DVD review: Strange Fruit: The Beatles’ Apple Records
Posted by Bernard Perusse
August 20, 2012
With all the Beatles-related videos tackling just about every bit of minutiae you can think of, it’s astonishing that it took this long for someone to tackle the fascinating story of Apple Records, the group’s occasionally successful, but often unfocused, label.
Apple was the home of not only Beatles recordings, but releases by artists championed by at least one of the Fabs. James Taylor, Mary Hopkin, Billy Preston and Badfinger were among its most well-known signings.
Formed in 1968 when the Beatles were at the peak of their power, the idea was to launch a company based on what they called “Western communism,” meaning that the traditional label structure that enslaved artists, in the minds of some, would not be the model. It was hippy perfection: a Beatle liked your sound, and you were in. Take all the time you need to make an album, tour – or not – and move on when you feel like it.
As Strange Fruit: The Beatles’ Apple Records (Sexy Intellectual) makes clear, however, it couldn’t work. As the group began to bicker and become preoccupied with their own side projects, the artists on their label were increasingly ignored. And when their hatchet-wielding manager Allen Klein came in to clean house and stop the money from hemorrhaging, it was the end of the road for most of them.
The documentary is unauthorized, but features brief vintage performance and video clips of all the label’s key artists. The narrative is driven by talking-head commentary from observers and participants, including A Rough Guide to the Beatles author Chris Ingham, whose insights on individual albums are right on the money, journalist Mark Paytress, label CEO Tony Bramwell, Apple historian Stephan Granados and Apple artists Jackie Lomax (what’s with the Buffalo Bill getup, Jackie?), David Peel and Badfinger alumni Joey Molland and Ron Griffiths.
At a marathon 162 minutes, Strange Fruit will be too detailed for some, but for true students of both Beatle history and music biz evolution, it’s a gripping (near) three hours. Adopting a year-by-year approach, the film analyzes the strengths and shortcomings of individual releases and the successes and failures of the business in general. Among the fascinating points made is how the two most artist-friendly Beatles had different luck with their signings: McCartney effortlessly created and produced hits for Hopkin and Badfinger, while Harrison – easily the most active of the four when it came to the label – couldn’t do much for Preston, Lomax or Doris Troy.
In the end, Apple was, as the film concludes, “a revolutionary label that failed to live up to its potential.” Deep-sixed in 1975, the label was revived over the last couple of decades to release Beatles-related projects and reissue albums by its non-Beatles proteges (Our review of a kind-of-complete box set, released in 2010, can be found here.)
Apple is no longer a label in the sense of developing artists, of course. The wild eclecticism of its approach will never be seen again.
More’s the pity.
Bernard Perusse
Twitter: @bernieperusse
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