1967–1968

At the time, it did still seem as though the Beatles could do little wrong. With a sense of optimism, they launched their own company, called Apple Corps, which included a record label that would release all of the Beatles future recordings, as well as those of some promising up-and-comers (among them James Taylor). The White Album was the first record released on their label. Although built on a great idea—to create a place where artists with talent could come to make records without having to make a record deal with a major company—Apple quickly buckled under the weight of too many ideas and too small a grip on reality. The company quickly lost lots of money, primarily because there was no one who was serious about running it. John recalled, “People were robbing us and living on us to the tune of eighteen or twenty thousand pounds a week that was rolling out of Apple and nobody was doing anything about it.” Later in 1969, disagreements over Apple would be an indirect cause to the start of the Beatles breakup.