John Lennon once said that everyone who knew the Beatles eventually wrote a book about them and, unlike some of the things Lennon said, this was no more than the simple truth. Derek Taylor, the Beatles dapper, individualistic and witty former press officer, was one of the first in what became a very long queue with this entertaining memoir published in 1973.

Born in 1932 Taylor was comparatively old by the youth obsessed standards of 1960s pop music. As Jon Savage observes in his introduction to the 2018 reissue he ‘crossed over the generational divide and never even thought about coming back’. Indeed, Taylor personifies the transformative power of ‘60s pop culture. A Daily Express journalist who had a Damascene experience at a Beatles concert in Manchester in 1963 he ran away from Fleet Street to join the rock ‘n’ roll circus.

His personal journey through the ‘60s mirrors the trajectory of pop culture itself as he travels from the joyous simplicity of Beatlemania to the earnest and anti-establishment counterculture of the late ‘60s. In a few short years commercially driven pop turned into rock and the emergence of the idea of youth culture as a quasi-revolutionary force.

Taylor metamorphosed along with the decade. By 1965, having temporarily split with the Beatles after falling-out with Brian Epstein at the end of their 1964 world tour, he was based in Los Angeles as an industrious and, one senses, fairly hard-nosed PR man to the Byrds, Beach Boys and many others. He wrote columns for pop publications with now deliciously dated titles like Tiger Beat and Teen in which he shamelessly hyped his own acts. Come the Summer of Love he was supporting Californian youth in conflict with the authorities and helping to organise the Monterey Pop Festival which became one of the defining events of the period. He was fully committed to the hippie dream (‘we believed we were going to make everything very beautiful, that it was going to be a wonderful world’) and also the intoxicants and hallucinogens that turned drab reality into glorious psychedelic colour.

The second half of this book is Taylor’s contemporaneous account of his time as press officer at Apple. The Beatles imagined Apple as an idealistic company which would combine the disparate and often conflicting strands of pop culture as it had developed during the decade: work and play, art and commerce, self-interest and altruism. All would come together in a Renaissance like outpouring of multi-media creativity under the aegis of the Fab Four. It went horribly wrong, of course, with high ideals quickly degenerating into low farce as every charlatan and freeloader in the known world descended on Apple’s Savile Row headquarters in pursuit of free money. These were the messy final years of the Beatles: drug busts, bust-ups in the studio and, in the end, lots of litigation.

This is where the book really comes alive mainly because it’s where Taylor seems most emotionally engaged with his subject. His informal yet stylish prose is suddenly injected with anger, melancholy and anxiety. Subsequent writers have concentrated on the financial shenanigans and who sued whom and for how much but Taylor, not caring too much for money, conveys the sadness of the collapse of youthful energy, ideals and optimism. You also sense his disquiet as he anticipates, correctly it must be said, that for the rest of his life he would be known as the man who used to be the Beatles press officer. These final pages have a perplexed and open-hearted quality which is really quite moving.

But let’s not end on a downbeat note. On the Beatles valedictory album, Abbey Road, John Lennon sang ‘everybody had a good time’. It’s clear from As Time Goes By that Derek Taylor certainly did. ( )

A curiously detached yet at the same time, highly subjective account of the 60s, and The Beatles' Apple. Written - much of it - in diary form at the time it happened, or not too long after, it has the air of a 'fly on the wall' commentary, but one that has a literate, slightly whimsical, slightly egocentric, slightly judgemental approach to it all.

Extract:

Time magazine wondered whether the Beatles had any comment on JS Bach and Newsweek wanted to know what the Beatles wanted for Christmas. I wanted to know what the Beatles had to do with either Bach or Christmas, and the Beatles didn't want to know about anything, and me not blaming them, I sat at my desk and ... did no more useful work that day, remembering on the train home and to my horror that I had failed to tell Newsweek about the Beatles' Christmas presents or Time about the Beatles' Bach.
I was very annoyed with myself because I didn't like failing in my responsibilities to magazines with the dignity and seriousness of purpose of Time and Newsweek. My goodness, no!

Taylor writes as if he cannot quite believe he was actually present at all he describes. The narrative is disjointed, not a continuous flow, yet that seems to impart a more vivid quality to the episodes he picks out; in so doing he shines a spotlight on matters that must have seemed relevant to the audience of the day, but that - in this post-punk, hip hop, X Factor, iTunes, rock-commentary era - have lessened in importance. So all the more interesting to see them buffed up and presented to our view in this rather charming pot-pourri of a book. ( )