Born: 13 October 1941, in Prestatyn, Wales. Died: 23 March, 2008, in New York, aged 66.
NEIL Aspinall began as van driver and roadie for his school pals the Beatles, lugging their amps, mikes and spotlights to gigs around Liverpool, but he became
their most trusted confidant, minder, personal assistant, business manager and fierce lifelong protector and promoter of the Beatles brand.
He headed Apple Corps Ltd, the pop group's company, from its inception in 1968 until last spring, skilfully ensuring that the Beatles never sank into the ranks of mere blasts from the past, but continued being a contemporary phenomenon to new generations of fans, selling millions of albums annually. He was also the man who successfully negotiated the Beatles' various disputes with the computer company Apple Inc, whose upstart logo in the 1970s looked uncannily like the existing one of Apple Corps, and with the giant record company EMI over £30 million in royalties.
Aspinall, who lived in Twickenham, west London, but died in a New York City hospital of lung cancer, was often described, including by George Harrison, as "the fifth Beatle," a trusted member of their inner circle, a quiet, discreet counterweight to the antics and egos of the Fab Four. Despite the eventual frictions among the band members, he remained close to, and respected by all of them (including by widows Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono) although the four liked to tease him by calling him Nell. Sir Paul McCartney reportedly visited him in hospital shortly before he died.
Neil Stanley Aspinall was born to Liverpudlian parents in Prestatyn, North Wales, where his mother had been evacuated during the German bombing of the city while his father was at sea with the Royal Navy. Back home after the war, he went to the Liverpool Institute grammar school, a classmate of McCartney and a year ahead of George Harrison. The three, who called themselves "the Mad Lads", would soon meet the older John Lennon, who was in his first year at the Liverpool College of Art, next to their school, and had started a skiffle group called The Quarrymen.
After leaving school in 1959 with eight O-levels, Aspinall trained as an accountant, lodging at the home of his best mate, an aspiring drummer called Pete Best, in the West Derby area of Liverpool. Best's mother, Mona, was about 40 but was considered "with it" by her son's friends because she used the basement of her Victorian house to run a club for teenagers, the Casbah, where Lennon, McCartney and Harrison would play, with Best on drums. It was only 30 years later, in the 1990s, that Aspinall admitted he'd had an affair with the "with-it mum" Mona Best when he was only 19, and fathered her child, Roag.
Had he been musically gifted, Aspinall would undoubtedly have been part of his friends' pop group. As it turned out, he found he could earn more from driving the group, by now calling themselves the Beatles, to and from gigs – charging each of the four five shillings for petrol – than from his accounting job. When the mop-haired quartet started to gather a following in the summer of 1961, he quit the day job and became their full-time road manager. The only time he considered leaving them was after Best got what was probably the most famous chop in pop history, to be replaced by Ringo Starr.
At the height of Beatlemania, Aspinall spent much of his time keeping schoolgirls away from the group (or occasionally, it is said, smuggling the chosen ones into hotel rooms). His role was loosely portrayed by Norman Rossington, as "Norm", in the 1964 film A Hard Day's Night, during the shooting of which Aspinall met his future wife, Suzy Ornstein, the daughter of United Artists' film studio boss Bud Ornstein. They married in 1968.
It was after the sudden death of the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein in 1967 that the distraught and disorganised superstars turned to Aspinall to sort out their business affairs. They set up Apple Corps, which Aspinall headed without a formal job title, for the next 40 years. (He was briefly ousted after the Rolling Stones' American manager Allen Klein was called in to streamline the company, but the Beatles brought Aspinall back and Klein himself moved on).
Aspinall dedicated the rest of his life, especially after the 1980 murder of John Lennon, to protecting the Beatles' legacy and the rights to their brand, ranging from photographs and memorabilia to film footage and their massive music catalogue. Using that material, he put together the highly successful 1995-96 Beatles' Anthology project of TV documentaries, book and double-albums, and, in 2000, the Beatles 1 album of their No 1 hits, which has sold an astonishing 30 million copies.
His last major achievement was reaching a compromise with Apple Inc last year over the use of the Apple logo on digitally-downloaded iTunes, an Apple Inc subsidiary.
Neil Aspinall is survived by his wife, their son, their three daughters, and his other son, Roag Best.
PHIL DAVISON
The full article contains 861 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
