The 'Fab Four' may well have been the world's most influential pop group, but if the highly enjoyable Sky Arts documentary 'The Beatles, Hippies and Hells Angels — Inside the Crazy World of Apple' was anything to go by, they were also amongst the worst businessmen too.

Communist Marks & Spencer

According to one of the talking heads that were interviewed for the programme, they wanted 'Apple', the company they set up to supposedly look after and develop their various business interests, aims and ambitions, '…to be a kind of Communist Marks & Spencer'.

Little wonder then, that with the copious amount of drug taking and alcohol fuelling the day to day activities, Apple soon turned into a psychedelic financial storm drain of outflowing money.

It may also go some way to explaining why The Beatles decided to invest time and money in a poet who screamed at Lions in a zoo, a bloke who couldn't wire an electric plug let alone come up with a 36 track mixing desk, employed people who floated about on a Maharishi cloud of transcendental LSD… and came up to Yorkshire in 1968 to record 'Yellow Submarine' with Black Dyke Mills Band.

Spending a fortune

As was shown, nobody questioned John, Paul, George or Ringo when it came to how they spent their fortunes, as long as they were all having a great time of it back in trendy London.

It was therefore interesting to hear two past members of Black Dyke in John Clay and David Pogson recalling their memories of the recording at Saltaire, when the programme featured the link to the current Queensbury band under MD Prof Nicholas Childs with a neat segment of them playing the pop single.

Little wonder then, that with the copious amount of drug taking and alcohol fuelling the day to day activities, Apple soon turned into a psychedelic financial storm drain of outflowing money4BR

Whiff

Appropriately enough though, it came with a faint whiff of 1968 hippy ganga smoke most probably still in the air, as the current producers managed to mix up David with James Shepherd, whilst John pointed out that Paul McCartney seemed to be able to play the cornet OK — although the picture showed that he did, like his guitar, hold it left handed.

It was though a great insight into a time when anything was possible — even for brass bands.