The Beatles set up a new company today in 1967 for their friend Yanni Alexis Mardas, a greek immigrant and supposed electronics genius they called Magic Alex, who'd impressed John Lennon after being introduced by Brian Jones with his installation at London's Indica Gallery. In fact John had been on acid, and stared at the Kinetic Light Sculptures for hours while Alex told him all about his planned 72-track tape recorder (Abbey Road still used 4-tracks at the time, but were in the process of upgrading to 8). The company was called Fiftyshapes Ltd., but Magic Alex was also made an Apple employee, the head of Apple electronics, and charged with designing the new Apple Studios at the headquarters on Saville row. He became part of The Beatles posse, went with the band to the Maharishi's Ashram, and told them of all the cool stuff he could build, like an invisible force field to replace the baffles around Ringo's drums, force fields to protect their houses, car paint that could change color with the flick of a switch, and at one point supposedly asked for the V-12 engines out of John's Rolls Royce and George's Ferrari so he could build a flying saucer. Unfortunately Magic Alex had little idea what he was doing, and the 16-track studio he built after spending tons of their money was unusable, and they'd had to call George Martin to the rescue. George called the venture a total disaster, but the Indica Gallery's owner had observed from the start, "He was quite cunning in the way he pitched his thing. He knew enough to know how to wind people up and to what extent. He was a f***ing TV repairman: Yanni Mardas, none of this 'Magic Alex' sh**." Mardas eventually moved back to Greece and sold bullet-proofed Mercedes to clients like The Sultan of Oman and King Hussien of Jordan, who field tested them with live fire, and when they exploded demanded refunds.

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