New Apple boss

Apple Corps Ltd, the company set up by The Beatles to take care of their business, yesterday announced a new CEO for the company, Tom Greene.

Neil Aspinall

Neil Aspinall

After the break-up of The Beatles in 1970, their long time assistant, and initial class mate, road manager and friend, Neil Aspinall held the position until he fell ill with lung cancer in 2007, and passed away in 2008. During his time, he supervised the release of many of the “collection” Beatles albums, such as the red and the blue albums, “Rock and Roll Music”, “Love Songs” etc, as well as boxed sets of singles, EPs and LPs.

Neil was on board with the transition to CDs in 1987, and the beginning of the remix era, which started with “Yellow Submarine Songtrack” in 1999, due to the release of a restored version of the animated film on Beta, VHS and DVD. “The Beatles Live at the Hollywood Bowl” in 1977, and “Live at the BBC” in 1995 were also released during his time, as was “Let It Be…Naked” and the hugely successful compilation album “1”, and a number of rereleased albums with other Apple artists, but his biggest accomplishment was a project he started together with Mal Evans, tentatively called “The Long and Winding Road”.

Neil had collected all the archive material he could find in the form of film and television clips, and edited these together to tell the story of the Beatles, chronologically. The work started as early as 1970 and was eventually to come to fruition in the mid nineties with the new title, “The Beatles Anthology”, which incorporated a TV-series, a book, an album series of outtakes, live and radio recordings and unreleased songs and a box of video cassettes, which later became a box of DVDs. It also saw the three remaining Beatles come together, both to improve upon a couple of John Lennon’s demos as well as for a filmed reunion jam and conversations.

After all of these fantastic releases, Beatles fans worldwide were asking for the release of the material missing: the “Let It Be” movie, the Shea Stadium TV special, the Washington Coliseum concert film, not to mention all the promotional films for their songs, some of which we got glimpses of during the Anthology series. Aspinall was asked about the latter, but his reply was that “it would be too obvious”! Neil also fought, won and eventually lost, a battle in several courts with Apple, the computer company over the companies names.

Jeff Jones

Jeff Jones

Neil Aspinall’s successor in Apple was Jeff Jones. He was formerly an executive vice president at Sony/BMG, where he managed Sony’s recorded catalogs, including repackaging classic albums.

During his time at Apple, the Beatles’ promotional films were released in a special repackaging of “1”, the number 1 hits album, the Beatles became available as downloads on iTunes with the Washington Coliseum concert film an added bonus, a Beatles Live project resulted in the “Eight Days A Week” film with the concert part of the Shea Stadium special restored and remixed but only screened theatrically, “Get Back” TV series (which eventually also became available on physical discs) , a restored and remixed “Let It Be” on the Disney + streaming service.

The Beatles’ new boxed sets, one in stereo and one in mono were released both as CDs and LPs, and the remix era got under way with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, followed by “The Beatles”, “Abbey Road”, “Let It Be” (which finally gave us the “Get Back” album, an early incarnation of the “Let It Be” album), and “Revolver”.

He also oversaw the releases on DVD and Blu-ray releases of ṯhe films “Help!”, “Yellow Submarine” and “Magical Mystery Tour”. “A Hard Day’s Night” have also become available restored and with a new audio remix by Giles Martin during Jones’ time with the company, but that film is owned by another company, not by Apple Corps.

Tom Greene

Tom Greene

Jeff Jones stepped back last October, with a company man subbing while the search for a new CEO was going on. They eventually found Tom Greene, currently the COO of BLAST, a competitive entertainment company that works with prominent video game developers and publishers on the production, commercialization, and audience growth of their esports programs. Greene will remain on board with BLAST even after taking the CEO position at Apple Corps, busy man. He will relocate though, as he is currently residing in Copenhagen, the job at Apple will see him moving to London.

Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Sean Ono Lennon said: “We are thrilled to welcome Tom Greene as CEO. We have a lot of exciting plans and Tom’s experience and vision make him the perfect person to join us in making it all happen.”

Tom Greene: “It is a huge honour to lead Apple Corps into this new phase of its history. Like so many people around the world, I grew up in a household obsessed with The Beatles and their music. At a time when the world might need more of The Beatles’ spirit, there are so many new and innovative ways to bring their unique magic to all generations of fans. I cannot wait to get started.”

One of the projects in the pipeline is the four biographical dramatisations of The Beatles’ story, one each, seen from the viewpoint of each member of the group. That’s not what the most ardent Beatles fans are looking forward to, as we are more interested in the real deal, not actors posing as The Beatles.