The high point of Chips Chipperfield's career? Making a documentary about The Beatles, he tells Tony Clayton-Lea
Strange as it may seem, one thing links The Beatles, Northern Irish punk rock, Barbra Streisand and Dingle. The connection is a man with the unlikely name of Chips Chipperfield, a film producer and video-maker who has made the Co Kerry town his home since his arrival in the mid-1990s.
Born in the north-east of England, Chipperfield moved to London in the 1960s, gradually becoming embroiled in the UK capital's music scene. Making ends meet through a series of undesirable jobs, he found himself toiling on the graveyard shift.
"I was employed in a cemetery when a guy I was working with asked me if I wanted to take over his job in Ronnie Scott's cloakroom while he was on holiday," Chipperfield says. "And that changed my life. I still say to people I don't know what I want to do when I grow up. I've never planned anything in my life."
And an interesting life it has been so far, too, despite the lack of a career strategy. He spent the mid- to late 1970s managing a number of pop and rock acts - including Belfast's Starjets, a band that released a classic lost Irish album, War Stories - only to see punk rock wipe them out. Almost by accident, as he tells it, he drifted into the burgeoning video industry, initially through his own company and subsequently through PMI, the muscular audio-visual arm of EMI.
Videos for a wide range of acts followed: Streisand, Marvin Gaye, Blancmange, UB40, Robert Palmer, Flock of Seagulls, Status Quo and Sade, to name but several that Chips can recall; there are undoubtedly many more whose names people have forgotten. He also made music-related television programmes. Currently working on a series for TG4 called Halo!, a light-hearted look at the lives of saints in the style of Hello! magazine, Chipperfield remains a consultant on the Classic Albums series, from which the next offering is Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon.
But The Beatles, Chips - what gives with The Beatles? How did landing the big fish come about? He puts it all down to Geoff Wonfor, a film director with whom he had been working sporadically from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s.
Paul McCartney and George Harrison had asked Wonfor if he would be interested in directing a biography of the life and times of The Beatles. Immediately taken with such a historic project, Wonfor looked around for a producer, glanced over his shoulder and saw Chipperfield with his hand up.
The television series that became known as The Beatles Anthology - out this week on DVD- didn't have a title in the early 1990s. Back in the dying days of The Beatles, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Neil Aspinall, an associate of the band, had tried to make a historical documentary, but between the band and Apple, their record label, falling asunder, he never completed it.
"Neil was still plugging away at it 20 years later, which is how we became involved," says Chipperfield.
On its initial airing, in 1995, The Beatles Anthology - eight episodes showing how four young men from Liverpool changed the world - caused a sensation. Regarded as the Holy Grail by many, criticised as hagiography by a few, it nevertheless became one of the most successful documentaries of its type. And, as producer, Chipperfield was there throughout.
"It was something they felt they ought to do," he says. "Rather than something they particularly wanted to do. It was different reactions from all of them. Paul was probably most aware of the potential of it. George hadn't done anything for a long time; same with Ringo. They started off from a point of not being entirely comfortable with it but ended up thoroughly enjoying it, certainly warming to it. At the end, they were all very pleased with the reaction to it and the series itself."
Yet it was a difficult project to put together, says Chipperfield, not least because the three involved hadn't been together that much in the interim 20 or so years.
And then there was the veto. "That's how they always worked: if one of them didn't want to do something, then it wasn't going to happen," says Chipperfield. It could have caused insurmountable problems had it been used to obstruct or to cloak indiscretions or misdemeanours.
"The right of veto was never really needed," he says, "because we made the documentary about the music. In 150 years' time, people aren't necessarily going to be interested about who did what drugs: they'll want to know about the music."
Alongside the original eight episodes, which last for 10 hours, the DVD includes a chocolate-topped carrot for Beatles fanatics and casual observers alike: an additional disc of special features, lasting more than 80 minutes, with previously unseen material.
Chipperfield regards it as an outstanding project. "The nature of it, the scope of it, the profile and the length. It took three to four years to make, as opposed to most projects taking about six months. Most of the time when you work with artists, you don't have the same buzz of working with someone who's a Beatle."
Every time he talked to Paul, George and Ringo, he says, he knew full well he was dealing with people who would, in the eyes of millions, be Beatles for ever. "There's such a sense of history to the anthology. It'll always be there."
The Beatles Anthology, a five-DVD set, is on EMI
