Short answers, pulled from the story.
Brian Epstein was an English music entrepreneur born on the 19th of September 1934 who managed the Beatles from 1961 until his death in 1967. He secured their recording contract with EMI's Parlophone label, overhauled their stage image from leather jackets and jeans to suits and ties, and negotiated the terms that launched their international career.
Epstein attended a lunchtime concert by the Beatles at the Cavern Club in Liverpool on the 9th of November 1961. He had previously read about the group in Mersey Beat magazine and seen their names on posters around the city.
Epstein's first management contract, signed on the 24th of January 1962, gave him 10 to 15 per cent of the Beatles' income. A revised contract in October 1962 raised his share to between 15 and 25 per cent depending on how much he helped the band earn, with his expenses deducted from the artists' gross income.
After being rejected by Columbia, Pye, Philips, Oriole, and Decca, Epstein visited the HMV store at 363 Oxford Street in early February 1962. A disc-cutter named Jim Foy directed him to Sid Colman of EMI's publishing division, who passed him to George Martin at Parlophone. EMI managing director L. G. Wood ultimately instructed Martin to sign the group in May 1962.
Epstein allowed his lawyer David Jacobs to give away ninety per cent of Beatles merchandising rights to Nicky Byrne in the UK, leaving only ten per cent for Epstein, NEMS, and the Beatles combined. Jacobs later renegotiated the royalty rate up to forty-nine per cent in August 1964, but the initial deal was widely regarded as a serious commercial error.
Epstein died on the 27th of August 1967 at his Chapel Street home in London. The coroner Gavin Thurston ruled the death accidental, caused by an overdose of Carbrital, a barbiturate preparation combining pentobarbital and carbromal, combined with alcohol in his system. He was thirty-two years old.
Epstein was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Non-Performers' Section in 2014, nearly fifty years after the Beatles themselves became among the Hall's earliest entrants. The induction was not without controversy; he was inducted alongside Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who declined to attend partly in protest at what he viewed as the indignity of a joint induction.