past on my way home from school and saw that the door was open and that there were a couple of guys removing a whole bunch of tapes and putting them into a van. I couldn’t resist it, I walked in and asked if they needed any help. They were very friendly and said sure, go right ahead. So I started lifting these big boxes of multitrack master tapes and putting them in to their van. I noticed that these tapes were labelled with things like  “George jam” and I felt sure that they must be the original tapes for the jam session that made up record 3 of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album. I could barely contain myself. After we had finished loading up the tapes, the two guys thanked me for my help and one of them asked me for my name and address and said he would send me the latest Apple release. You can bet I gave it to him. And sure enough, within the next few days, a 45 shaped package came through the post and this is what was in it: “Photograph” by Ringo Starr. A dreadful record in many ways but to me it will always be wonderful – because it was my wages for working for Apple records for ten minutes or so one afternoon in October 1973. 

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