Our Story
We had earned our 'stripes', meeting during 1966 and 1967 outside the Beatles' houses, EMI Abbey Road, Old Compton Street, Wigmore Street, Trident Studios and De Lane Lea Studios - we'd certainly done 'the rounds' - and now it was time to settle down and the one place we knew 'they' would be visiting on a regular basis was their new offices in Savile Row.
Strategically positioned on opposite sides of the steps we could view the comings and goings of The Beatles, their friends and associates and the Apple Employees - and so from the steps of No 3 we saw the world around us with a different prospective.
Little did we know we were now to become part of Apple's History at Savile Row.
Apple Scruffs Unlimited
. . . as being a member of The Beatles Fan Club doesn't make you a Beatle . . .
and so just for fun - we now started to offer a membership to the 'Apple Scruffs Unlimited' Fan Club and (for a small fee to cover our costs of course!) you would receive a named and numbered membership card plus a red badge (with your membership number on the back). The 17 'Official' Apple Scruffs each had a black badge - oh, we loved badges in the 70s! . . . and if you look carefully you may spot them in the photos
We welcomed everyone and had members from all over the world with requests from Ringo, George, Phil Spector and Derek Taylor to become members - even completing their own 'membership' forms. Derek was proud to be included and said in an interview just before he passed away that he still had his membership card.
We explained that now you are a member of 'Apple Scruffs Unlimited' - this doesn't make you an Apple Scruff - just as being a member of The Beatles Fan Club doesn't make you a Beatle.
Issue No 5 - May
Issue No 4 - April
Issue No 5 - Back Cover
Issue No 10 - Oct
Issue No 2 - Feb
Issue No 3 - March
Our Monthly Book
"It's your opinion - opinions are like arse-holes, everybody's got one" Mal Evans May 1970
The Apple Scruff Monthly Book picked up where the 'Beatles Monthly' left off, as it stopped publication after the December 1969 issue.
For the princely sum of 1s (5p) you could treat yourself to our advice and words of wisdom. This 'satirical' (well we thought so!) and witty but sometimes 'obnoxious and downright nasty' magazine consisted of a dozen or so pages all about us, Apple gossip, below the belt digs at certain people (we're very sorry!) and our thoughts and comments on life just as we saw it from the 'Steps' - plus there were some fabulous drawings by our Scruff Lucy.
The magazine was originally intended only for the 9 original Apple Scruffs but Richard DiLello persuaded us to let Derek Taylor see the first issue - and then it took off! Orders for the magazine poured in from all corners of No 3 Savile Row, (all hoping to find a mention of themselves!) and much to our horror (at the time) a copy fell into the hands of Ringo who loved it so much offered us the use of Apple's photo-copier to print the magazine. So the 10 issues we printed each month soon became twenty and twenty became sixty.
Derek Taylor, The Beatles press officer (observed by a Scruff to “only come in on Thursdays to pick up his money but more recently coming in early every day”) reckons that the Scruff magazine saved Apple a lot of work. “When the Beatles Monthly packed in," he explains, “we thought about producing a successor. But the Scruffs have done it for us. Their game is knowledge and expertise. They’ve built up a reservoir of love and malice. I’d hate to see them fall apart by becoming completely respectable. They miss very little of what goes on in Apple. They can polish or demolish your image.”
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