Only a couple of weeks after the passing of Beatles recording engineer Norman Smith, Beatles road manager and business associate Neil Aspinall has died. It would take a long time to explain Neil’s relationship and roles with the Beatles, so I won’t even try. But it’s safe to say that without Neil Aspinall, the massive Beatles Anthology project in the mid-90’s would never have gotten done.
Here’s a link to an obituary in The Los Angeles Times. If that doesn’t work, click here instead. And at this link is the BBC’s write up on Neil.
The NY Times also has a good article on Neil. The article I sent you (which I cannot find now) claims Paul flew out to see Neil in the hours before his death. This must be a bad year for Paul, with the messy divorce and losing both Norman and now Neil. I had NO IDEA that Neil had a child with Pete’s mother! How did I miss that? And his future wife was kind enough to accept him as her own; they went on to remain married for over 40 years! until yesterday.
Neil, and Norman’s deaths really show how much a successful band like the Beatles was more than just the band itself: it was a sum of all its parts. Without input from Norman, Neil, George Martin, etc., how would they have fared? An interesting thought!