The Beatles, the Bible, and Bodega Bay: My Long and Winding Road

by Mansfield, Ken

• ISBN13: 9780805422894
• ISBN10: 0805422897
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-05-01
• Publisher: B&H

Summary

When the lads from Liverpool began their own record label, Ken Mansfield became the first American manager of Apple Records. This book contains Mansfield's reflections on those heady days of the Beatles era, including his personal recollections of the members of the Beatles, but Mansfield also reconstructs his journey of discovery that led him to his faith in God.

Table of Contents

The Long and Winding Road
Days in the Lives
Here, There, and Everywhere
Author's Bent, Lament, and Intent
A Foreword from Back then Preludes
Hands Across the Water	1	(6)
Lost at Sea	7	(6)
50's Rock and Roll	13	(14)
Kings	27	(6)
Eight Arms to Hold You	33	(6)
Beauty for Ashes	39	(6)
The Fool on the Hill	45	(6)
Fish Tales	51	(4)
Like Peggy Lee Said: ``Is That All There Is?''	55	(10)
Just Like Jeremiah	65	(4)
Hollywood---Paul 'E Would	69	(12)
Beauty and the Beach	81	(8)
Hello, Goodbye	89	(12)
Victory at Sea	101	(4)
Up on the Roof	105	(8)
Without Using Your Hands	113	(6)
There's a Place	119	(10)
Peter, Appalling, and Merry	129	(6)
Norwegian Woods---A Separate Reality	135	(6)
The Son in My Eyes	141	(4)
(Why Couldn't They Just) ``Let it Be''	145	(8)
Message in a Bottle	153	(6)
I'm Only Sleeping	159	(4)
Fissures of Men	163	(6)
I've Just Seen a Face	169	(6)
The Waves and the Word	175	(4)
He Was the Eggman	179	(10)
Harbor Lights	189	(6)
Deklein of the Roamin' Allen Empire	195	(8)
Blessing of the Fleet	203	(6)
Imagine There's No Heaven	209	(14)
The Rocks Cry Out	223	(6)
Across the Universe	229	(8)
The Heart of the Matter	237	(4)
Homeward	241	(6)
Father, Wherever You Are	247	(4)
Mal	251	(10)
A Child's Prayer	261	(4)
While My Guitars Gently Sleep	265	(6)
The Old Man and the Sea	271	(4)
Kass: Reinventing the Apple	275	(10)
Past Tours, Pastures, and Pastors	285	(12)
The Beatles, the Bible, and Bodega Bay	297
Blood, Sweet, and Tears
Added Infinite Items and in the End--The End

Excerpts

Chapter One

Hands Across the Water

AUGUST 1968

Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean

I peer out the little oval window into the clouds, searching for the coastline. Still in a state of disbelief, I try to discern the transitional point in my life that brought me out of a small town in northern Idaho into this moment and this airplane as it prepares for the approach to Heathrow Airport, London, England, Europe--the Beatles!

    Less than a year after the death of manager Brian Epstein, the Beatles are masterminding their own business empire, Apple Industries. Ron Kass, the president of Apple Industries, notified Stanley Gortikov, the president of Capitol Industries, that he and the "lads" are considering asking me to become the U.S. manager of their record division, Apple Records. They asked that I join them in London for a dramatic and insightful series of Apple-related meetings. It seems that washing my feet, brushing the potato peels out of my hair, working my way through college, and then scrambling my way up through the corporate ranks at Capitol Records, Hollywood, is paying off in a way I never imagined. I still have a hard time extricating myself from the small-town country boy within: dust to above the ankles, dirt roads, rolling hills, quiet fields, and simple surroundings. This world is precisely 6,071 miles and just as many light years away from my Idaho beginnings and the Nez Perce Indian reservation lands where I grew up--a world with no freebies, no frills, no backstage passes, no fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, no bobbies on horseback, no afternoon teas, and certainly no Fab Four.

    As I continue to gaze out the window, the airplane becomes a reverse time capsule as we fall together into my destiny:

I'm traveling with Stanley Gortikov and Capitol's head of Press and Publicity, Larry Delaney. Apple A&R man Peter Asher (of Peter and Gordon fame, and an old friend of mine by now), is scheduled to pick us up at London's Heathrow Airport. Gortikov's straightforward admonition on the way to LAX (Los Angeles International Airport)--that the Beatles currently account for approximately 50 percent of Capitol's business--keeps running through my head. Fifty percent! As he subtly puts it, "When it has to do with the Beatles-- there is no margin for error ."

At the Capitol Tower back in Hollywood after our trip, Bob York, my immediate superior and the v.p. general manager of the company, summons me into his office to discuss my new responsibilities and to let me know in no uncertain terms that I am to "keep it together" as far as the Beatles and the Apple staffers are concerned. In order to make my job easier, he informs me that I do not have to get approvals for my travel, expenditures, or schedules. In fact, I will not even be required to explain my whereabouts or what I am doing--as long as I "keep it together"! At this point I expect Glen Wallichs, the founder and chairman of the board of Capitol, to call me over to his home next and instruct me to "keep it together" with the Beatles just to be sure I get the message from the complete executive hierarchy of the company! I do get the message, but more than that, Capitol Records has just handed me a first-class ticket to ride on a long and wonderfully winding road into the most amazing place and time in musical history.

    I stop dream-staring out the window and begin straining to see land. Suddenly I see sparkling lights way off and way down below; I'm seeing England for the first time! Then I realize that because we have taken the typical north-southeast approach, we are being blessed with a night view of portions of Scotland, Ireland, and northern England. The stewardess shakes me out of my wonderment and asks if I want coffee or tea with my breakfast. "Coffee please ... no wait, I'll have tea." I better get used to it!

    I twist off the wind tunnel of air above me and pull close the thin excuse for a blanket. My body remains in an odd angular relationship to the seat so that I can still search for the coastline. I feel like a kid: wrapped in a blanket, excited, nervous, and gawking out the window like I have never been on an airplane before.

    As the runaway comes into sight, the view from the oval window looks cold, rainy, and bleak.

God, I am scared.

JULY 1968

LONDON

Apple moves into new offices at 3 Savile Row.

The Beatles attend the world premiere of the animated filmYellow Submarine at the London Pavilion.

Work on their new album, The Beatles ( referred to worldwide as the White Album), continues at EMI and Trident Studios. This immense recording project was started at George's Esher Surrey home studio in May and at this point stood at about a dozen songs in various stages of completion.

The Beatles close down their Baker Street Apple Boutique. The one on Kings Road suffered the same defeat a few weeks later.

AUGUST 1968

LOS ANGELES

In response to an invitation by the Beatles, Stanley Gortikov, president of Capitol Industries; along with Ken Mansfield, national promotion manager-director of Artist Relations; and Larry Delaney, press and publicity chief for the label, fly to London to begin strategy meetings pertaining to the release of Apple Records' product in the U.S.A.

Upon return to Los Angeles, Mansfield is promoted to Capitol's Director of Independent Labels, and the Beatles and Ron Kass select him to be their U.S. manager of Apple Records.

Copyright © 2000 Ken Mansfield. All rights reserved.