The Beatles will make their first live LP -- and perform before an audience for the first time in two years -- at a TV special taping session tentatively scheduled for January 18. It will be an invited audience, though the site for the concert has not been chosen. (Among the places mentioned are London's Roundhouse and Liverpool's Cavern.)

No less than a dozen new songs, and probably 14, will be debuted, with eight or nine from Paul, a few by John and some material by George to draw from. "There is no shortage of material," says Apple PR man Derek Taylor They're writing all the time. It's a question of selecting the right material for the show.

There will be a run-through of the show, then the actual taping, each with a different audience to afford as many people as possible the opportunity to see the boys back in action again.

Some question has developed concerning the January 18 date, a date set by the Beatles. "Because we set it, we are not fixed by it," Taylor says. It may take a bit longer than that to get it together. If we can't do it then, it doesn't matter. The best thing we can say at this moment is that we hope it will happen before the end of the winter."

It is the first public appearance for the Beatles since August of 1966 at San Francisco, and the first in Britain since May of 1966. No release date has been given for the album. (Though a 1965 live recording from the Hollywood Bowl also exists, it has never been issued. The only other live recordings were with singer Tony Sheridan in Hamburg, long ago.)

Meanwhile, Apple is laying plans for the invasion of the United States. The Beatles' business enterprise will soon open a Los Angeles office which will function as the American counterpart of the British firm.

"We are going into the U.S. in exactly the same way American companies are establishing themselves in Europe," says Apple chief Ron Kass, an American himself. "Our American company will not just be a branch of the London office, but a fully operational record and publishing company, one hundred per cent involved in the U.S. market with an entirely American image."

Kass adds that no other European record company has taken this direct route of exploiting the U.S. market, "a massive source of potential revenue" which "dominates the world." More than 60 per cent of the sales of Mary Hopkins' Apple single "Those Were the Days" were made in America.

The name of Apple in Los Angeles will be Apple Music Publishing Co. (ASCAP) to be headed by an American, Michael O'Connor, with a smaller affiliate, Python Music (BMI), mainly to deal with American writers. A basic staff of six will be situated in a house (as yet unlocated) similar to Apple's 1 million-plus Savile Row headquarters. A residence for George Harrison and Paul McCartney, both of whom intend to spend six months a year in the States, is also being house-hunted.

Apple A&R man Peter Asher is already in the U.S. on a two-month organizational trip to initiate the massive push for American Apple. He is signing artists, studying the industry and producing records from his temporary headquarters, the Capitol Tower in Los Angeles.

"The US. publishing company will become bigger than the U.K. company in time," Kass predicts.

Apple also projects a series of "disposable records" -- the phonographic equivalent of paperback books -- selling for about $2.00 to begin sometime during 1969.

Kass says: "The John Lennon-Yoko Ono album would have been the first in this series if we had thought of it earlier. The idea arose from a meeting with Paul, George and John. They want to produce cheap albums of esoteric material covering a wide range of music and the spoken word. We'll be including such things as interviews with Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Picasso. We have approached Norman Mailer and Eldridge Cleaver and writer Michael McClure will be recording an album of his own songs for the series.

"The albums will have simple black and white artwork and will be available on subscription, like a magazine. This series has tremendous possibilities because people who won't talk to major record companies will often talk to us. The Beatles themselves will be featured in discussion on some records. It will be a sort of underground label, but it will not be enclosed and obscure -- it will be open to us all."