Brian Epstein
[Guardian]
If there is an unsung hero of the sixties, it is Brian Epstein. From the day, the 9th of December 1961, that he walked into the Cavern Club and first experienced the Beatles – ‘a vast engulfing sound’ – he devoted his life to their success and well-being. ‘He just had this vision,’ says Alistair Taylor, with whom Epstein made that first, lunch time visit; ‘Within half an hour, he wanted to manage them. He could see what they could become.’
From that meeting came a cultural and social revolution. The Beatles changed everything and Epstein was the architect of that change. The sheer statistics are staggering: by the end of December 1963, Brian Epstein’s acts – the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J.Kramer – had spent over 30 of 1963’s 52 weeks at number 1 in the UK chart; four months later, the Beatles held the top five places in the US top 40 – a hitherto unthinkable feat for a British group and a coup not repeated since.
You’d have thought that managing the biggest group in the world was enough – Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker couldn’t believe that he had more than the one act – but, during the next two years, Epstein continued to manage the enduringly popular Gerry Marsden and Cilla Black; he expanded NEMS into dozens of companies; he man aged the bullfighter Henry Higgins; he produced the West End premiere of James Baldwin’s “Amen Corner”; he ran a West End theatre, the Savile, which showcased Hendrix, Little Richard and the Four Tops.
For all this achievement, history has not been kind to Brian Epstein. As a result of his premature death in August 1967, people regard him as a victim of that old trope – ‘money can’t buy you happiness’. When his homosexuality became public – after John Lennon’s excoriating, 1971 Rolling Stone interview – the gloves came off: subsequent accounts – most notably Albert Gold man’s relentlessly mean “Lives Of John Lennon” – have promoted ideas that have stuck: that Epstein was lousy at business, dominated by the Beat les, sad. Even Joe Orton had had a pop in his diaries: ‘A thoroughly weak, flaccid type.’
Yet, as ever in these murky waters, you have to consider who is doing the telling. After all, Epstein rejected Orton’s “Up Against It” script as a possible Beatles film; Goldman’s source for some of his factoids was Nicky Byrne, who was in litigation with Epstein for two and a half years. The problem for anyone rash enough to approach the Beatles’ story yet again – no matter at how oblique an angle – is that the myth has become so en crusted with assertion and counter-assertion: when these are couched in book form, this means you have a problem of who to believe that is library-sized.
So, in making “The Brian Epstein Story” for Arena, Anthony Wall and I decided to forget about all the books except Epstein’s own: “A Cellarful of Noise”. We didn’t want theory; we wanted to talk to people who had been there, who had known Epstein. Because, for all the mediation surrounding the Beatles, Brian Epstein has emerged as little more than a cipher in their story – yet his was a central role: as Paul McCart ney says, ‘If anyone was the fifth Beatle, it was Brian, you know.’
Our first port of call was Epstein’s ghostwriter on “A Cellarful of Noise”, Derek Taylor, who, despite his grave illness, received us with perfect grace. Taylor had been through the full white light madness of the Beatles’ August 1964 US tour as their press officer; his own writings contain the most incisive ac counts of the Beat les and their myth. ‘Brian was undoubtedly very impressive,’ he remembered. ‘A very soft appearance, he didn’t look as though he did any ex ercise, but then a lot of people didn’t then. I certainly didn’t do any, and I was very thin. Cigarette smoking, so was he, nervy. Very well dressed, very good suit, lovely shirt: these were what made people different. The detail.’
‘It is extraordinary that he could be almost immediately acceptable to those four. The only way that it could have worked is if it was absolutely right. It was on, in other words. It’s no good pretending it works if it didn’t. But, thinking big. That is what bound Brian and the boys together. They all did think big. When he signed them up in that office in Whitechapel he told them, “I think I could help you”. He actually believed he could, and he was prepared to sit it out with them, with all their cheek and impudence. In a way they had a lot in common: just the vernacular was different.’
To Brian Epstein, the Beatles arrived as the answer to a question that had been gnawing at him for all of his life. Born on the 19th of September 1934, the eldest child of a prospering merchant family, Brian was mercurial, obsessive, and stubborn in pursuing his own path. His school days were disrupted by war and anti-semitism. His ambition to be a dress designer crumbled under family pressure. His dissatisfaction led him to an unsuccessful stint with RADA; his national service had ended prematurely with his dis charge on ‘medical grounds’.
By 1961, Brian Epstein was making a success of the family business, NEMS, but was, by his own account, ‘a little listless and bored’. The shadow here, which could not have been admitted when “A Cellarful Of Noise” was published, was his sexuality. Derek Taylor: ‘He wouldn’t have had anything in there that implied or hinted at homosexuality, because of the dangers of jail. After the Lord Montague thing, which was a frightening, horrible witch hunt only ten years before. But he told me this after only a morning: and how well did he know me ? Not well, but a bit. It was a risk.’
It’s easy to forget now – when, despite pockets of resistance, there is greater public tolerance – just how off the map homosexuals were in the fifties and early sixties. Epstein’s own thoughts his life are contained in a document written for his then solicitor in the late 50’s, notes for a defence against a charge of importuning: ‘I believed that my own willpower was the best thing with which to overcome my homosexuality. And I believe my life may become contented and I may even have attained a public success. I was determined to win through the horrors of this world. I have always felt deeply for the persecuted: for the Jews, the coloured people, for the old and society’s misfits.’
The truism is that Epstein’s interest in the Beatles was fuelled by sexual attraction, and this may well be the case. A persistent rumour, which cannot be either proved or disproved (as both parties are now dead), is that he had an encounter with John Lennon while on a spring 1963 holiday together in Barcelona. Yet this is an essentialist argument: even if Epstein did feel a sexual pull, it could easily have been transmuted into the care with which he managed the group. Not every sexual desire has to be physically acted upon.
There was another element in their mutual bonding: for the first time in his life, Epstein felt as though he belonged. ‘A lot of stress has been laid on Brian fancying John Lennon,’ says famed pop manager Simon Napier-Bell, who encountered Epstein at the end of his life; ‘But I think it was far more being a loner and suddenly finding he was part of a group. I think that was much more what he was interested in, and that brought him into a broader group again than the Beatles, just show business.’
According to Paul McCartney, this theatricality was key: ‘We had been playing together a little while and we were starting to feel that we were getting good. But we needed someone to push us and give us a few clues as to how we might go further. It became obvious that Brian was that per son. He had a theatrical flair, having gone to RADA. He knew a lot of people. He was a great networker so it became clear that he would be very good for us. It is always very helpful having someone theatrical out front; there’s got to be someone out there who says: “That was really good.” “When you moved over, you, they lost you. Don’t do that next time.” It’s a di rector: that’s re ally what he was.’
When the Beatles hit in the way that Epstein had predicted in 1962 – ‘One day they will be greater than Presley’ – his show business connections worked conclusively in their favour. Part of a London circle that included Lionel Bart and Alma Cogan, Epstein picked Alun Owen – well known for “No Trams To Lime Street” – to write the script for “A Hard Day’s Night”, an inspiration for a whole generation of American rock groups and still one of the best pop films ever. But then Brian Epstein was already on record as saying that he thought pop music was ‘an art form’, and he totally supported the Beatles’ instinctive attempts to make it so – that empathetic quality which makes him the doyen of pop managers to the present day.
By the time it was becoming absolutely clear that the Beatles were like no other pop group, success had brought the problems of over-expansion. ‘He found it impossible to delegate all the time that I knew him,’ says Derek Taylor. With this increasing pressure came crippling anxiety: as Epstein states in “A Cellarful of Noise”, ‘When a disc goes badly or a business venture fails, I am the one that suffers most, for I hold myself responsible. It isn’t the worry that worries me; it’s the failure.’
‘Brian was obsessed with controlling a situation,’ says his US attorney and close friend Nat Weiss, who met him in summer 1964. ‘Anything done outside his area of control brought a tirade of abuse. I think the image of Brian as a sort of very soft, sensitive person is not the case. He was very strong willed. I re member one occasion when John Lennon refused to do an interview during a tour and Brian went nose to nose with him. He took his tie and said, “John, you’re soft”, and stared him down. And John backed away.’
In the run-up to a famous death, it is possible to see signs of impending doom everywhere. Yet in Epstein’s case, as in many premature endings, the storyline is finely balanced right up until the final act. ‘Brian was a man of many moods,’ says Nat Weiss,’ He was a very multi-faceted person. With the advantage of looking back thirty years now, I would say that he certainly had all the symptoms of someone who was manic depressive.’ This emotional rollercoaster was slowly exacerbated by the use of prescription and illegal drugs: principally amphetamines and barbiturates, doled out by doctors ignorant or careless about their dangers.
By late 1966, several factors had put Epstein into a downward spiral. The Beatles were maturing and, after their deci sion to stop touring, were not so much in need of careful protection. The Seltaeb Beatles merchandising deal had gone horribly wrong and was dragging through the courts. His close friend Alma Cogan had died of cancer in October. And Epstein’s one personal relation ship, with a young bisexual called Dizz Gillespie, had ended in robbery and blackmail. ‘He began to feel like a liberated person but he was never able to sustain a long-term relationship,’ says Nat Weiss; ‘He’d become depressed by the fact that he’d believe it was not him they wanted but who he was.’
Despite a suicide attempt in autumn 1966, Epstein could remain positive and forward looking. His musical interests remained acute: he boosted the Who, Cream and Jimi Hendrix to Murray the K in early 1967, when all three were little known in the US. Friends dis agree about its effect, but there is a case for saying that he found LSD – which he publicly admitted taking in June 1967 – beneficial. He was worried whether the Beatles would resign with him when his contract came up in late September 1967 but, according to Paul Mc Cartney, ‘there was no question in our minds that we would stay with Brian. We didn’t want another manager.’
Brian Epstein died alone, in his bedroom at Chapel Street, Mayfair, on the 27th August 1967, one month after the Sexual Offences Act partially decriminalised homosexuality, and just one month after the death of his father Harry. There is no reason to doubt the verdict of the inquest: ‘poisoning by Carbrital, caused by an in cautious self-overdose’. Little was known about the dangers of prescription drugs at that time: indeed, Ep stein’s is the forerunner of all those 60’s drug deaths – when the limits of freedom were finally tested. It was a ghastly accident, the effects of which were immediate.
‘It was a great loss to us and I know it really frightened us,’ says Paul McCartney; ‘John got particularly frightened. I think he thought, ‘Right, this is it. This is the end of the Beatles”, and it kind of was. Brian’s death opened the floodgates. It gave other people the possibility to come in whereas before there had been no possibility. I think on or two of the other guys got quite enamoured with Allen Klein, but I never liked the idea partly because I’d seen how Brian did it and no-one else was going to stack up against Brian in my mind. No one would ever be able to do it as good because you couldn’t have the flair, the panache, the wit, the intelligence that Brian had. They would just merely be money managers. Brian was far more than that.’