Alex and Apple
When The Beatles set up their Apple empire, Mardas was appointed the head of Apple Electronics. He was given his own workshop – a rented garage on Boston Place – and the task of developing innovative and futuristic electronic devices to be sold by Apple. He was paid £40 a week, plus 10 per cent of profits on any of his inventions.
I'm a rock gardener, and now I'm doing electronics. Maybe next year, I make films or poems. I have no formal training in any of these, but this is irrelevant.
Unfortunately, the workshop fell victim to a mysterious fire before any of his inventions could be properly realised, keeping Mardas in The Beatles' favour for a while longer.
What Magic Alex did was pick up on the latest inventions, show them to us and we'd think he'd invented them. We were naïve to the teeth.
Mardas remained at Apple until 1969, experimenting with audio-visual technology but creating little of substance. Legend has it that among his promised projects were an artificial sun, a voice-dialling telephone, wallpaper loudspeakers, a hovering house supported by an invisible beam and a solar-powered guitar.
Magic Alex invented electrical paint. You paint your living room, plug it in, and the walls light up! We saw small pieces of metal as samples, but then we realised you'd have to put steel sheets in your living room wall and paint them. Also, he had the 'talking telephone' – remember this is 1968 – a speaker phone which compensated so the volume always stayed at the same level as you walked round the room...God knows what else he invented. He had this one idea that we all should have our heads drilled. It's called trepanning. Magic Alex said that if we had it done our inner third eye would be able to see, and we'd get cosmic instantly.
Anthology
Mardas' electrical paint was to be used on George Harrison's Ferrari Berlinetta. The colours were to change with the gears, and the rear was to turn red when the brakes were applied. According to Harrison, the engine from the car was to be combined with John Lennon's, with which Mardas promised to make a flying saucer.
One of his tasks was to design The Beatles' new recording studio, to be installed in the basement of the Apple HQ in Savile Row, London. Legend has it that Mardas claimed to be working on a system of replacing the 'baffles' which isolated each instrument with a sonic force field, which inevitably never came to fruition.
George Martin became frustrated with Mardas' attempts to observe the technology in Abbey Road, which he dismissed as out-of-date while simultaneously taking notes.
I found it very difficult to chuck him out because the boys liked him so much. Since it was very obvious that I didn't, a minor schism developed.
Mardas announced plans to build the world's first 72-track facilities, but when the group needed to begin the Get Back project in January 1969 they discovered it was unfinished, with no soundproofing, talkback system or tape machine.
All that had been installed was a badly designed mixing console built by Mardas, which was scrapped after a single session. Additionally, the studio was unconnected to the control room, so any sound recording could not reach the mixing desk. The studio was later described by George Harrison as "the biggest disaster of all time".
The mixing console was made of bits of wood and an old oscilloscope. It looked like the control panel of a B-52 bomber. They actually tried a session on this desk, they did a take, but when they played back the tape it was all hum and hiss. Terrible. The Beatles walked out, that was the end of it.
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn
According to Geoff Emerick, the mixing desk was sold as scrap to a second-hand electronics shop on London's Edgware Road for £5. "It wasn't worth any more."
George Martin was forced to call EMI and request the loan of two four-track consoles to connect to Apple's eight-track recorder. The failure of The Beatles to listen to his objections led Martin to distance himself from the Get Back project, and much of the production work was handed to engineer Glyn Johns.
In 1969 Allen Klein began an attempt to clean up The Beatles' tangled business empire. A number of people – including Mardas – subsequently left the organisation, either being fired or resigning, as Klein attempted to transform Apple into a more efficient business.
It later emerged that every British patent Mardas had applied for on Apple's behalf was turned down on the grounds of unoriginality, and that the designs that did reach production were variants of already-existing products.
After The Beatles, Mardas mostly sank back into obscurity. It later transpired that his primary electronic experience had been gained as a television repair man in Greece. In spite of this, Magic Alex remained a source of intrigue to many Beatles fans: colourful stories about him are plentiful, and he was a significant presence during one of the group's most creative and controversial periods.
Alexis Mardas died in his apartment in the Kolonaki neighbourhood of Athens, Greece in January 2017. His body was discovered on 13 January, but early reports suggested he had been deceased for several more days. He had reportedly been suffering from pneumonia.
I feel very sad. "Magic Alex" Mardas was a good friend to both John and I. He was not just talented, he had a big heart.
love, yoko pic.twitter.com/Aw01TxUSLn— Yoko Ono (@yokoono) January 16, 2017
Is Magic Alex still alive?
Yes, he is currently living in Greece
He died today, Jan 13 2017 at age of 75.
Today Friday 13 January 2016 he was found dead in his apartment in Athens. RIP
died yesterday in Athens (13-1-2017)
He died in January 2017.
Not really Rasputin. A court jester for the jesters of the court.
Here’s an interesting link:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/arts/Mardas.pdf
I read that Magic Alex spread the rumors about the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi hitting on women. John apparently later heard that from him. I don’t believe it, I’ve read the Science of Being and Art of Living and Maharishi seems like a real Guru in the Disciplic line he is in. It’s also a helpful read to delve in to the subconcious, I have yet to learn the TM method, I’m a bit scared of that, Lol.
I wrote this before I read the article, Paul said about the same thing, Lol. Is this the same Yanni that is the easy listening musician, Lol. Joking of course.
Magic Alex also had this venture where he claimed to make cars bulletproof…he just opend up the upholstery and added bulletproof vests into it and closed it up..a pathetic job…
He also claimed to be related to some Greek royal family…
btw there isn’t any ”some Greek royal family” ! There is THE Greek EX-royal family, of the same breed that still reigns in UK.
I think the many of the accusations against Mardas are just vicious deliberate lies or at best, silly gossip. They very much sound like such, anyway.
Mardas was a scammer and con-man who rode the Beatles’ gravy train until they (primarily John) came to their senses and ditched him. Pretty much everyone else around them figured ol’ Magic out quickly.
They (again, primarily John) were never the greatest judges of character.
The accusations were made by those who were there. Were you there?
Never understood (from what I’ve read/heard) what Lennon saw in him, but of course I was never part of the inner circle, so what do I know! He was lucky to be there, I’ll give him that much!
I’ve just been researching the “Nothing Box.” Recently I received a print catalog from the Hammacher Schlemmer company. They included a little filler item saying that they introduced the “Nothing Box” in 1962 and that the Beatles purchased hundreds of them as gifts. There is a picture I found on a website of John holding this box, which looks exactly like the drawing of the box in the original ad. And John, in this picture, is definitely pre-Alex in appearance. SEVERAL YEARS earlier in appearance.
There are several sources that cite the “Beatles bought hundreds” story. Some say the box was metal, some say wood. This article on this page says plastic. In the picture of John holding the box, it looks metal to me.
According to one website, an abstract from a New Yorker article from 1962, a housewife whose husband was a retired engineer made the box for her, thinking it would amuse her. She brought it to the president of Hammacher Schlemmer thinking he’d like it, and he did, so he made it a catalog item.
Several sources state that Dwight Eisenhower even bought one of these boxes!
Perhaps this “Nothing Box” has become Lennon/Magic Alex folklore because Alex’s name got mixed up with it. Somehow, perhaps, because he was making similar types of things, and because John had one of these boxes, people just put his name with the “Nothing Box.” But it’s quite obvious to me that the “Nothing Box” was clearly out in the world, and John seems to have acquired one, according to the photo of him holding it, several years before Alex Mardas ever came into the Beatles circle. Also, in the link that Tony Sables provides above, Alex Mardas himself makes no mention of the “Nothing Box.”
Thanks. That’s really interesting info. I took out the reference to the Nothing Box, because of the uncertainty regarding the link to Magic Alex.
Scroll to page 31 of this online catalog, and you’ll see the filler item for the “Nothing Box” at the bottom left of the page.
http://www.hammacher.com/OnlineCatalog/
You can zoom in to see it clearly. Although at some point there may be a different version of the catalog at this link after some time has passed from the date I’m posting this, so you might not see this item on page 31, if at all.
Alex died today 13 Jan 2017 in Athens. R.I.P
Hi….. Alexis Mardas died some days ago in his appartment, but his body was found only today. He was 75 years old.
The Four were not always great judges of character. John was always particularly gullible.