Magic Alex
Magic Alex | |
---|---|
Electronics engineer, security consultant | |
Board member of | Apple Electronics |
Spouse | Eufrosyne Doxiades |
Yannis (later John) Alexis Mardas (Greek: Αλέξης Μάρδας; 2 May 1942 – 13 January 2017), also known as Magic Alex, was a Greek electronics engineer who was closely associated with the Beatles. His nickname was given to him by John Lennon when he was involved with the group between 1965 and 1969, during which time he became head of Apple Electronics.
Mardas arrived in England in 1965, exhibiting his Kinetic Light Sculptures at the
In the 1970s, the
London and the Beatles
The 23-year-old Yannis Alexis Mardas first arrived in England on a student visa in 1965, befriending John Dunbar of the Indica Gallery in London, and later moving in with him in a flat on Bentinck Street, which was where Mardas first met Lennon. Known at this time as Yannis Mardas, he found employment as a television repairman.[2] Dunbar later introduced Mardas to Brian Jones,[3] after Mardas exhibited his Kinetic Light Sculptures at the Indica Gallery.[4] Dunbar worked with Mardas on the "psychedelic light box" for the Rolling Stones' three-week tour of Europe in 1967,[5] although they were not impressed with the results.[4] Dunbar later said: "He was quite cunning in the way he pitched his thing. He knew enough to know how to wind people up and to what extent. He was a fucking TV repairman: Yannis Mardas, none of this 'Magic Alex' shit!"[6][7]
Jones introduced Mardas to Lennon, and it was at this point that Mardas impressed Lennon with the Nothing Box; a small plastic box with randomly blinking lights that Lennon would stare at for hours while under the influence of
The Beatles set up a company for Mardas called Fiftyshapes Ltd. in September 1967;[13] he later became one of the first employees of the newly formed Apple Corps, earning £40 a week (equivalent to £800 in 2021).[14] and receiving 10% of any profits made from his inventions.[15]
The Beatles often called Mardas the "Greek wizard",[16] and Paul McCartney remembered being interested in his ideas: "Well, if you [Mardas] could do that, we’d like one". It was always, 'We'd like one'".[17] Mardas' ideas were not confined to the realms of electronic wizardry, but included songwriting involvement, with a Lennon–Mardas composition, "What's the New Mary Jane", originally meant for inclusion on the Beatles' self-titled double album (also known as the White Album). Lennon later removed Mardas' songwriting credit for unknown reasons.[18]
Mardas was given his own laboratory called Apple Electronics, at 34 Boston Place,
Greece
The Beatles had tried in 1964 to buy the 14-acre (5.7 ha) Trinity Island, (Greek: Αγια Τριάδα), off the coast of the Greek island of Euboea (resembling a guitar in shape) but the owners were not interested in a sale.[21] Lennon was still interested in buying or leasing an island to live on together, and discussed it with the other Beatles on 19 July 1967.[22] Mardas' father was a major in the Greek secret police, and Mardas explained that through him the Beatles would have access to Greek government connections, which would speed the acquisition of an island, because many islands did have the right certificates of ownership and were subject to government restrictions.[21] On 22 July 1967, Harrison and his wife Pattie Boyd, Ringo Starr and Neil Aspinall flew to Athens, where they stayed in Mardas' parents' house overnight, until Lennon, along with Cynthia Lennon and their son Julian Lennon, McCartney and Jane Asher, Pattie Boyd's 16-year-old sister Paula, Mal Evans and Alistair Taylor set off for Athens.[3]
Their chartered yacht, the MV Arvi, was detained in Crete because of bad weather, so the party had to wait in Athens for three days.[22] Taylor complained that on a trip to a small hill village, "We came round a corner of the peaceful road only to find hundreds of photographers clicking away at us", which Mardas had organised. McCartney later said that while sailing around Greek islands, everybody just sat around and took LSD.[23][24] They eventually found what is referred to as the 80-acre (32 ha) island of Leslo (although no Greek island is officially known by this name). The island had a small fishing village, four beaches, and a large olive grove. Four small neighbouring islands surrounded it (one for each Beatle). The Beatles sent Alistair Taylor back to London to handle the purchase of the island. Taylor received permission from the Greek government to purchase the island, and £90,000 of special "export dollars" required for the transaction were purchased. However, the Beatles changed their minds before the deal went through, and the export dollars were sold for a £11,400 profit a few months later when exchange rates went up (one of the few profitable business ventures for the Beatles).[25]
Apple Boutique and marriage
On 1 August 1967, Mardas, Aspinall and
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and India
Mardas and Aspinall joined Lennon and Harrison in India, where they were studying meditation under the tutelage of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; Starr had returned to England—complaining that the Indian food did not agree with him—and McCartney had left on 24 March 1968.[32] When Mardas first met the Maharishi, he said sarcastically, "I know you! Didn’t I meet you in Greece years ago?"[33]
Mardas was jealous about the control the Maharishi had over Lennon, and during one of their frequent walks through the woods he asked Lennon why the Maharishi always had an accountant by his side.[34] Lennon replied that the Beatles (or Lennon and Harrison) were considering donating a large part of their income to the Maharishi's bank accounts in Switzerland.[35] When Mardas questioned the Maharishi about this, he offered money to Mardas to build a high-powered radio station, so he could broadcast Maharishi's teachings to the whole of India.[36]
Alcohol was not allowed in the Maharishi's
Cynthia Lennon personally believed that Mardas invented the story about sexual impropriety to undermine the Maharishi's influence on the Beatles, as Mardas was always jealous of anyone having Lennon's attention.[39][40][41] Harrison and McCartney later offered their apologies to the Maharishi (McCartney said that he did not believe the accusation at all).[42] In 2010, Mardas issued a statement to The New York Times denying that he had spread rumours.[43]
Lennon's divorce
After returning to England in May 1968, Lennon suggested that Cynthia take a holiday in Greece with Mardas, Donovan, Boyd, and her sister.
Lennon went to New York with McCartney shortly afterward, telling Cynthia she could not go with them, so she went on a trip to Italy with her mother.[48] During Cynthia's holiday in Italy, an "agitated" Mardas unexpectedly arrived (pacing up and down outside her hotel until she returned)[49] and gave the news that Lennon was planning to sue Cynthia for divorce on grounds of adultery, seek sole custody of Julian, and send Cynthia "back to Hoylake".[50] Mardas also said that he intended to testify in court that Cynthia had committed adultery with him. She said in 2005: "The mere fact that Magic Alex [Mardas] arrived in Italy in the middle of the night without any prior knowledge of where I was staying made me extremely suspicious. I was being coerced into making it easy for John [Lennon] and Yoko to accuse me of doing something that would make them not look so bad".[51]
Apple Studio
Mardas had often said that the Abbey Road studio was "no good",[52] much to producer George Martin's annoyance: "The trouble was that Alex was always coming to the studios to see what we were doing and to learn from it, while at the same time saying 'These people are so out of date.' But I found it very difficult to chuck him out, because the boys liked him so much. Since it was very obvious that I didn't, a minor schism developed".[53] Mardas boasted that he could build a much better studio, with a 72-track tape machine,[1] instead of the 4-track at Abbey Road—which was being updated at the time to an 8-track—so he was given the job of designing the new Apple Studio in the basement of Apple headquarters on Savile Row.[54] One of Mardas' more outrageous plans was to replace the acoustic baffles around Starr's drums with an invisible sonic force field.[55] Starr remembered that Mardas bought some "huge" surplus computers from British Aerospace, which were stored in his barn, but "they never left the barn", and were later sold as scrap metal.[55]
Mardas gave the Beatles regular reports of his progress, but when they required their new studio in January 1969, during the Get Back project that became
During these sessions, Mardas gave the Beatles a prototype of a combination rhythm guitar and bass that had a swivel neck.[59] In the film The Beatles: Get Back, Lennon wondered how he would play guitar with the strings of the bass against his hand, and noted that it was impossible to tune.[60]
After Allen Klein was brought in to be the Beatles' manager in 1969, he closed Apple Electronics[61] and Mardas left the company.[62][63] It was later estimated that Mardas' ideas and projects had cost the Beatles at least £300,000[64] (£5.54 million in 2021 pounds if it was essentially spent in 1968). Starr once approved of one of Mardas' ideas: "He [Mardas] had an idea to stop people taping our records off the radio – you'd have to have a decoder to get the signal, and then we thought we could sell the time and put commercials on instead. We brought EMI and Capitol in from America to look at it, but they weren't interested at all."[57] According to author Peter Doggett, in the Beatles' history, Mardas is the only individual who occupies a place close to Klein's in terms of vilification from commentators and biographers.[65]
Security consultant
In the 1970s, the anti-terrorism industry offered bullet-proof vehicles, bugging devices and security hardware. Mardas set up companies offering these products to VIPs, using the former King Constantine II of Greece as his principal salesman.[64] Ex-King Constantine—who at the time was exiled in Britain—provided contacts to several royal families for Mardas, and had close contact with the deposed Shah of Iran, who had moved to Mexico. The Shah was one of the first people interested in the customised bullet-proof cars that Mardas was offering, and was believed to have financially assisted Mardas’ companies.[64]
In 1974, Mardas held an expensive party for the then heir to the throne of Spain,
The Sultan of Oman ordered six Mercedes 450 limousines in 1977, but quickly discovered that they were not as safe as he had been led to believe. His ex-SAS bodyguards tested one of the cars in the desert in July 1977, by firing guns at it, but a bullet hit an emergency air cylinder, which caused the fuel tank to explode, destroying the entire car.[64] The remaining cars were immediately sent back, with a demand to refund the money spent.[64] King Hussein of Jordan had a fleet of cars that Mardas customised, but carried out a safety test on them with live ammunition in November 1977. One eyewitness reported that the cars could be more life-threatening than ordinary vehicles, as bullets easily pierced the armour-plating, and the thick armoured glass broke into jagged splinters when struck. Hussein ordered that the cars be restored to their previous state.[64] These failures convinced Mardas and Constantine to look at the growing European market for anti-terrorist protection, setting up a factory in London to produce "bullet-proof" cars in 1978. This was financed by an investment of over £1 million through anonymous Monegasque and Swiss bank accounts, which were believed to be controlled by the Shah.[64]
The media and the courts
On 28 February 1988,
The Independent newspaper apologised on 21 August 2006, writing that on 14 June 2006, the paper had wrongly reported Mardas' involvement with Apple Electronics Ltd. They corrected the earlier piece by writing that Mardas had not been a company employee, but a director and shareholder of Apple Electronics, and had not been fired, but resigned his directorship in May 1971, while still retaining his shareholding, until giving it to Apple Corps some years later. The paper accepted that Mardas "did not claim to have invented electric paint, a flying saucer or a recording studio with a 'sonic force field' or cause his employers to waste money on such ideas. We apologise to Mr. Mardas for these errors".[62]
In 2008, Mardas won the right to sue The New York Times in England, in relation to an online article which said he was a charlatan. In a story about the Maharishi, Allan Kozinn had written: "Alexis Mardas, a supposed inventor and charlatan who had become a Beatles' insider".[66][67] After an appeal, Mardas won the right to continue his case of defamation against The New York Times in 2009.[68][69][70] After The New York Times produced a witness, Sir Harold Evans, who gave evidence supporting the journalistic responsibility of the paper, Mardas said he would not pursue the case further, on condition that the paper would publicly explain that by labelling him as a charlatan, it did not mean to imply that he was a con man.[71] On 4 March 2010, The New York Times published an editor's update to the 2008 article, saying: "While expressing skepticism about his work as an inventor during that period, the article did not accuse Mr. Mardas of engaging in fraudulent dealings or criminality. ... The Times's reporting on those events was attributed to Paul McCartney and based on widely published accounts from books and magazines".[42]
Later years and death
Mardas put 15 items from his collection of Lennon memorabilia up for sale on 5 May 2004 at
Notes
- ^ a b Lewisohn 1990, p. 164.
- ^ Miles 1997, p. 373.
- ^ a b Spitz 2005, p. 704.
- ^ a b c Barnes, Anthony (2 May 2004). "Apple's 'Magic Alex' sends John Lennon's acid artwork to auction". The Independent. Archived from the original on 29 June 2009. Retrieved 29 June 2009.
- ^ Brown & Gaines 1983, p. 205.
- ^ Miles 1997, pp. 373–374.
- ^ Jacob, Sam (30 April 2009). "Just what do designers believe in?". The Architects' Journal. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ The Beatles Anthology DVD (2003) (Episode 8 - 0:29:53) George Martin talking about the toys that Mardas gave Lennon.
- ^ a b c Spitz 2005, p. 705.
- ^ Miles 1997, pp. 442–443.
- ^ Brown & Gaines 1983, p. 206.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Statement by John Alexis Mardas" (PDF). The New York Times. February 2010. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ a b Everett 1999, p. 159.
- ^ a b UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 11 June 2022.
- ^ Spitz 2005, p. 728.
- ^ 16, September 1968. p48
- ^ Miles 1997, p. 376.
- ^ Turner 1999, p. 264.
- ^ The Beatles Anthology DVD (2003) (Episode 8 - 0:30:02) Mardas in the Apple Electronics studio.
- ^ Miles 1997, pp. 531–532.
- ^ a b "Greek islands for sale". Country Life. 11 October 2007. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ a b Miles & Badman 2001, p. 272.
- ^ Miles 1997, pp. 379–380.
- ^ The Beatles Anthology DVD (2003) (Episode 6 - 1:06:18) Harrison talking about the trip to Greece to buy an island.
- ^ "The Beatles visit a Greek island they intended to purchase", The Beatles Bible. Retrieved on 30 March 2019.
- ^ The Beatles Anthology DVD (2003) (Episode 7 - 0:06:42) Harrison talking about visiting Haight-Ashbury, with photos of Mardas sitting/standing next to him.
- ^ Shotton & Schaffner 1983, p. 150.
- ^ Spitz 2005, p. 730.
- ^ Harry 2000, p. 717.
- ^ Spitz 2005, p. 732.
- ^ a b 16, November 1968. p64
- ^ a b Spitz 2005, p. 755.
- ^ Badman & Bacon 2004, p. 214.
- ^ "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: Spiritual leader who introduced millions, including the Beatles, to transcendental meditation". The Independent. 7 February 2008. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ Spitz 2005, pp. 755–756.
- ^ Brown & Gaines 1983, p. 261.
- ^ Lennon, Cynthia (10 February 2008). "The Beatles, the Maharishi and me". The Sunday Times. Times Newspapers. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ a b c d e Spitz 2005, p. 756.
- ^ Brown & Gaines 1983, p. 264.
- ^ Miles 1997, p. 429.
- ^ Musician magazine, September 1992, p. 43 "There was nothing that ever happened except that there was a fella who was supposedly a friend of ours who stirred up and created this big fantasy. There was never anything that took place".
- ^ a b Kozinn, Allan (7 February 2008). "Meditation on the Man Who Saved the Beatles". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ "Corrections". The New York Times. 4 March 2010. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ Hunt, Chris (Uncut) December 2005
- ^ Lennon 2005, pp. 281–282.
- ^ a b Spitz 2005, p. 772.
- ^ Lennon 2005, pp. 288–289.
- ^ Lennon 2005, pp. 292–293.
- ^ Spitz 2005, p. 773.
- ^ Coleman 1995, p. 464.
- ^ The Loves Of John Lennon by Chris Hunt, Uncut, John Lennon Special, 2005.
- ^ The Beatles Anthology DVD, (2003) (Episode 8 – 0:29:56) George Martin talking about Mardas saying that Abbey Road was "No good".
- ^ Martin 1994, p. 173.
- ^ Spitz 2005, p. 768.
- ^ a b c d e f Spitz 2005, p. 810.
- ^ The Beatles Anthology DVD (2003) (Episode 8 – 0:30:32) Harrison talking about the chaos in the studio, and having to rip it all out.
- ^ a b Anthology (book) 2000, p. 290.
- ^ Spitz 2005, p. 811.
- ^ Sokol, Tony (1 December 2021). "The Beatles: Get Back – Was Magic Alex a Con Artist or an Innovator?". Den of Geek. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
- ^ Moran, Meredith (7 December 2021). "Here's What Happened to Get Back's Non-Beatle Characters". Slate. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
- ^ Robinson, John (2 November 2003). "Get Back and other setbacks". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ a b "John Alexis Mardas". The Independent. 21 August 2006. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ Miles 1997, p. 546.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Campbell, Duncan, New Statesman, 3 August 1979. pp. 158–160
- ^ Doggett 2011, p. 65.
- ^ "Beatle associate can sue over 'charlatan' claim, says High Court". Out-Law. 18 December 2008. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ "Meditation on the Man Who Saved the Beatles". The New York Times. 7 February 2008.
- ^ "Parliamentary business". publications parliament. Retrieved 16 June 2012.
- ^ "Mardas v New York Times; Mardas v International Herald Tribune". 5rb (Media and entertainment law). Archived from the original on 21 May 2013. Retrieved 17 December 2008.
- ^ Avila, Amanda (12 February 2009). "English Court Allows Defamation Action To Proceed Despite Evidence Of Low Readership". Stanford Law School. Retrieved 16 June 2012.
- ^ Muir, Hugh (5 March 2010). "The show won't go on. The actors have upped and left. But then that's showbiz". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 June 2012.
- ^ "Lot 251 : John Lennon". Invaluable. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ "Magic Beatles Collection At Christie's" (PDF). Christie’s. 26 March 2004. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ Barnes, Anthony (2 May 2004). "Apple's 'Magic Alex' sends John Lennon's acid artwork to auction". The Independent. Archived from the original on 29 June 2009. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ "John Lennon's guitar sells for $408,000". BBC News. 19 May 2013. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
- ^ "Αλέξης Μάρδας: Όταν οι Beatles τον "έχρισαν" Magic Alex!" [Alexis Mardas: When the Beatles called him Magic Alex!]. Newsit.gr (in Greek). 13 January 2017. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
References
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- ISBN 978-0-7119-8307-6.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ISBN 978-0-8128-2915-0.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ISBN 978-0-313-37686-3.
- ISBN 978-0-8118-2684-6.
- Apple records. ASIN: B00008GKEG.
- Turner, Steve (1999). A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles' Song. ISBN 978-1-85868-806-0.
External links