A Beatles Engineer Was Right to Be ‘Scared to Death’ That a Christmas Party Would End in the Deaths of the Band
In 1969, The Beatles attended a Christmas party at Apple Corps. The previous year, George Harrison had invited the Hells Angels to a party that quickly devolved into chaos. At the 1969 party, audio engineer Geoff Emerick worried the night would end in horrible tragedy. The studio was under construction, and as the night wore on, he became increasingly — and rightfully — concerned that the floor would collapse under the partygoers.
A Beatles engineer worried about danger at a Christmas party
At the end of 1969, Apple Corps was under construction. The corporation hosted the Christmas party just after the demolition phase of the project, much to Emerick’s concern.
“The most memorable thing about the 1969 Christmas bash was that it nearly marked the end of Apple … literally,” Emerick wrote in his book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles. “The demolition phase of the studio project had been completed by then, although the construction had not yet begun. As you gazed out the window from the second floor, where the party was being held, you looked straight down into this pit, this great gaping hole where the basement had once been.”
According to Emerick, the contractors had placed enough support beams to hold around 100 people. Unfortunately, 200 people came to the party and danced on the shakily supported floor. Emerick began warning people that the floor could very likely cave in at any moment.
“Amid the din and the free-flowing booze, nobody paid me much mind — they just assumed I was kidding around — but I wasn’t,” he wrote. “Actually, I was scared to death that the whole building was going to collapse, taking all of us and assorted Beatles and Beatle wives with it.”
Luckily, everyone walked away from the party unscathed, although maybe a little hungover.
“Somehow it didn’t happen, but I can’t help but think that if one more uninvited guest had shown up, my place in Beatles history would have been quite different.”
This wasn’t the only Beatles Christmas party that got out of hand
Emerick sat through the party in a state of horror. Still, it came nowhere near to as chaotic as the previous year’s event. Harrison invited the Hells Angels, and they spiritedly attended the Christmas party.
“I can remember that everybody was getting hungry, and then a huge turkey came in on a big tray with four people carrying it,” road manager Neil Aspinall said, per The Beatles Anthology. “It was about ten yards from the door to the table where they were going to put the turkey down, but it never made it. The Hell’s Angels just went ‘woof,’ and everything disappeared: arms, legs, breast, everything. By the time it got to the table there was nothing there. They just ripped the turkey to pieces, trampling young children underfoot to get to it. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Harrison didn’t even attend because he worried his guests would behave poorly. His bandmate, Ringo Starr, witnessed the whole thing, though.
“They proceeded to ruin the kids’ party — and then we couldn’t get rid of them,” he said. “They wouldn’t leave and we had bailiffs and everything to try to get them out. It was miserable and everyone was terrified, including the grown-ups. It was like the edgy Christmas party.”
Geoff Emerick also grew concerned about people stealing Christmas presents
During the holiday season, Emerick also grew concerned about the casual theft by Apple employees.
“For months beforehand, many of the office staff had been pinching boxes of the newly released Abbey Road album to give away as Christmas presents, but I informed all of my staff that we weren’t going to take a thing out of that building: not an album, not a paper clip, nothing,” he wrote. “That wasn’t in our nature anyway, but we took a certain amount of pride in knowing that we weren’t going to join in the plundering that was going on all around us, even under the [Allen] Klein regime.”
Emerick’s rule did virtually nothing to stop the other employees from taking albums, though.
“Behind the switchboard was a room filled with stacks of gold disks The Beatles had been awarded over the years, just piled on the floor — a pile that somehow grew smaller and smaller as the months wore on.”
