-The 1968 LP "McGough & McGear" was produced by Paul McCartney, and features two-thirds of The Scaffold (Roger McGough and Paul's brother, Mike McGear, who chose that name since "gear" was a Liverpudlian equivalent of "fab"). This LP is always listed as "being slated for release on Apple Records, until it wasn't." Do some detective work, people! The album was recorded in 1967-68 and released in May of '68. Apple didn't put out its first disks ("Our First Four") until August. So the label simply wasn't fully active yet: in May, The Beatles were just starting work on The White Album. Another (less likely) explanation may be that McGough and McGear (with John Gorman) were part of The Scaffold, who were already signed to EMI's Parlophone division. And EMI may have objected to one of "their" artists being "moved over" to Apple. This is the same reason that the Beatles' records (both together and solo) always had Parlophone catalog numbers, even when sporting an Apple label. But back to this LP, the opening cut, "So Much," is quite good and features Graham Nash and Jimi Hendrix (among others). A very rare 1989 CD reissue included some brief sleeve notes from Mike McCartney/McGear about all of the people who played on the album... I'm not sure if those notes are included in the 2016 re-reissue. McGough & McGear, incidentally, continued as part of The Scaffold in this period, and notched a Christmas, 1968 #1 with "Lily the Pink."
-The soundtrack to Ringo's 1969 film, "The Magic Christian," came out on the small Commonwealth United label and includes three songs by Badfinger ("Rock of All Ages," "Carry On Till Tomorrow" and the McCartney-penned hit "Come and Get It"), incidental music by Ken Thorne (who had also worked on "Help!" and "How I Won the War" starring John Lennon) and the Pete Townshend-produced "Something In the Air" by Thunderclap Newman. It was the addition of the last song which prevented the LP from coming out on Apple: Thunderclap Newman was signed to Track Records, which refused to have the song (a big hit) on another label. For some reason, that trumped the THREE tracks that Apple was providing. So Commonwealth United got this odd collection, and Apple instead released "Magic Christian Music" by Badfinger, which includes the three songs listed above, four other new songs, and seven songs from the band's first LP, "Maybe Tomorrow," which has a long, tortured history that's related here.
-Another soundtrack from 1969 was for the Oscar-winning classic, "Midnight Cowboy." (Incidentally, "The Magic Christian" is neither Oscar-winning nor a classic). Apple was never going to release a soundtrack LP for "Midnight Cowboy," but there are many Beatle connections.
First, Elephant's Memory has two songs on the album: "Jungle Gym at the Zoo" and the jazz-odyssey known as "Old Man Willow" (a favorite of someone at WDRV-FM in Chicago, since I used to hear it on their "Outer Limits" late night show). This was about two years before Elephant's Memory hooked up with John & Yoko.
Another Beatle-connection comes from Harry Nilsson, who supplied the hit theme song for the movie, "Everybody's Talkin'." He would, of course, have his other big hit with the Badfinger-penned "Without You." I always found it ironic that Nilsson had success as a songwriter for others (Three Dog Night's "One" and The Monkees' "Cuddly Toy") but didn't write the two biggest hits he had under his own name.
The other Beatle-connections (and they are tentative) are that this LP was released on United Artists (home of the Beatles' feature films) and had a score by John Barry (of James Bond fame, who would be replaced by George Martin and Paul McCartney for 1973's "Live and Let Die").
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