To begin with, their songwriting was crap. The first songs I heard from them, I thought "Oh, God, where am I going to get a good song for them?" The first record we issued was "Love Me Do" and "PS I Love You" -- which are not exactly Cole Porter, are they?

I tried to ... explain to them what sonata form was. Paul was all for experimenting like that, but John said, "I'm a rock and roller, George, I can't do this stuff."

Seems like you weren't alone in that opinion -- when the Beatles came to you, they'd been turned down by every other record company in the country. So what did you see in them?

It wasn't a big deal. First of all, I was looking for something -- for an artist who could be as good, or as best-selling, as Cliff Richard. So Brian Epstein came along and played me some acetates of what the boys had already done at Decca, where they'd been turned down. And they were awful. I listened patiently and I said, "Brian, I'm sorry, but I can't see anything here that would induce me to spend money on them." He looked so forlorn and dejected -- I didn't know he'd been turned down by everybody else! So I said, "if you bring them down from Liverpool, I'll spend an hour with them in the studio and see if there's anything that's not on the records."

He brought them down to Abbey Road studios, and they played me things like "Over the Rainbow" and "Besame Mucho" and Fats Waller's "Your Feet's Too Big," as well as "One After 909" and all those little things they'd been making themselves. The music didn't impress me, but they had this cheeky charm and tremendous charisma, and I could see what Brian was on about. He obviously was in love with them -- particularly John, I guess. Well, I'm not a homosexual, but I was in love with them, too. And I thought, if they do this to me, and we have the right songs, they'll probably do it to an audience. That's worth a small gamble, so I gave them a small gamble and signed them up.

When did it become evident the kind of talent you were dealing with?

After the first year, John and Paul began to write great songs, and the combination of their voices, rather than being solo acts, was very appealing. Gradually their personalities, which were always evident, started becoming stronger and more emergent. John and Paul became openly competitive, and they spurred each other to heights that I don't think they would have achieved otherwise. It was a kind of brotherly rivalry, in which George lost out. The great thing about them was that they never gave me "Star Wars 2." They refused to do the same thing twice. That was really their creed, throughout their career. Which became a strain for me, because they would always say, "come on, let's do something different, give us something we don't know."

What was your relationship like with George and Ringo?

Early on, George was struggling with his songs, but he didn't have a Paul or a John to help him. I tolerated him rather than encouraging him -- he hadn't shown me anything that was any good. And that rankled, he wasn't too happy about that for a while and that's a legacy which I'm afraid I have to bear. When he did break through and start making good songs, then I tried very hard to help him out, but it was a bit late by then. But I had the two greatest songwriters in the world to cope with, so I'm not blaming myself at all.

Ringo is always underrated, but he contributed so much to the boys over the whole period of time. I told him this when we were making "Love," because it became obvious to us when we were making it, threading his drumming all the way through and driving the show, really. I said, "Ringo, you've done some great stuff, your drumming holds together beautifully," and he looked at me and said, "I know." No "nice of you to say that," just "I know."

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