Neil Aspinall

• 1. Introduction

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  Neil Stanley Aspinall was born on the 13th of October 1941, in Prestatyn, North Wales, not because his family lived there, but because the air-raids on Liverpool had forced his mother to evacuate. His father was away at sea with the Royal Navy. The bombing subsided, and by 1942, mother and son were back in Liverpool. From that uncertain beginning, Aspinall would go on to sit at the center of the most documented musical story of the twentieth century.

  He was twelve years old when he gained a place at the Liverpool Institute on Mount Street. He sat in the same classroom as Paul McCartney for English and Art lessons. He met George Harrison behind the school's air-raid shelters. He passed eight of nine GCE exams, failing only French. Then, in July 1959, he left school to study accountancy, earning two pounds and ten shillings per week as a trainee.

  How does a trainee accountant end up running the Beatles' company for four decades? How does someone who described his own role as simply being there when somebody needed something become the person Paul McCartney called "Mr. X"? And what does it mean to earn the nickname "the fifth Beatle" without ever having played a note on a record, except for a tamboura, a harmonica, and some percussion?

• 2. The Van on the Road

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  Pete Best asked Aspinall to drive the band around in February 1961, when the Beatles were playing two or three shows per night at different locations and could no longer rely on public transport. Aspinall paid £80 for what he described as "an old, grey and maroon Commer van" and charged each band member five shillings per concert.

  George Harrison later remembered the van with affection, noting it was brush-painted red and grey and covered from head to foot in graffiti: girls' names and declarations of love for John. The van attracted attention wherever it stopped. The Beatles had turned a secondhand vehicle into a moving advertisement for themselves.

  By the time the Beatles returned from their second trip to Hamburg in July 1961, Aspinall had done the arithmetic. He was earning more money driving the band than he was earning as an accountant. He left his job and became their permanent road manager.

  On New Year's Eve in 1962, Aspinall drove the band down to London for their Decca audition. He lost his way, and the trip took ten hours. They arrived at ten o'clock at night. John Lennon remarked that they got there just in time to see the drunks jumping in the Trafalgar Square fountains. The audition, famously, did not go well for the label. Decca passed on the Beatles.

  Ringo Starr remembered the road life that followed: one band member in the passenger seat, three on a hard bench in the back, while Aspinall navigated the notoriously pot-holed British roads up and down the country. When Mal Evans joined in 1963 to help set up equipment and act as bodyguard, Aspinall moved up to arranging appointments and buying things the band needed: suits, boots, meals, drinks.

• 3. Pete Best and a Hidden Secret

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  Best was sacked from the Beatles on the 16th of August 1962, with manager Brian Epstein delivering the news on behalf of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison. What happened next put Aspinall in an impossible position.

  According to Mersey Beat editor Bill Harry, Aspinall was waiting downstairs in Epstein's NEMS record shop when Best was dismissed. He was the first person to speak to the newly ex-Beatle, and he was furious. He said he would quit working for the band. Best urged him strongly not to.

  Aspinall then confronted McCartney and Lennon at the next concert, demanding to know why they had fired Best. Their reply was blunt: it had nothing to do with him, they said. He was only the driver.

  In a 2007 interview with Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, Aspinall gave a different account. He said he had been physically present when Epstein sacked Best, that he had told Best unprompted he intended to stay with the band, and that the first question the other band members asked him afterward was how Best had taken the news.

  The complication ran deeper than professional loyalty. While renting a room in the Best family home, the nineteen-year-old Aspinall had become romantically involved with Mona Best, who was seventeen years his senior. Roag Best was born in late July 1962, the son of that relationship. Aspinall denied it for years. He did not publicly acknowledge that he was Roag's father until much later.

• 4. Being There

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  Aspinall's job as personal assistant was defined less by a title than by an instinct for readiness. When George Harrison fell ill with a fever of 102 degrees Fahrenheit before a rehearsal for The Ed Sullivan Show, Aspinall stood in for him during the camera rehearsals. Harrison recovered in time for the actual broadcast.

  Before Peter Blake could finish the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Aspinall was dispatched to find photographs of every person to be featured on the front. He also suggested the concept of Sgt. Pepper acting as compere, introducing the group, and proposed the reprise of the title song near the end of the album.

  At night, after recording sessions, Aspinall would drive McCartney and Mal Evans in an Austin Princess limousine to late-night clubs. One favourite was the Bag O'Nails at 8 Kingly Street in Soho, which offered live music alongside the food. The usual order was steak, chips and mushy peas. Aspinall always produced a torch from his pocket in the dim light to inspect the portions on each plate and ensure they matched what had been ordered. McCartney found this reliably amusing.

  Lennon did not pass his driving test until 1965. Even after that, he rarely drove himself, having a reputation for poorly navigating roads and failing to notice other traffic. He was chauffeured to and from recording sessions and appointments by his own personal chauffeur, leaving Aspinall free to attend to the wider logistics of a band that was rapidly outgrowing any ordinary management structure.

• 5. Apple and Its Battles

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  After Epstein died in August 1967, Aspinall agreed to run Apple Corps on the condition it was only temporary, until the band found somebody else. He later said he only accepted after being asked and never wanted to do it full-time. George Martin, the Beatles' record producer, doubted whether Aspinall had the social credentials to negotiate with senior EMI executives.

  On the 11th of May 1968, Aspinall accompanied McCartney and Lennon to New York to announce Apple's formation to the American media. The company had five divisions: electronics, film, publishing, records and retailing. The filing systems were being built from scratch. Aspinall later described finding no contracts, no paperwork, no record of what had been agreed with EMI or with the film companies or the publishers.

  Allen Klein arrived to manage the Beatles, dismissed Aspinall, then reinstated him after the band complained, having concluded Aspinall posed no threat to his authority. Klein lost a High Court action in 1971 following a lawsuit brought by McCartney, but the litigation between Klein and Apple kept Aspinall occupied until 1977.

  In 1978, Aspinall launched the first of three trademark suits against Apple Computer, Inc. The first settled in 1981 for £41,000, with Apple Computer agreeing not to enter the music business. When the Apple IIGS appeared in 1989, including a professional synthesiser chip, Apple Corps sued again, reaching a settlement of £13.5 million in 1991. A third lawsuit followed in September 2003, after the launch of the iTunes Music Store and the iPod. The trial began on the 27th of March 2006 and ended on the 8th of May 2006, with the judge ruling in Apple Computer's favour. McCartney credited Aspinall for trademarking the Apple name worldwide and called him "Mr. X" within the organisation.

• 6. The Anthology and the End

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  In the early 1990s, Aspinall took on the role of executive producer for The Beatles Anthology, the multi-part documentary project that gave the surviving members and their estates an authoritative account of the band's history. In the new footage shot for the project, Aspinall, producer George Martin, and press officer Derek Taylor were the only non-Beatles to appear on camera.

  He continued advising the three surviving Beatles and the estates of Lennon and Harrison, overseeing the licensing of music, videos and merchandising. One of his last significant tasks was supervising the remastering of the Beatles' full back-catalogue, which was anticipated for a 2008 release.

  On the 10th of April 2007, Apple Corps announced that Aspinall had decided to move on. Jeff Jones, a longtime vice president at Sony Legacy, was hired as his successor. Aspinall had held the role for close to four decades, longer than the Beatles themselves had been a working band.

  Aspinall died of lung cancer in New York City in 2008. His funeral was held at the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Twickenham, the London borough where he and his wife Suzy had run their own company, Standby Films, from their home. Among those who attended were Stella McCartney, Yoko Ono, Barbara Bach, George Martin, Pete Best, and Pete Townshend, who played Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" as a tribute. Aspinall left nearly seven million pounds in his will, held in trust, with the income directed to Suzy, his wife of forty years.