I have a special treat because it is on one of my favorite group of people to write about on this blog, The Apple Scruffs! In the October 1996 issue of Mojo magazine, there is a large story about the Scruffs, included in that story is a second story, which is actually an interview about the Scruffs with Derek Taylor. Derek passed away in 1997, and while he did have some interviews in the Anthology, he was supposed to have more to say that was going to be in the Anthology book, which ended up being post-pond due to his death. And since I could never afford his book, it was great to read his words. This was written by Cliff Jones.
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| Derek and Neil discuss thing inside of Apple |
Derek Taylor acted as the Beatles’ press officer and advisor
throughout the Apple period and still oversees their press. He was made an honorary Apple Scruff in 1969
and still treasures his membership card
“The Scruffs were almost as extraordinary as The Beatles
were. I used to imagine that if I could
only discover why the Scruffs were out there I might understand why I was here
on the inside. With the benefit of
hindsight the answer was simple we were all just Beatle fans. I was a fan of everything I was involved
with, from the Byrds to the Beach Boys, but the Scruffs were a different class
altogether. Totally different from fans
of, say, the Bay City Rollers or Take That.
“It is like the ravens at the Tower of London. You couldn’t really imagine them not being
there. Apple was an insane place
then. I saw the Scruffs as just another
lovable but crazy part of all that mayhem.
I recall the Sunday Times ran a huge piece on Apple and actually
included the Scruffs on a map that depicted them on the steps at Savile Row!”
In many ways, the Scruffs saw more than us insiders because
they weren’t’ caught up in details.
Their magazine was hilarious too and often let those of us on the inside
have a good laugh about what we thought was the serious shit going down. They could be quite cruel at times if they
didn’t like you, and they were particularly mean about Linda who they depicted
as a rather big-chested dominatrix. John
used to disappear in his office when each issue came out and you’d hear him
roaring with laughter, especially the stuff about him and Yoko.
“Looking back, the Scruffs were very Zen. I’d seen groupies with the Byrds but these
girls were different. They didn’t want
to sleep with the boys or attempt to get their psychic tentacles into them or
invade their space. I found that aspect bewildering but fascinating and the
Beatles did too. After all, they were
used to extraordinary scenes of groupiedom in America, where they were
literally queuing up for a favour.
George, in particular, always had a problem with the fans, being
naturally shy and a bit diffident, but he grew very fond of them because he got
to know them and they were there when he was going through some bad times. That’s why he wrote the Apple Scruffs
song. Paul sometimes had a hard time,
especially when they ridiculed Linda, but he was always very polite to them and
got to know a few of them. Ringo was
Ringo and always had time for a joke or a quip, but John was sometimes
difficult.”
“I used to get pangs of conscience as I sat there in my warm
room with a nice hot cup of tea knowing it was freezing cold outside on those
steps. But the strange thing is they
were happy out there. They didn’t want to
be on the inside. Margo eventually
became an Apple tea girl. Gill worked at
Abbey Road and Lucy I think became George’s assistant, but the rest were happy
out there. They seemed to know
instinctively that there were boundaries to their world and they stuck to them.
What fascinated me most, however, was how they got their
information. Often they knew more about
where the boys were they we did. It was
often a process of abstraction and deduction with them Sherlock Scruffs they were. They’d use some infallible female intuition to
work out whether the boys were recording at Olympic or at Trident, AIR or Abbey
Road. Very clever.
“There’s a kind of
innocence I find in all people I really get along with. The Scruffs had that naivety too. That’s why the Beatles liked them. Despite how it may have appeared at the time,
we were all very innocent. It was all
new and there was no blueprint for what happened. John went to New York, a place that lost its
sense of naivety, and look what happened.
John often found it difficult to deal with fans and would poke fun at
them, but that was just his way of dealing with the pressure of knowing he was
being watched and waited for by people he didn’t know. He was a very sensitive man underneath and
fame can be quite paranoia-inducing.
Fame is not awfully good for people, but in some strange way the Scruffs
helped The Beatles by becoming a sort of daily interface between them and the
world.
