Yanni (‘John’) Alexis Mardas, better known as Magic Alex, became a close friend of The Beatles in the mid 1960s.
…and then I brought in Magic Alex and it just went from bad to worse.
Alexis Mardas was born on 5 May 1942 in Athens, Greece. A former teenage science prodigy, he moved from Greece to England in the early 1960s, and met The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones in around 1963. The group went on to commission him to design a way to link sounds to lights for the group’s live shows.
He befriended John Dunbar, owner of the Indica art gallery in London, and the pair shared a flat on Bentinck Street. It was there in 1966 that Mardas first met John Lennon.
Lennon nicknamed him Magic Alex because of his impressive technological and scientific knowledge. Lennon often called him his “guru”, and he became part of The Beatles’ extended entourage after they stopped touring.
Because John had introduced him as a guru, there was perhaps a little pressure on him to try and behave as a guru. I didn’t treat him that way, I thought he was just some guy with interesting ideas.
In 1967 The Beatles briefly considered buying a Greek island to escape the pressures of fame, and as a place where they could take drugs undisturbed. They were seemingly unaware that Greece had recently been taken over by a military junta.
Mardas promised to use his family connections to help broker the deal with the Greek government. They chose an island – often cited as Leslo, although no island of that name appears to exist – which was to have a series of houses built for The Beatles and their close associates, linked together by a series of tunnels.
The group’s assistant Alistair Taylor was given the task of purchasing the land from the Greek government. However, The Beatles soon lost interest in the notion of an island retreat, although they did make a profit on the failed deal, estimated at £11,400.
It was about the only time The Beatles ever made any money on a business venture. To make the purchase, we’d changed the money into international dollars or some currency. Then, when they changed the money back, the exchange rate had gone up and so we made about 20 shillings or so.
Magic Alex appeared briefly in the Magical Mystery Tour film, and went with The Beatles to India to study transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It has been claimed that this was because he saw his influence with the group waning in favour of the Maharishi.
It was Mardas whom allegedly told Lennon and Harrison that the Maharishi had been making advances towards Mia Farrow, the catalyst which led to their departure from India.
It was Magic Alex who made the original accusation and I think that it was completely untrue.
Following their return to England, Lennon’s wife Cynthia went with Mardas, his flatmate Jenny Boyd (sister of Pattie Harrison) and the singer Donovan, on holiday to Greece. When Cynthia returned to the Lennons’ house in Weybridge, she found John having breakfast with Yoko Ono, the pair clearly having begun a relationship.
Cynthia left the house with Mardas and Boyd. He is said to have got Cynthia drunk and tried to persuade her that they should run away together. Cynthia was sick in the bathroom and went to bed in the spare room, but Mardas joined her and attempted to kiss her until she pushed him away.
The following day Cynthia returned to her house, and Lennon appeared completely normal. Soon after he travelled to New York with Paul McCartney, and Cynthia went on holiday with her mother to Italy.
During the Italian holiday Mardas appeared unexpectedly and told Cynthia that Lennon was suing her for divorce on grounds of adultery and seeking sole custody of their son Julian.
The mere fact that ‘Magic Alex’ arrived in Italy in the middle of the night without any prior knowledge of where I was staying made me extremely suspicious. I was being coerced into making it easy for Lennon and Yoko to accuse me of doing something that would make them not look so bad.
Is Magic Alex still alive?
Yes, he is currently living in Greece
He died today, Jan 13 2017 at age of 75.
Today Friday 13 January 2016 he was found dead in his apartment in Athens. RIP
died yesterday in Athens (13-1-2017)
He died in January 2017.
No he died in 2017.
Not really Rasputin. A court jester for the jesters of the court.
Here’s an interesting link:
https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/arts/Mardas.pdf
I read that Magic Alex spread the rumors about the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi hitting on women. John apparently later heard that from him. I don’t believe it, I’ve read the Science of Being and Art of Living and Maharishi seems like a real Guru in the Disciplic line he is in. It’s also a helpful read to delve in to the subconcious, I have yet to learn the TM method, I’m a bit scared of that, Lol.
I wrote this before I read the article, Paul said about the same thing, Lol. Is this the same Yanni that is the easy listening musician, Lol. Joking of course.
Magic Alex also had this venture where he claimed to make cars bulletproof…he just opend up the upholstery and added bulletproof vests into it and closed it up..a pathetic job…
He also claimed to be related to some Greek royal family…
btw there isn’t any ”some Greek royal family” ! There is THE Greek EX-royal family, of the same breed that still reigns in UK.
Greek Royal family was official till 8 December ‘74. Glücksburg=Gluksmpurgos; Royal house of Dänemark. She’s Leaving Home sounded for me on early ‘80s Windsor documentary; the overture.
I think the many of the accusations against Mardas are just vicious deliberate lies or at best, silly gossip. They very much sound like such, anyway.
Mardas was a scammer and con-man who rode the Beatles’ gravy train until they (primarily John) came to their senses and ditched him. Pretty much everyone else around them figured ol’ Magic out quickly.
They (again, primarily John) were never the greatest judges of character.
Yeah,a good example,Allen Klein.
We were Family friends, lived in the same apartments house in Athens, 11, Valtetsiou Street. His father was a Banker like mine. When he left people of those times thought that he was peculiar, but he was brilliant indeed…
The last time I talked to him on Facebook was in November 2016.
The accusations were made by those who were there. Were you there?
Never understood (from what I’ve read/heard) what Lennon saw in him, but of course I was never part of the inner circle, so what do I know! He was lucky to be there, I’ll give him that much!
I’ve just been researching the “Nothing Box.” Recently I received a print catalog from the Hammacher Schlemmer company. They included a little filler item saying that they introduced the “Nothing Box” in 1962 and that the Beatles purchased hundreds of them as gifts. There is a picture I found on a website of John holding this box, which looks exactly like the drawing of the box in the original ad. And John, in this picture, is definitely pre-Alex in appearance. SEVERAL YEARS earlier in appearance.
There are several sources that cite the “Beatles bought hundreds” story. Some say the box was metal, some say wood. This article on this page says plastic. In the picture of John holding the box, it looks metal to me.
According to one website, an abstract from a New Yorker article from 1962, a housewife whose husband was a retired engineer made the box for her, thinking it would amuse her. She brought it to the president of Hammacher Schlemmer thinking he’d like it, and he did, so he made it a catalog item.
Several sources state that Dwight Eisenhower even bought one of these boxes!
Perhaps this “Nothing Box” has become Lennon/Magic Alex folklore because Alex’s name got mixed up with it. Somehow, perhaps, because he was making similar types of things, and because John had one of these boxes, people just put his name with the “Nothing Box.” But it’s quite obvious to me that the “Nothing Box” was clearly out in the world, and John seems to have acquired one, according to the photo of him holding it, several years before Alex Mardas ever came into the Beatles circle. Also, in the link that Tony Sables provides above, Alex Mardas himself makes no mention of the “Nothing Box.”
Thanks. That’s really interesting info. I took out the reference to the Nothing Box, because of the uncertainty regarding the link to Magic Alex.
Scroll to page 31 of this online catalog, and you’ll see the filler item for the “Nothing Box” at the bottom left of the page.
https://www.hammacher.com/OnlineCatalog/
You can zoom in to see it clearly. Although at some point there may be a different version of the catalog at this link after some time has passed from the date I’m posting this, so you might not see this item on page 31, if at all.
Alex died today 13 Jan 2017 in Athens. R.I.P
Hi….. Alexis Mardas died some days ago in his appartment, but his body was found only today. He was 75 years old.
The Four were not always great judges of character. John was always particularly gullible.
I had known Alex in Greece from the mid ’50s when he was still “Yannis”; he was my best friend for many years, until I left Greece to pursue studies in the US. I met his parents as well.
Yannis was an extremely intelligent man. His most unique trait was his ability to “read” others and size them up quickly and accurately. That allowed him to manipulate others in a natural, affable, and effective manner. He was charming, helpful, and he possessed a good sense of humor. Manipulating others was never malicious but merely a very advanced form of what we all do when we want to make a good impression on others by putting our best foot forward. He merely elevated that to an art form to his detriment because he did not know when to stop. He was never intimidated by others’ titles, wealth, or station in life.
What he lacked in formal training in science or engineering, he made up for with his immense energy, enthusiasm, inquisitiveness, and experimentation. His hands-on experimentation with electronics enabled him to build assorted gadgets that, to others, looked like magic.
It is very sad that, as I was told, he died alone from pneumonia in his apartment in Athens. He deserved a lot better than that.
May he rest in peace.
Magic Alex. I love it!
Magic Alex did make a statement to the New York Times to repudiate a lot of allegations and fallacies about him. He did say that, contrary to popular belief, the story of him building a completely unusable 72-track studio of hopelessly bad quality was a complete fabrication, because a) he never got around to actually building this futuristic studio in the basement of 3 Savile Row and b) the studio equipment in Boston Place was only a mock setup with appropriate equipment.
He also stated that he never promise, let alone tried to invent, anything that would’ve been next to impossible to invent in real life, such as wallpaper speakers, electric paint, X-ray cameras, force field of compressed air, an artificial sun to hover over the sky in Baker Street, magic paint, force fields around Ringo’s drums, flying saucers or a house that could hover in the air on an invisible beam or a force field of coloured air.
Realistically speaking, all of those inventions could only exist in storybooks or sci-fi, not in real life, as they would be next to impossible to build.
With Abbey Road Studios expanding to 8-track during the White Album sessions, a 72-track studio would’ve been way ahead of its time and 16-track may have been more feasible. I don’t think that in those days, 72-track tape machine existed.