"Fifth Beatle" dead

By ALLAN KOZINN
New York Times News Service
Published on: 03/25/08

NEW YORK — Neil Aspinall, who left an accounting job to become the Beatles' road manager when the group was still a local dance band and who went on to manage its production and management company, Apple, died Sunday night in Manhattan. He was 66 and lived in Twickenham, England.

Geoff Baker, a spokesman for the family, said the cause was lung cancer. Aspinall had been undergoing treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He retired from Apple last year.

Of all the people in the Beatles' orbit, Aspinall had the most durable relationship with the group; he had already been a crucial member of the Beatles' entourage for about 18 months when Ringo Starr became the drummer. When the Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1988, George Harrison made a point of saying that Aspinall should be considered the fifth Beatle.

In November 1967, when the Beatles formed Apple to oversee their creative and business interests, they asked Aspinall, by then a trusted assistant of long standing, to manage it.

He never took a formal title, but he ran a company that, in its first years, included a record label, a film production company, and electronics, publishing and retailing divisions. He also quickly put the Beatles' complicated contractual commitments in order.

But when expenses at Apple spun out of control and the American manager Allen Klein was brought in to sort out the Beatles' finances, Klein fired much of the staff but was told by John Lennon, "Don't touch Neil and Mal; they're ours," referring to Aspinall and his assistant, Mal Evans, who had also been with the group since its Liverpool days.

Aspinall oversaw a succession of lawsuits at Apple. In 1969, the Beatles sued EMI Records in a royalties dispute that took 20 years to settle. Apple also sued the Broadway show "Beatlemania" for unauthorized use of the Beatles' name and logo, and it fought several court battles against Apple Computer for trademark infringement. The last was settled in 2006, in favor of the computer company.

Aspinall was often blamed for the slow pace at which Beatles archival projects were released. There was something to that: Several projects have never been released, including a home video of the Beatles' 1965 concert at Shea Stadium and a remastered version of the film "Let It Be" as well as both CD and digital download versions of all the Beatles' studio recordings.

What the complaints did not take into account is that Aspinall could release only what Apple's principals — Paul McCartney, Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono (the widows of Harrison and Lennon) — unanimously agreed should be released. And the interpersonal politics at Apple are such that unanimity has been hard to come by.

Even so, Aspinall did oversee several important releases since 1993. These include "Live at the BBC," a two disc compilation of the group's radio performances; "Yellow Submarine Songtrack," a remixed version of the music from the "Yellow Submarine" cartoon film, which Apple also restored and reissued; "1," a single-disc hits compilation; and "Love," a multimedia collaboration with Cirque du Soleil (and a matching recording).

His biggest achievement was "The Beatles Anthology." The idea was to use performance film and interview clips to let the Beatles tell their own story. Originally meant to be a theatrical film, the project was begun in 1970 but shelved until the final EMI lawsuits were settled in 1989. By then, Aspinall had proposed that instead of making a film, the Beatles should contribute new interviews (with archival interviews with John Lennon, who was murdered in 1980) to a six-hour television series and a nearly 13-hour home video edition.

When the Beatles agreed, he assembled an extraordinary archive of television and concert film, photograph collections and other materials for use in "The Beatles Anthology" and other potential Apple projects. He was credited as executive producer.

Aspinall also ran a film production company, Standby Films. Among its productions is a 1999 film, "Jimi Hendrix: Band of Gypsys."

Aspinall's history with the Beatles reached back to their earliest days as a band, when he hung fliers around Liverpool advertising their performances. In February 1961, with the group's popularity in Liverpool soaring, Aspinall gave up his job as an apprentice accountant and began driving the group from job to job, often three performances a day.

On international tours, he left the business of equipment setup to Mal Evans and became the Beatles' principal aide. One of his later jobs was to round up the pictures of the celebrities and other influential crowd members for the cover of the 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

On occasion, he was drafted as a performer. He was among the singers in the celebratory chorus of "Yellow Submarine," and he played tambura (an Indian drone instrument) on "Within You Without You," harmonica on "Being for the Benefit of Kite" and percussion on "Magical Mystery Tour."

Aspinall was born in Prestatyn, Wales, on Oct. 13, 1941, and grew up in Liverpool, where he attended the Liverpool Institute with McCartney and Harrison. He became friendly with the Beatles through Pete Best, their drummer from 1960 to 1962.

Aspinall, originally a boarder in Best's house, had started a romantic relationship with Mona Best, Best's mother. Their son, Roag Best, was born in 1962. Aspinall accompanied Pete Best to the meeting with the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein at which the drummer was fired, but he decided to continue working for the group.

In 1968, Aspinall married Suzy Ornstein, whose father, Bud Ornstein, was head of European production for United Artists, the company for which the Beatles made the films "A Hard Day's Night," "Help!" and "Let It Be." She survives him, as do their daughters Gayla, Dhara and Mandy; their son, Julian; and Roag Best.

During his years as the Beatles principal aide, Aspinall made several films for the Beatles. One was a promotional clip for Ringo Starr's 1970 single, "Sentimental Journey"; another film accompanied the group's 1969 single "Something," for which Aspinall showed the Beatles and their wives walking placidly through an English garden (or, in McCartney's case, the grounds of his farm in Scotland). What the film avoided showing was that the Beatles were at that point barely on speaking terms; in the film, no two Beatles are seen together.

Virtually alone among Beatles insiders, he resisted the temptation to publish his memoirs, but joked that if he did write them, he would arrange to have them published only after his death. He is not known to have undertaken the project.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/03/25/OBIT_ASPINALL.html