For this series 100th program, a extended show dedicated to some of the many talented artists of music history’s most amazing experiment in the business, Apple Records, that started off with great promise but crashed and burned amid a bitter divorce among what were once close friends. #beatles #applerecords #apple

By 1967, The Beatles had seemingly done the impossible. The Fab Four, as the press dubbed them, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, hailed from a town no one had heard of or cared about called Liverpool, and after initially honing their craft in basement bars at home and strip joints overseas, were playing stadiums and had conquered the entertainment world with a series of popular films, highly rated television performances and record sales that dwarfed everyone else before them.

Doris Troy on the cover of the single “Ain’t That Cute”, 1970. Photo by Richard Polak, courtesy of Apple Records.

Their album that year, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, would become the most studied and dissected piece of music of the 20th century. They were rich, young and seemingly a font of artistic brilliance with no shortage of ideas.

But what do you do will all of that money and fame when the tax man comes a-knocking? Brian Epstein, their manager, formed a corporation as a tax haven for the band, originally called Beatles Inc. in 1967 that would morph into what is still known today as Apple Corp. (Yes, the pun was intentional.) It was going to be diversified: electronics, films, a clothing boutique and most notably, a record label.

Badfinger in 1971. (l-r) Pete Ham, Tommy Evans, Mike Gibbons, and Joey Molland. Photograph by Michael Putland/Getty Images.

Epstein died during the Summer of Love, in August of 1967. A disastrous film in December of that year, Magical Mystery Tour, illustrated just how lost the band were without him, and they needed a win. By the time of the launch of the label almost a year later to the day of Epstein’s passing, it would turn out, in hindsight, that their former manager was the glue that somehow kept the four friends together and on task.

What wasn’t known to much of the outside world was just how badly and quickly the cracks between the members had become. The former Fab Four put on a good face for the press, but it was becoming obvious that things were not well in Pepperland. They would and did find, at least initially, a rare joy amidst all of the tumult by closely working with artists on their new label, since they had also stopped touring and, for the most part, working together. They would often act as producers, players and songwriters for many on their roster, some who were new and some veteran acts.

Yoko Ono in 1968. Photo credit: Ian Macmillan/Yoko Ono.

Though not the first vanity label (Reprise by Frank Sinatra, Tangerine by Ray Charles, Brother by The Beach Boys and Bizarre by Frank Zappa preceded them), where artists are often signed to their own imprint and fostered other talent they liked, Apple was above and beyond the most recognizable, and easily the one with the biggest ever roster that is self-owned by the lead artist, in spite of their brief recorded output.

American novelist, poet, and short story writer Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) poses with his typewriter, San Francisco, 1968. Photo by Baron Wolman/Iconic images.

They would also blow it quite often. The label didn’t have traditional talent scouts (in the early days, it was the members of The Beatles themselves who performed the bulk of this task), and at least one member of the band had to approve of any new signing.