Come & Get It – The Best Of Apple Records (1968 – 1972 Hits Set/Capitol/EMI CD) + Strange Fruit: The Beatles’ Apple Records
(Chrome Dreams/MVD DVD)
Picture:
X/C+ Sound: C+/B Extras: C-/C Music/Documentary: B/B+
Back in
the 1960s, the idea of a music act of any kind having their own record label
was considered shocking and surprising.
Warner wanted Frank Sinatra so bad that they let him set up Reprise
Records and long after his reign of hits, the label lives and included many of
his best friends joining him with the result being some of the biggest hits of
their careers. Flush with tons of money
and with the sudden loss of manager Brian Epstein, The Beatles set up Apple
Corp as an all-media entity, but it became especially known for its music…. while it lasted.
These two
recent releases show the label and company was not just fore their group and
solo works, but had the original intent of being its own powerful entity.
A little
while ago, Capitol/EMI issued a single CD collection called Come & Get It – The Best Of Apple
Records running 1968 – 1972 and featuring the major highlights of
non-Beatles work and is a hits set for the most part. It is joined by the oddly titled Strange Fruit: The Beatles’ Apple Records
DVD that runs over 2.5 hours and covers much of the rise and fall of the label
in its original form.
First the
hits form the CD:
1)
Those Were The Days by Mary Hopkin was a huge #1
worldwide hit in 1968 produced by Paul McCartney and (shades of Sgt. Pepper’s
when you think about it) offered a 1920s-style Russian folk arrangement. It sold millions of singles and seemed a huge
start for the label.
2)
Carolina In My Mind is one of the first hits by none
other than James Taylor from his self-titled debut album in 1968 with McCartney
on bass and George Harrison on backing vocals.
It showed their taste in talent was no fluke and they knew talent when
they heard it, but it was not a big hit, yet if they could have kept him would
have had one of the premiere artists in what became the singer/songwriter
movement; the first post-Beatles phenomenon.
3)
Maybe Tomorrow was by The Iveys who later
changed their name to Badfinger, brought to Apple by one-time Beatles roadie
Mal Evans and was only a small U.S. hit (which was better than the U.K.) and
did well in other countries (like Holland) but they were badly compared to The
Beatles and would soon make changes.
4)
Theme From Thingumybob was also a McCartney song by The
Black Dyke Mills Band for the 1968 British TV comedy drama series. A brass band, the song is known more in the U.K.
than most countries.
5)
King Of Fuh by Brute Force is a funny F-bomb
song that was hardly distributed, but written by the author of The Tokens’ The Lion Sleeps Tonight and released in
1969. Amusing.
6)
Sour Milk Sea is by white soul singer Jackie
Lomax who the label was never able to break in and despite Harrison, McCartney,
Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton on the track, it was not a hit.
7)
Goodbye was another hot for Mary Hopkin
by McCartney who played on it and though not as big, kept her a big star at the
time.
8)
That's The Way God Planned It was recorded by “other fifth
Beatles” Billy Preston and also included Harrison, Keith Richards, Ginger Baker
and Eric Clapton performing on the track.
However, I was never a big fan of it, but it was a hit.
9)
New Day was another attempt to give the
talented Jackie Lomax a hit that also did not work out.
10) Golden
Slumbers/Carry That Weight by Trash is one of several remakes here by a Scottish
group that did a decent job of covering it.
11) Give
Peace A Chance has the Hot Chocolate Band doing a reggae version of the Lennon
classic when that genre was new. They
are the same British band who later had much bigger hits in the Disco era when
they simply called themselves Hot Chocolate including the classic I Believe In Miracles.
12) Come And
Get It was a big hit for Badfinger that was produced and written by McCartney
for soundtrack of The Magic Christian
feature film with Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, but it came from one of the
group’s members publicly complaining they were not getting enough attention, so
McCartney decided to do a song with irony to get the last laugh and it was a
massive hit much bigger than the film it was cut for.
13) Ain't That Cute was co-written by its singer,
Doris Troy with Harrison and issued in
1969. It is not bad, but did not do
well.
14) My Sweet
Lord has Billy Preston covering Harrison’s biggest hit, as well as most
controversial song (he was sued over its originality) in a version produced by Harrison. Not bad,
but I like the original better.
15) Try Some
Buy Some has Harrison teaming up with singer and Rock legend Ronnie Spector
on a song that Harrison later remade
himself. Interesting, but not a big hit.
16) Govinda
is by the Radha Krishna
Temple of whom the label (especially
at the behest of Harrison) issued several
albums from who otherwise would likely have remained in obscurity. This gives you an idea of how those releases
were, Harrison plays on it and it was even a
minor hit.
17) We're On
Our Way sung by Chris Hodge happened because of Starr discovering him and
the result was a hit, though not a big career.
18) Saturday
Nite Special by The Sundown Playboys landed up on the label because one of
the members of this Louisiana
band sent a demo of it to the label’s offices.
19) God Save
Us by Bill Elliot & The Elastic Oz Band was a special single by Lennon
and Yoko Ono to raise money for the defense in the famous Oz Obscenity Trial of
1971. A lesser heard political song from
the duo, it makes sense to include it here.
20) Sweet
Music is by Lon & Derrek van Eaton, one of the final acts to sign to
the label before it folded and became a legacy label. Ringo played on it and Harrison
produced it.
21) Day
After Day by Badfinger was a massive worldwide hit, only the band’s third
single for Apple and was produced by Harrison who also sang on the record. Sadly, it was their last hit before leaving
the declining label for Warner Bros. in a deal that eventually caused the
co-writers to self-destruct. It later
became the basis for Joe Jackson’s great hit Breaking Us In Two.
A booklet
on the songs and artist is the only extra.
Strange Fruit is one of the British company
Chrome Dream’s longer documentary works and they have done plenty on The
Beatles (including the great series on Lennon & McCartney as writers,
friends and rivals (reviewed elsewhere on this site), but the title will remind
music scholars of the political anti-lynching hit by Billie Holliday. However, that has nothing to do with the
story, which covers the songs and artists above and much more.
The only major
problem is that for whatever reason, the program never tells us that all four
Beatles had their work on Apple after the group broke up. You’d think Paul and Ringo signed at other
majors. Otherwise, this has great
interviews, tons of licensed original music and the usual well-researched
history with more detail on the rise and fall of the label than this review
could cover. As you may know, McCartney
called the company Western Capitalism, but that was before they lost so much
money that Lennon noted this in an interview and Rolling Stones manager Alan
Klein convinced all but McCartney to run Apple for five years with mixed
results that caused it to collapse.
Another
shocker are all the major acts they failed to sign because they did not have a
good A&R rep to get that job done, so they missed Crosby, Stills, Nash
& Young, Yes and David Bowie!
Imagine if they had signed them and kept them, Apple would still be an
active label today. The Beatles’ last
few albums arrived at this time and their sad break up also happened. If only Epstein had lived. This is one of Chrome Dreams best and you
should go out of your way to see it. A
featurette on the story of King Of Fuh
is the only extra.
The PCM
2.0 16/44.1 Stereo on the Best CD sounds as good as it is going to in this
format and has been nicely remastered without losing any of the quality or
character of the songs. The 1.33 X 1
image on the DVD is a mix of old film and vide footage with new interviews,
nicely edited as always and just fine to watch throughout, but while the lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has some Pro Logic-like surround information, there
are too many simple stereo and monophonic moments for that mode to be
consistent throughout. Pro Logic can put
it too much in the center channel of home theater systems.
- Nicholas Sheffo
