My Other Beatle

I was very saddened to read in the papers yesterday that Neil Aspinall is seriously ill in a New York hospital.  The paper called him ‘the fifth Beatle’.  I’ve known him since I was a child and I’d always thought of him as “my other Beatle“.  He is a lovely man and although I didn’t realise it at the time, a great inspiration to me.

I grew up in Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, England in a street called Clive Road.  We lived in a semi-detached house but the area was still being developed, our road had not yet been tarmacked and was still a muddy, pitted rough track with green gaps where houses were still to be built. The end of the track lead into “St Mary’s College” where we used to terrorise the ground wardens as kids and where years later I would sit on the floor in the ballroom and see an early Pink Floyd show.

As a child I played in the large open space next door to our house, where the remains of a grand old ornamental garden with fishponds and hidden paths were still visable.  This was part of the larger 18th century houses in the road behind us and I guess the houses in our road were built in the sold off gardens of those much grander old houses.

Now as I reached my early teens, I was just discovering Rock and Roll, having bought Beatle records as an 11 year old, I was now moving on to local bands and…. dreaming of learning to play an instrument myself….

My younger sister had started to climb over our back garden fence and play with the new children who had just moved into the big old house at the back. One day she came home to say their parents had asked if I, being of “responsible” age, could ‘babysit’ for them.

It was then we discovered that the new family was Neil Aspinall the famous “Fifth Beatle” who had been their road manager and friend since their beginnings in Liverpool and who now ran and looked Apple Corps. It was the early 70s and was to be my first touch with Fame.

I spent many evenings at the Aspinall’s house, often until the early hours of the morning where they would return to find me asleep on their red velvet sofa in this sumptuous bohemian home, or I’d sleepily hear the Bentley pull into the drive and would leave as the dawn came up, climbing back over the fence to our home.  It was quite exciting, after all in our house no one ever stayed up after 11 o clock …actually no one even went out, especially not to parties in ‘Swinging London” till 4 a.m.!!   It was a completely new world to me and I would return home with my babysitters cash to spend on buying records for myself – funny now to think back that I bought all my first records with money earnt by the Beatles and handed to me!

Neil and his wife Sue were always incredibly kind and generous to me and as Neil discovered my growing interest in the rock and roll world, he started to take me up to London on trips to Apple Headquarters in Saville Row to hang out and then back at his house, he’d play me new tapes of records they were working on.   I don’t need to tell you what that was like for the young teenage Tj?

I can remember one Friday evening Neil calling me over to play me something special.  He threaded the quarter inch tape onto what now seems like an ancient tape player hooked up to his giant speakers and we both sat there listening to a demo of a brand new song called “Imagine” by John Lennon.  I had never heard words like these and I was mesmerized.   Many nights a half asleep Tj would be introduced to people I had only ever read about  – George Harrison, Harry Neilson, Kieth Moon, Ringo and so many others…. leaving them all to party on till dawn as the babysitter stumbled home.

When I got my first bass guitar he let me practice in their cellar with a drummer in my first school band.  I hung out on the set when they made the brilliant film “That’ll be the Day”…. what magical times they were and now when I look back I must have taken it all so easily for granted…

And so, as I sit here in my hotel room in Seattle this morning and read of Neil’s battle with cancer, there sadness in my heart.

I have not seen you for twenty years Neil – you planted and nourished the dreams in a teenage boy from nowhere and I’m thinking of you today and wishing you all the very best.

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Further to the blogging piece I wrote yesterday, I have just learnt of the sad news of Neil’s passing and wanted to extend my condolences to  his family.

Tony James