The Beatles Ltd changes its name to Apple Music Ltd

About

On this day, The Beatles Ltd, formed in June 1963, changed its name to Apple Music Ltd. It would be renamed Apple Corps Ltd, in January 1968.

The name “Apple” made its first appearance on the back sleeve of album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” released in June 1967.

Paul came up with the idea of calling it Apple, which he got from René Magritte. I don’t know if he was a Belgian or Dutch artist… he drew a lot of green apples or painted a lot of green apples. I know Paul bought some of his paintings in 1966 or early 1967. I think that’s where Paul got the idea for the name from.

Neil Aspinall – From “Those Were The Days 2.0” by Stefan Granados

In my garden at Cavendish Avenue, which was a 100-year-old house I’d bought, Robert was a frequent visitor. One day he got hold of a Magritte he thought I’d love. Being Robert, he would just get it and bring it. I was out in the garden with some friends. I think I was filming Mary Hopkin with a film crew, just getting her to sing live in the garden, with bees and flies buzzing around, high summer. We were in the long grass, very beautiful, very country-like. We were out in the garden and Robert didn’t want to interrupt, so when we went back in the big door from the garden to the living room, there on the table he’d just propped up this little Magritte. It was of a green apple. That became the basis of the Apple logo. Across the painting Magritte had written in that beautiful handwriting of his ‘Au Revoir’. And Robert had split. I thought that was the coolest thing anyone’s ever done with me. When I saw it, I just thought: ‘Robert’. Nobody else could have done that. Of course we’d settle the bill later. He wouldn’t hit me with a bill.

Paul McCartney – From “Groovy Bob” by Harriet Vyner, 1999

René Magritte’s painting owned by Paul McCartney is called “Le Jeu De Mourre“. From andrewgrahamdixon.com:

Magritte’s picture, which dates from 1966, late in the artist’s life, appears as number 1051 in Volume 3 of the catalogue raisonne of the artist’s work. The authors of that weighty and learned tome, assembled under the editorial supervision of David Sylvester, quote the somewhat unilluminating Larousse dictionary definition of Mora, or Mourre, as “a game in which one of the players rapidly displays a hand with some fingers raised, the others folded inwards, while his opponent calls out a number which, for him to win, has to correspond to that of the total of raised fingers”; and they go on to speculate that Magritte’s curious choice of title is probably a play on words, a pun on the phrase “Les jeunes amours” (“young love”), which the artist had already used for the title of an earlier picture showing three apples rather than one. They add that they “have not been able to examine the picture” and record its whereabouts simply as “Private Collection”.

Last updated on November 11, 2021