Cilla Black, Brian Jones, Donovan, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and Paul McCartney are huddled around a conference table at the Hanover Grand Hotel in London. It’s January 1968, and in front of the starry line-up are Grapefruit, the newest act signed to The Beatles’ music publishing division, Apple Publishing.
Lennon is addressing the media, introducing this upcoming band, swilling their drinks and pulling on cigarettes behind him, as the next big thing. A flash goes off and a photograph is taken of Grapefruit surrounded by some of the biggest names of the 1960s. It’s an image that would land the band a gig supporting the Bee Gees on tour, and see them rubbing shoulders with model-of-the-moment Twiggy, giving rise to a track titled “Theme for Twiggy”. Now, it’s simply a relic of a band whose career idled before it got started.
Grapefruit was one of several acts signed to Apple Corps; James Taylor amongst them. As a band, they were notable not only for their sound – a Beatles-esque blend of pop with splashes of psychedelia over lush orchestral arrangements – but for their connections to the music industry. Glaswegian frontman George Alexander had a brother in George Young of The Easybeats. His other siblings, Malcolm and Angus, founded the rock band AC/DC.
Alexander was 29 and already friendly with The Beatles when he was signed by Apple Publishing manager Terry Doran. He had played the saxophone in The Bobby Patrick Big Six, a Glaswegian band that emerged onto the Hamburg rock scene alongside the Fab Four. According to their keyboardist, John Wiggins, the Big Six and The Beatles soon became inseparable, bonding over their lofty aspirations and penchant for musical experimentation. But it was in November 1967, when Alexander joined with fellow Doran signing John Perry, that Grapefruit began to take shape.
Perry, a budding songwriter who performed with the vocal harmony group Tony Rivers & The Castaways, had met Doran at the Speakeasy club in London. “I got chatting to a rather eccentric Liverpudlian called Terry Doran,” he told It’s Psychedelic Baby magazine in 2023. “He said he was from Apple Publishing, which I’d never heard of – it’d just started and sounded like a greengrocer’s shop – and that he was looking for songs. We had a hilarious night together as I was also insane, and at the end he gave me a card and said to call.”
Doran ultimately turned down Perry’s songs, but suggested that he, along with his Castaways buddies, brothers Geoff and Pete Swettenham, form a group with Alexander, who would play bass and sing. After the four-piece had assembled, The Beatles – having previously gotten to know Alexander through the Big Six – quickly took an interest. Lennon himself gave the group their fruity name, inspired by the title of a book by Yoko Ono. (The connection, however, was reportedly covered up, given he was still married to Cynthia Powell at the time).
Doran signed as the band’s manager, and things got off to a roaring start. Speaking to Richard Porter, author of Guide to the Beatles’ London, the Swettenham brothers recalled how Lennon and McCartney crashed Grapefruit’s first recording session at IBC Studios, Portland Place, in 1967.
“We’d been recording for about half an hour when, on the stairs leading up to the control room, suddenly in walked John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who had been our heroes for years!” said Geoff. “We’d been drinking scotch and coke, and Paul asked for a drink. He took one sip and asked if there was any scotch in it. He then proceeded to fill the glass up with scotch and said, ‘Now that’s what I call a scotch and coke’.”
In the year following that famed press conference of 1968, Lennon’s interest in the band continued to grow, and Perry was invited to appear on The Beatles recording of “Hey Jude”. He told It’s Psychedelic Baby that McCartney had asked him to sing on the track unexpectedly during a visit to Trident, where the band were recording. “I was, by this time, sitting on the floor downstairs at Trident, just watching this film-like event unfold before me with the four Beatles around the mic singing various parts when the track got to the middle of the verse prior to the ‘Better better’ bit,” said Perry.
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“Paul McCartney suddenly looks over in my direction and ushers me over to join them, I look around to see who he’s talking to and seeing only the wall behind me conclude quite brightly that he must be talking to me,” he said. “I get up and walk towards the mic, which John, Paul, George, and Ringo are standing around, and Paul McCartney once again gestures at some headphones lying on the floor. I reach down and put them on; they are so loud… I then, nervously, sang along with The Beatles, the first layer of ‘Na Na Na’s’ going right to the end of the song.”
That same year, Grapefruit supported the Bee Gees at the Royal Albert Hall – a second milestone in their fledgling career. Swettenham spoke fondly of their swift, brief rise to fame, telling Richard Porter, author of Guide to the Beatles’ London: “One day, me and Pete piled in a small car with Pattie Harrison, Twiggy, and Adrienne Posta and decided to visit our parents’ pub in Chelmsford. Imagine the look on people’s faces when we walked through the door, it caused quite a stir!”
In the spring, Terry Melcher, who owned the record label Equinox in the US and was the son of Hollywood star Doris Day, was persuaded to produce Grapefruit’s debut song “Dear Delilah”. The track, which sounds a little like the love child of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and a church organ, peaked at No 21 in the UK singles chart. Lennon and McCartney took the band into the studio to record “Lullaby” – a follow-up single originally called “Circus Sgt Pepper” in a nod to The Beatles’ album that was released the year before.
While that recording was never turned over to RCA, to whom their records had been licensed in the UK, other songs like “Elevator” and “Yes” were. They showcased the band’s infatuation with their luminaries, taking cues from bands including the Beach Boys, which Perry and the Swettenhams had previously covered as part of the Castaways. McCartney even travelled with Grapefruit to Hyde Park to produce a three-minute promo film for “Elevator”.
Nevertheless, the two-sided single failed to trouble the charts, inspiring the band to cover The Four Seasons’ “C’mon Marianne” instead – eventually reaching No 35. To this day, those three tracks show how their music was a clear replacement for The Beatles’ earlier jangly sound, which had, by then, been replaced by a drug-fuelled psychedelia featuring sitars and rhythmic unpredictability.
But before Grapefruit could release more music, they were dropped by RCA. Mike O’Connor, the new head of Apple Publishing, also released the group from their Apple contracts, forcing Doran to sign the band to the US record label Equinox, where Melcher produced and re-recorded the band’s earlier songs for their first album, Around Grapefruit (1968), which met with little fanfare.
Embracing the similarities between the two bands, Derek Taylor, The Beatles’ press officer, wrote in the LP’s liner notes: “They are very gifted people, and we all smoke the same brand.” Deep Water (1969), their second record, also flopped upon release after the group underwent a significant makeover, with Bob Wale replacing Pete Swettenham and Alexander opting for more of a soft rock sound as opposed to the melodic pop they had become known for.
Grapefruit eventually split in late 1969. The late Geoff Swettenham continued to play music for fun, while Alexander joined his brother George and Harry Vanda from The Easybeats to record new music in 1970 before returning to Hamburg, where he died in 1997. Perry, meanwhile, became a supporting singer for Cliff Richard, with whom he worked and toured for more than 10 years. He then went on to collaborate with the likes of Elton John, Shakin’ Stevens and Phil Everly.
All mod-rocker swagger and early promise, the photograph taken at that 1968 press conference is a reminder of what could have been for Grapefruit: a snapshot of a moment in time when they were on the precipice of something great. In the end, the band couldn’t survive without the backing of Apple Corps – and their dissolution foreshadowed the breakup of The Beatles the following year.
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