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Obituaries

Neil Aspinall | Beatles' manager, 66

    Inquirer
    Published 

Neil Aspinall, 66, a longtime friend of the Beatles who managed their business enterprises and helped make the group a money-making phenomenon years after they split up, died Sunday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where he had been receiving treatment for lung cancer.

The death was announced yesterday in a statement by surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison, and the band's Apple Corps Ltd. company.

Mr. Aspinall was a childhood friend of McCartney and Harrison in Liverpool, England. While he did not contribute musically, he played several roles in support of the Beatles, most notably as the head of their Apple Corps business, which oversaw the commercial concerns of the group, including licensing.

As the Beatles' first road manager, Mr. Aspinall would drive them to gigs in his van. He later became their personal assistant, and in 1968, he took over management of Apple Corps and continued to oversee the growth of the Beatles, even after they broke up in 1970. As head of Apple, he was executive producer of the

Beatles Anthology

series

.

- AP

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