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Comment by Grasper:
I had the misfortune of buying this book, not only that I was stupid enough to go for the limited edition with the reproduction memorabilia. To address that first, it’s simply the Beatlemania pack of reproduction tickets and flyers. You can easily get it on Amazon for around £10.00; so, it’s not even exclusive to this edition, it’s simply a commercially available product that’s easily obtainable independently. In addition to that, anyone who has that set will realise that it’s got nothing at all to do with Apple Records, being a collection of ephemera relating to the Beatlemania years of 1963 to 1965, and so completely irrelevant to this book and its subject. As to whether this, the addition of a box and a certificate signed by the author is sufficient to warrant the massive price differential between this and the already overpriced standard edition I will leave you to decide.
As for the book, it’s nothing short of garbage being badly written with a mangling of the English language second only to Pearce’s other travesty, The Apples Of Our Eyes.
There are elements of the book that are vague at best, in particular the photographs of the Apple 1 45 and the Sapcor 7 LP. Apple 1 was the one off pressing of Frank Sinatra doing The Lady Is A Champ for Maureen Starkey, this was given to Maureen. Our erstwhile author includes a photo of what he claims is the picture sleeve (!) He also includes a photo of the Apple record and sleeve for Sapcor 7, the Delaney and Bonnie LP. This never reached production as the band were still under contract to Elektra and no Apple sleeves were ever prepared. The sleeve Pearce includes in the book looks like it’s just the Elektra sleeve with a promo sticker on it. The promo sticker is somewhat conveniently placed where the Elektra logo is.
There is the odd, interesting item in here - the reproduction of the First Four set supposedly done by Apple during one of its relaunches for instance, although in the light of the various other homemade discs Pearce is continuing to pass off as originals it’s debatable whether this is actually an official Apple production. Others are common and easily obtainable, usually in much better condition than those in the Pearce collection. For instance, his picture sleeve of the Lennon single ‘Woman Is The…’ would likely be described as only ‘good’ by even the most optimistic of eBay sellers. Coupled with that, it’s not particularly rare. And that’s another big problem with the book, the collection isn’t half as good as Pearce thinks it is. There are much better examples out there; for instance the Applelog books by Jefferey Levy showcase material that kicks this sorry and shabby collection into a cocked hat.
The book is woefully incomplete and inadequate when it comes to Apple records and far from being the story of what went on inside number 3 it’s simply a book of photographs of records that Pearce has in his collection. He can’t even muster a complete and accurate Apple discography.
If you want an authoritative and informative history of Apple then go for the A Is For Apple series and avoid this at all costs. It’s simply a vanity project, and an expensive one at that. Utterly worthless….