The Brian Epstein Story
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‘I was fascinated by this excellent documentary on Brian Epstein and his relationship to both the early Liverpool music scene and the Beatles. He was an elegant, flamboyant background figure who was more interesting than some of the rockers who eclipsed him. The producers did an amazing job of researching and shooting location footage, and obtaining interviews with people who were there in the beginning. There is rare, archival footage here that would be impossible to see anywhere else. I rate it a 10 out of 10.’
[blog comment in IMDb, Internet movie database]‘Unlike many profiles of people associated with The Beatles, The Brian Epstein Story doesn’t frame its subject in terms of Beatlemania, but instead offers a portrait of Epstein as a man who, despite the trappings of celebrity, remained somewhat of a dignified enigma both during his life and after his death’.
Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide‘Let us look at the bottom line: Brian was a passionate man who would not take a “no” on behalf of his lads and that is how we got to hear The Beatles. End of story. The rest is all anal-retentive scatology and self-serving revisionism. My book celebrates the few months I worked for the Beatles and applauds the Brian I experienced and worked for.’
Andrew Loog Oldham, Rock’s Back Pages
(Arena, 1998)
- Director: Anthony Wall
- Producer: Anthony Wall
- Executive producers: Debbie Geller, Diana Mansfield
- Screenplay: Jon Savage
- Cinematographer: Luke Cardiff
- Editor: Guy Crossman
- Sound/ Sound Designer: Godfrey Kirby
[“The Brain Epstein Story” was transmitted in two 75 minute parts during August 1998: at the 1998’s BAFTAS, it won the Huw Wheldon Award for the Best Arts Programme or Series, and was repeated in an edited form on BBC4 during September 2007.]
“The Brian Epstein Story” happened through a more circuitous route. While working on the GTV local entertainment programme, “What’s On”, I met Tony Warren – originator of “Coronation Street”, author of several novels including “The Lights of Manchester” and he would regale me with insider gossip about the 60’s.
Some of this related to Brian Epstein, whom Tony had encountered as scriptwriter on the Gerry and the Pacemakers movie “Ferry Cross The Mersey”. In the late 70’s, the 60’s gay demi-monde was still a secret history: it was a story that had been swept under the carpet and that, at some point, I was eager to tell.
The opportunity came fifteen years later, after the successful transmission of “Punk and the Pistols”, when Anthony Wall asked me whether I had any other ideas. I did. As time went on, both Anthony and producers Debbie Geller and Diana Hayward became even more obsessed than I was with this mercurial, elusive figure.
Brian Epstein had THE vision that changed the 20th century. He spotted the fact that the Beatles would be ‘bigger than Elvis’ at the time when almost everybody else thought them a bunch of roughnecks. He believed passionately, and this belief drove him to break through music industry and media indifference to his charges.
While his business acumen was not always sound – see the disaster of Seltaeb, the Beatles’ US merchandising company – Epstein grounded the four musicians and guided them through the first few crucial years of stardom – when showbiz still reigned, before youth culture began to dictate its own terms.
The proof is in what occurred when he died in August 1967, within weeks after the legalisation of homosexuality. As John Lennon remembered, ‘I thought, “We’ve had it”.’ Maybe they would have fallen apart anyway, but the process accelerated without Epstein’s often wayward but sure instincts.
- Brian Epstein article (Guardian)
- a piece from the Guardian to go with the films’ first transmission
- Derek Taylor interview (Guardian)
- a long interview with Derek Taylor which was conducted in the very first stages of our research. An edited version of this interview was included in Ugly Things, Issue 27, Summer 2008.
- Meek, Orton and Epstein
- [belongs here?]
Brian Epstein introduces Gerry and the Pacemakers on “Hullaballoo”, dig the screams:
Brian Epstein interview with Larry Kane, Beatles US tour autumn 1964:
Beatles’ interview on climactic 1966 US tour, defensive and angry about the whole ‘Jesus’ controversy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1CidMWUfbw&feature=related
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The moving and revelatory “In My Life: The Brian Epstein Story” by Debbie Geller, edited by Anthony Wall, puts Epstein front and center in the Beatles story… “In My Life” gets at the pride and sadness of Epstein as outsider — the desire to belong and the knowledge that he couldn’t be anything other than what he was. But finally it gets at something more important than his Jewishness or homosexuality, more important than the question of whether his death by overdose in 1967 was accidental (as it was ruled) or intentional. What’s fully unexpected about the book is the way it finally explains the protectiveness that Beatles fans have always felt toward Epstein.
Charles Taylor, reviewing “In My Life: The Brian Epstein Story” – the oral history produced by Debbie Geller, at Slate.