Saturday 22 July 1967 | Athens, Greece
On 22 July 1967, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and a group of friends and associates began a journey to Greece to explore a set of Greek islands that The Beatles were seriously considering purchasing as a communal retreat. The trip — part holiday, part utopian experiment — was one of the most vivid expressions of the group's Summer of Love idealism, and a direct precursor to the founding of Apple Corps.
The Party
The group that set off for Greece on 22 July 1967 included:
- John Lennon
- Cynthia Lennon (John's wife)
- Julian Lennon (John and Cynthia's son)
- Paul McCartney
- Jane Asher (Paul's girlfriend)
- Paula Boyd (Pattie Harrison's 16-year-old sister)
- Mal Evans (The Beatles' road manager)
- Alistair Taylor (NEMS employee and personal assistant to Brian Epstein)
Notably absent were George Harrison and Ringo Starr, who had already travelled to Greece separately. The trip had been arranged at the suggestion of Alexis 'Magic Alex' Mardas — the Greek electronics inventor and self-styled genius who had become a close confidant of John Lennon and a peripheral figure in the Beatles' inner circle.
The Plan: A Greek Island Commune
The idea was straightforward in its ambition and gloriously impractical in its execution: The Beatles would buy a cluster of Greek islands and establish a self-sufficient commune where the four members, their families, and their closest associates could live, create, and exist entirely on their own terms.
Paul McCartney later recalled the genesis of the plan in Many Years From Now, Barry Miles' authorised biography:
“Alex invited John on a boat holiday in Greece, and we were all then invited. There was some story of buying a Greek island or something. It was all so sort of abstract but the first thing we had to do is go to Greece and see if we even liked it out there. The idea was get an island where you can just do what you want, a sort of hippie commune where nobody'd interfere with your lifestyle. I suppose the main motivation for that would probably be no one could stop you smoking. Drugs was probably the main reason for getting some island, and then all the other community things that were around then – ‘Oh, we’ll paint together. We’ll do this. I’ll chop wood.’
I think that if you’re going to write a great symphony or you’re going to rehearse the greatest string quartet in the world, it’s fair enough to cut yourself off. It’s just a practical matter; give yourself lots of time and if you’re going to do that, then why shouldn’t it be in Greece? It was a drug-induced ambition, we’d just be sitting around: ‘Wouldn’t it be great? The lapping water, sunshine, we’d be playing. We’d get a studio there. Well, it’s possible these days with mobiles and …’ We had lots of ideas like that. The whole Apple enterprise was the result of those ideas.”
— Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
McCartney's recollection is candid and revealing: the Greek island plan was simultaneously a drug-fuelled fantasy and a genuinely creative impulse — the same restless energy that would, within months, crystallise into the founding of Apple Corps and the group's attempt to build a business empire on their own terms.
Magic Alex and the Athens Connection
Alexis 'Magic Alex' Mardas — born Yannis Alexis Mardas in Athens in 1942 — had entered The Beatles' orbit in 1965 through his friendship with John Lennon. A charming and inventive self-promoter, he had convinced Lennon of his genius as an electronics engineer, promising revolutionary inventions that rarely materialised. John nicknamed him 'Magic Alex' and championed him enthusiastically.
By 1967, Magic Alex had become sufficiently embedded in the Beatles' world to propose the Greek holiday and to host the group at his family home in Athens while they waited for their yacht. His influence on the group — and particularly on Lennon — during this period was considerable, if ultimately ephemeral.
The MV Arvi: Delayed by Storm
The Beatles had hired a luxury yacht, the MV Arvi, to take them island-hopping in search of their ideal commune. However, the vessel was delayed by a storm off Crete and did not arrive until 25 July 1967. In the meantime, the group remained in Athens as guests at the Mardas family home, exploring the city and its surroundings while the Mediterranean summer played out around them.
The three-day wait in Athens — 22 to 25 July — was itself a significant episode: a group of the most famous people in the world, largely unrecognised in a foreign city, living temporarily outside the bubble of Beatlemania that had defined their existence for the previous four years.
The Summer of Love Context
July 1967 was the height of the Summer of Love. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had been released on 1 June 1967 and was reshaping popular culture in real time. The Beatles had performed All You Need Is Love to a global television audience of 400 million on 25 June 1967 as part of the Our World broadcast. The counterculture was at its peak, and The Beatles were its most visible standard-bearers.
The Greek island plan was entirely consistent with the mood of the moment: communal living, creative freedom, escape from conventional society, and the belief — sincere if chemically assisted — that a better world was not only possible but imminent. That it came to nothing was almost beside the point. As McCartney noted, the same impulse produced Apple Corps — which, for all its chaos, did produce some of the most important music of the late 1960s.
It was also during this period that Brian Epstein — The Beatles' manager since 1962 — was in increasingly poor health. He would die of an accidental drug overdose on 27 August 1967, just five weeks after the group set off for Greece. The Athens trip was one of the last major Beatles adventures of the Epstein era.
Key Facts: 22 July 1967
| Date | Saturday 22 July 1967 |
| Destination | Athens, Greece (en route to Greek islands) |
| Party | John & Cynthia Lennon, Julian Lennon, Paul McCartney, Jane Asher, Paula Boyd, Mal Evans, Alistair Taylor |
| Host | Alexis 'Magic Alex' Mardas, Athens family home |
| Yacht | MV Arvi — delayed by storm off Crete until 25 July 1967 |
| Purpose | To view Greek islands The Beatles were considering purchasing as a commune |
| Context | Summer of Love; post-Sgt. Pepper; five weeks before Brian Epstein's death |
Athens, Greece — where John Lennon, Paul McCartney and their party stayed at the home of Alexis 'Magic Alex' Mardas from 22 July 1967 while awaiting the MV Arvi.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Did The Beatles try to buy a Greek island?
Yes. In July 1967, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and their entourage travelled to Greece to look at a cluster of islands The Beatles were considering purchasing as a communal retreat. The plan was to establish a hippie commune where the group and their associates could live and create freely. The idea ultimately came to nothing, but Paul McCartney later credited it as a direct inspiration for the founding of Apple Corps.
Who was Magic Alex?
Alexis 'Magic Alex' Mardas was a Greek electronics inventor and self-promoter who became a close confidant of John Lennon in the mid-1960s. He arranged the 1967 Greek trip and hosted The Beatles at his family home in Athens. He later became head of Apple Electronics, though his promised inventions largely failed to materialise.
What was the MV Arvi?
The MV Arvi was the luxury yacht hired by The Beatles to take them island-hopping in Greece in July 1967. It was delayed by a storm off Crete and did not arrive until 25 July 1967, leaving the group to spend three days in Athens at the home of Magic Alex.
What was The Beatles doing in the summer of 1967?
The summer of 1967 was the height of The Beatles' psychedelic period. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had been released on 1 June 1967. On 25 June they performed All You Need Is Love to 400 million television viewers worldwide. In late July they travelled to Greece to look at islands for a proposed commune. Brian Epstein, their manager, died on 27 August 1967.
How did the Greek island trip lead to Apple Corps?
Paul McCartney directly credited the Greek island discussions as an inspiration for Apple Corps. The communal, self-directed creative vision that underpinned the island plan — a place to live, create, and operate outside conventional structures — was the same impulse that led The Beatles to found Apple Corps in 1968 as a vehicle for their artistic and business ambitions.
Who went to Greece with The Beatles in July 1967?
The party that travelled to Greece on 22 July 1967 included John Lennon, Cynthia Lennon, Julian Lennon, Paul McCartney, Jane Asher, Paula Boyd (Pattie Harrison's sister), Mal Evans (road manager), and Alistair Taylor (NEMS employee). George Harrison and Ringo Starr had already travelled to Greece separately.
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