A FABS GURU

BORN 1942

Born in Athens, Yanni Alexis Mardas (left) was working as a television repairman when he impressed John Lennon with his Kinetic Light Sculptures, exhibited at Indica Gallery in 1965. Renamed Magic Alex, the persuasive Mardas would remain in The Beatles’ orbit until 1969, accompanying them to India to see the Maharishi and heading the Apple Electronics division. His legend includes such proposed inventions as sonic forcefields, invisibility paint and an “artificial sun”, among other wiggy late-’60s ideas, though all went unrealised, and George Harrison was scathing of Mardas’s insistence that he could build a 72-track studio in the basement of Apple Corps’ HQ on Savile Row. Upon Allen Klein’s arrival, Magic Alex would leave The Beatles’ employ, having allegedly spent the equivalent of £3million in today’s money. He died in Greece of pneumonia on January 13. Ian Harrison