Shooting an apple off one's child's head of the story is in the legend of William Tell, supposedly happening to start off the Swiss revolution, written first in the 15th-century "White Book of Sarnen", then in Aegidius Tschudi's 16th-century "Chronicon Helveticum", and later the basis for Friedrich Schiller's 1804 play. Tell is arrested for failing to bow in respect to the hat that the newly appointed Austrian "Vogt", Albrecht Gessler, has placed on a pole, and Gessler commands him to shoot an apple off his son's head with a single bolt from his crossbow. After splitting the apple with the single shot (supposedly on November 18, 1307),
Apple to the Core Hardy wrote that the authors had failed to assemble a convincing or informative narrative and had instead resorted to portraying Epstein as their "hero", at the obvious expense of Klein and the Eastman family. Hardy concluded that the book was "a failure", although he acknowledged that "if only because it sees beyond the stars in most people's skies, with [Michael Wale's] "Vox Pop", another flawed book, it marks a hopeful new starting point for rock writing." Writing in 1977, Beatles biographer Nicholas Schaffner described "Apple to the Core" as "[a]n irreverent but definitive unraveling of the web of financial intrigue