Gibson has a great new interview with Peter Asher who was a rock star in his own right but was also head of A&R for The Beatles' Apple Records. Here are a couple of excerpts from the interview:What was a typical day at Apple like? I would arrive at a fairly normal time in the morning. I had an office on the top floor, where there were three or four – and, at one point, five – people working for me. As you probably know, Apple took out an ad, saying "Send us your tired and huddled tapes, and we will listen to them." And that's what we did. We would go through them, and listen, and make notes, and write people polite "thank you" notes. Unfortunately, to be honest, out of all that stuff nothing really emerged. The people we actually signed came through connections with people we knew.
There were also normal record company meetings, about what was going to be released, and what needed to be finished, and how various projects were going. And then there was the unpredictable layer, which might involve the sudden arrival of Hare Krishnas, or the arrival of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, or Hell's Angels. People like that would often just arrive without warning. It was a mixture. More is written today about the chaos factor, but actually there was a pretty reasonable balance between some fun, some chaos, and a lot of hard work involving records getting made.
It's well-known that you discovered James Taylor, and signed him to Apple. Was your enthusiasm for Taylor shared by Lennon and McCartney? Paul certainly shared my enthusiasm for James. I think John was keen on him as well, but John was tied up with his own projects at the time. Ringo and George liked him as well. But then again, who couldn't like him? Those songs were phenomenally good. - Read more including the story behind I Want To Hold Your Hand!
