Magic Alex

1942 - Yes, date unknown    Has no ancestors and no descendants in this family tree.

• Name	Magic Alex
  Birth	5 May 1942	Athína, Elláda
  Gender	Male
  Death	Yes, date unknown
  Person ID	I513622	Geneagraphie
  Last Modified	10 Apr 2007

  
  

  Family	Jenny Boyd,   b. 8 Jan 1947, Surrey, England d. Yes, date unknown
  Family ID	F209540	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	10 Apr 2007

  
  

• Event Map	Click to hide
  		Birth - 5 May 1942 - Athína, Elláda  = Link to Google Earth
  Pin Legend	: Address       : Location       : City/Town       : County/Shire       : State/Province       : Country       : Not Set

  
  

• Notes

  of Apple Corps ' Apple Electronics subdivision a self-styled electronics wizard, was the head of The Beatles ' Apple Electronics . He became one of the principal hangers-on of the Beatles' burgeoning entourage, and broke the news from John Lennon to his first wife Cynthia that John wanted a divorce. Mardas was initially introduced to Lennon by Brian Jones . Impressing Lennon with his "nothing box", a small plastic box with randomly blinking lights, and his ideas for futuristic electronic devices, he became one of the first employees of the newly formed Apple Corps , who fitted him out with his own laboratory and helped him to obtain a British work visa . His main job was to create sellable and innovative products and techniques that Apple could market. He also became a friend of Lennon's, visiting him at home and at Abbey Road , whose "out-of-date" equipment and methods drew his constant criticism, to producer George Martin 's annoyance. (Martin had always campaigned for better equipment, and he noted that "Magic Alex" nonetheless studied Abbey Road closely whenever he visited.) The Beatles were interested in buying or leasing a Greek island to move to, and Alex claimed to have government connections through his family, who could help with the deal. Along with appearing (uncredited) in the Beatles' TV movie Magical Mystery Tour , he accompanied them to India to study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the spring of 1968 . When he suggested to Lennon and George Harrison that the Maharishi had been making sexual advances toward Mia Farrow and other women at the camp (a suggestion supported in Farrow's autobiography What Falls Away), they took the suggestion seriously enough to confront him. When the startled Maharishi's answers didn't satisfy them, they and their wives departed the camp. (McCartney and Starr had already left, for other reasons.) After returning to England, Lennon's wife Cynthia accompanied Mardas and his flatmate Jenny Boyd on a vacation trip to his native Greece (the island deal had been abandoned), while Lennon remained at home. Coming back early, Cynthia discovered her husband sitting at breakfast with Japanese artist Yoko Ono , both clad in bathrobes, and all the signs the two had been cohabitating for several days. She left with Alex and Jenny, staying with them overnight; Alex plied her with wine and tried unsuccessfully to seduce her. (Lennon used this incident to counter Cynthia's charge of adultery with one of his own, which he later dropped.) Mardas was ultimately given the job of designing the Beatles' new recording studio , in the basement at Apple headquarters in Savile Row , after boasting of his plans to create the world's first 72-track tape machine. He gave the Beatles regular reports of his progress, but when they required their new studio in January 1969 , during the Get Back project that became Let It Be , they discovered not a state-of-the-art facility, but a poorly planned, unusable, cramped set of rooms, with no 72-track tape deck, no soundproofing , no talkback (intercom ) system, and not even a patch bay to run the wiring between the control room and the studio. The only new piece of sound equipment present was a crude mixing console Mardas had built, that was consigned to the scrapheap after one session. One of Mardas's more outrageous plans was to replace the sound baffles (insulators, used to prevent leakage ) around Ringo Starr 's drums with an invisible sonic force field. That didn't happen. George Harrison's suspicions of Mardas's competence were raised when he saw him wandering around in a white coat, with a clipboard, muttering as he placed tiny loudspeakers around the studio - one for each track. When "Magic Alex" failed to deliver, the Beatles had to wait until George Martin came to the rescue, working around the studio's technical problems, and borrowing a pair of four-track recorders from EMI , to continue the project. Mardas was fired from Apple by Allen Klein in 1969, and every British patent he applied for on Apple's behalf was turned down, on the grounds that he had invented nothing new, but had only built modified versions of products already under patent. It was later revealed that Mardas's main electronic experience had been as a TV repairman. In The Beatles Anthology , Harrison considered the possibility that "Alex just read the latest version of Science Weekly, and used its ideas." Later media stories showed Mardas partnering with the former King of Greece, in a company marketing bulletproof cars to royalty and VIPs. He also sold his Beatles memorabilia for a profit.