The Beatles’ Pipe-dream Paradise: The Aborted Greek Island Venture

Memorabilia, Music history, Popular Culture

In a 1966 double-A side single the Beatles sung “we all live in a yellow submarine” but in real life the Fab Four did want to live together on a secluded Greek island they intended to buy. It happened the following year, 1967, the boys were holidaying in the Greek islands and were island-hopping when they came upon an ideal island location. Or at least that was what George, John and Paul thought while on acid the whole time of the “inspection”{𝔸}. The island that their eyes lit on was roomy enough, some 80-acres with a fishing village, a large olive grove and four beaches. In addition to the main island there were four smaller islands surrounding it (one for each Beatle!)


The prime mover for the island home scheme was Beatle John. At that point in his life Lennon was edging his way into his glorious hippie phase. The Aegean “Arcadia” represented a chance to live communally, an idyllic place where he and the other three celebs could escape the overwhelming pressures and attentions of superstardom. The plan was for the four musicians and the group’s entourage (manager Epstein, the roadies and the inner circle of assistants plus relatives) to all live together on a huge estate on the island hideaway. Paul and George seemed to have been on-song with John at that hazily propitious moment in time…McCartney: (the island was the means of achieving) “a sort of hippie community…where nobody’d interfere with your lifestyle”…Harrison concurred: “we’ll buy the island, we’ll just go there and drop out” (‘The Beatles in Greece’, Daily Beatle,, 03-Jul-2014, www.wogew.blogspot.com).

Team Beatles hit Greece (Source: Greek City News)
What prompted such an extravagantly fanciful and surreal notion?
The short answer would appear simply to be drugs! Narcotic substances may have inspired the germ of the highly romantic and improbable idea. As Beatle Paul explained later, the boys saw in the island jewel a place where they could smoke pot unhindered, without fearing the consequences of the law. Paul attributed the island acquisition project to “drug-induced ambition”. Certainly drug consumption was part of the agenda in coming to Greece – if you accept the word of NEMS staffer Peter Brown. According to Brown, a Beatle associate Yannis Mardas (AKA “Magic Alex”) had brokered a deal with the Greek authorities giving the Fab Four the green light to bring personal supplies of drugs secreted in their carry-on bags into the country in return for photo ops in aid of Hellenic tourism (Daily Beatle).

The rich celebrity artists’ commune
Roadie (and later Apple Corps head) Neil Aspinall’s recollection of what John, Paul and George (but especially John) had in mind was a configuration of individual villas for the four Beatles which would all be linked to a central dome of some description. There would also be a recording studio on the main island, plus an entertainment complex and some “knock-up” housing for Beatle staff and visiting friends.

Trinity Is (Source: Culture Trip)

The decision to buy the island paradise was pretty much made on the spot and another NEMS assistant Alistair Taylor was sent back to London to seal the deal. This necessitated the boys buying £90,000 worth of special export dollars to complete the international transaction. But by the time the deal was set up, the Beatles’s initial enthusiasm had waned and they had changed their minds…or maybe they just forgot about the whole grand scheme. Taylor then had to sell the export dollars back to the Greek government, which resulted in an unexpected windfall for the group, courtesy of a favourable exchange rate for the UK£{𝔹}.

Trinity Is is commonly referred to as “guitar-shaped” but with such a profound bend in its “neck” it looks more like one of Pete Townshend’s well-thwacked Fender guitars
In the application to purchase document (held in the British National Archives) the name of the would-be Beatle island—described as “300,000 square metres of arable land, olive trees, beaches and rocks”—is given as “Aegos, Konstadinos”(?), however no such island can be identified among the multitude of Aegean offshore islands. Another name ascribed to the heavily-wooded island fancied by the Liverpudlian musos is “Leslo” which also unfortunately does not exist. The more likely candidate which most people favour is Trinity Island{ℂ}, located to the east of Athens and just off the larger Euboea Island in the Western Aegean ‘The Beatles visit a Greek island they intended to purchase’, The Beatles Bible, Updated 13-Sep-2021, www.beatlesbible.com .

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{𝔸} Ringo wasn’t on the real estate expedition, he bailed after the Greek mainland part of the trip to return to his Weybridge (Surrey) mansion

{𝔹} a profit of £11,400 was forthcoming for the band

{ℂ} sometimes erroneously called Agia Triada (“Holy Trinity” island)

Manufacturing Beatlephobia in the Holy Land: Beware the Rhythm Beatles – Corruptors of Israeli Youth!

Memorabilia, Music history, Performing arts, Popular Culture
▪ ▪ ▪ The phantom 1965 concert

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This is a story about how Israel missed a golden opportunity to get the Beatles, then on the cusp of greatness, to perform live before Israeli audiences. The “Fab Four” were supposed to tour the country in 1965, concert tickets were even printed for what became a non-event. At the time the official account of why the Israeli government didn’t let the concert tour proceed was the fear of the deleterious effects that the Liverpool band were likely to have on the local youngsters. Citing the teen frenzy created by Cliff Richard’s 1963 concert hullabaloo in Israel, the authorities deny entry to the ‘Rhythm’ Beatles (as they were called in Hebrew) less they ”corrupt the minds of Israeli youth”. A follow-up investigation by a Knesset finance committee finds that “the band has no artistic merit” and reinforces the assertion that they were liable to “cause hysteria and mass disorder among young people” (Resolution 701). The local conservative press echoes the ’outrage’, describing the band’s music in hyperbolic vein as “yeah-yeah–yeah howls which are capable of striking dead a real beetle”.

▪ ▪ ▪ Cliff Richard: not wholesome enough for Israel?

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Thus the Beatles’ fans in the Jewish state never got to see the biggest band on the globe play live⍟. No doubt the desire of Israeli politicians to keep out the ‘pernicious’ influences of “sex, alcohol and rock‘n’roll” in the early 1960s was part of the thinking, however evidence emerged during the Aughts demonstrating that the (official) narratives presented in 1964/1965 were in fact apocryphal. A 2007 Israeli musical documentary Waiting for Godik by Ari Davidovich and subsequent investigations by Israel historians Yoav Kutner and Alon Gan unearths more personal considerations guiding the decision.

▪ ▪ ▪ Giora Godik, Theatrical promoter (Source: Lama Films)

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The true story—apparently—starts in 1962 with the mother of the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein✥, she apparently makes an offer to Israeli music promoter Giora Godik for the not-quite-yet famous Liverpool band to perform in Israel. Godik rejects the offer and instead invites the better known-internationally Cliff Richard to do a concert the following year. Fast forward two years and Godik’s rival Israeli promoter Yaakov Uri trumps him by securing the rights to a Beatles’ concert in the country. To get back at Uri for being “one-upped”, Godik successfully lobbies the Israeli authorities to veto promoters from taking out foreign currency (thereby making the whole undertaking financially unsustainable)…Godik persuades the bureaucrats by apparently playing up the bad publicity engendered from the Cliff Richard concert. A dispute between rival Jewish music promoters – and neither of them got the Beatles!

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The four “Mop Tops”, 1965 with medals

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End-note: In 2008 the state of Israel issued an official apology to the Beatles via a letter to the surviving sister of John Lennon for the 1965 snub, citing lack of budget and the contemporary concerns of some members of the Knesset as the reason for pulling the tour.

McCartney sparking a mini-Beatlemania revival in Tel Aviv (Source: abc.com.au)

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⍟ though they did finally get to see one-fourth of the band, Paul McCartney, perform there solo in 2008, triggering a new, short-lived wave of Beatlemania in Israel

✥ an Ashkenazi Jew

⌖ at the time of the incident some insiders within the country pointed the finger at Israel’s matronly prime minister Golda Meir

Articles and sites consulted


‘The Beatles and Israel’,
The Beatles Bible, Updated 16-Mar-2018, www.beatlesbible.com)

‘Truth after 42 years: Beatles banned for fear of influence on youth’, Toni O’Loughlin, The Guardian, 22-Sep-2008, www.amp.theguardian.com)

‘A Beatle (finally) coming to Israel’, Matti Friedman, The Inquirer, Aug 28-Aug-2008, www.theinquirer.com