The Beatles hire Alexis “Magic Alex” Mardas

Alexis Mardas first arrived in England on a student visa in 1965. He befriended John Dunbar of the Indica Gallery in London and later moved in with him. At that time, he was known as Yannis Mardas and found work as a television repairman. Dunbar later introduced Mardas to Brian Jones after Mardas exhibited his Kinetic Light Sculptures at the Indica Gallery. Dunbar and Mardas collaborated on a “psychedelic light box” for The Rolling Stones’ three-week tour of Europe in 1967, but the band was not impressed with the results. Dunbar later said: “He was quite cunning in the way he pitched his thing. He knew enough to know how to wind people up and to what extent. He was a fucking TV repairman: Yannis Mardas, none of this ‘Magic Alex’ shit!”

Brian Jones introduced Mardas to John Lennon, and it was at this point that Mardas impressed John with the Nothing Box, a small plastic box with randomly blinking lights that John would stare at for hours while under the influence of LSD. John later introduced Alexis Mardas as his “new guru”, referring to him as “Magic Alex”.

In July 1967, Alexis Mardas accompanied the Beatles and their entourage on a seven-day holiday in Greece, during which he strengthened his relationship with John and the other Beatles.

On August 24, 1967, The Beatles hired Alexis Mardas for £40 a week to continue his scientific inventions. In September 1967, The Beatles set up a company for Mardas called Fiftyshapes Ltd., which evolved into Apple Electronics in early 1968.

Even though he was unable to sell them an island, Alex continued to spin his fantasies about scientific inventions, and less than a month after they returned to London, he was employed by the Beatles to
head Apple Electronics. At an Apple board meeting of 24 August 1967, with Paul and John both present, it was agreed to pay Alex a wage of £40 a week, plus 10 per cent of the profit made on his inventions with a minimum of £3,000 a year. As a TV repairman he had probably been earning a maximum of £15 a week. The boat trip had enabled Alex to ingratiate himself further with John Lennon and, though John Dunbar was involved in the early stages of Apple Electronics, Alex quickly elbowed him out of any further involvement.

From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

By then, Mardas had completely taken over John and the Apple recording scene. Alex got money off them and started up this workshop to build them a studio. But Mardas absolutely shut me out. It was one of those scenes. I just thought, ‘Oh, fuck it, if it’s going to be like that…’

John Dunbar – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

So we formed Apple Electronics after having talked about all these things for a while, to just see if he could make any of them. Just to do some research into the whole thing. […] As I say, this was John’s doing. This was John’s guru, but we were all fascinated by the talk, which was rather sci-fi but the idea being that you could do it now. In the sixties there was this feeling of being modern, so much so that I feel like the sixties is about to happen. It feels like a period in the future to me, rather than a period in the past.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

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