Brian Epstein

• 1. Introduction

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  Brian Epstein walked into the Cavern Club on the 9th of November 1961, squeezing past a line of fans in the narrow stairwell of a Liverpool cellar venue he had visited many times before. What he found was a leather-jacketed group who smoked between songs, chatted with the audience, and stopped numbers when someone shouted a request. He had never managed an artist in his life. Within months, that group would be known the world over.

  Epstein was born on the 19th of September 1934 at 4 Rodney Street, Liverpool, into a family already shaping the city's retail landscape. His grandfather Isaac had arrived from the Russian Empire as a teenager in the 1890s. That immigrant's furniture enterprise eventually grew into NEMS, North End Music Stores, the chain where Epstein himself would spot a demand for a single called "My Bonnie" and begin chasing a group he had been reading about in a local music paper. By the time he died on the 27th of August 1967, at 32, he had also managed Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Cilla Black, and a roster of other acts. Whether he got the business side right is a question that followed him to the grave. Whether the Beatles would have got anywhere without him is one Paul McCartney answered simply in 1997: "If anyone was the Fifth Beatle, it was Brian."

• 2. Family Roots and Early Restlessness

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  Isaac Epstein married Dinah Hyman in Manchester in 1900, and by 1901 the couple were living above a furniture dealership at 80 Walton Road, Liverpool. The business expanded steadily; Isaac eventually founded Epstein and Sons and took over adjacent shops at 62-72 Walton Road to sell musical instruments and household appliances alongside furniture. The enterprise adopted the name NEMS, offered lenient credit terms, and grew large enough that Paul McCartney's father once bought a piano from them.

  Brian's mother, Malka, was nicknamed "Queenie" by the family because Malka means queen in Hebrew. His father Harry and Queenie married in 1933, and Brian arrived a year later, followed by his brother Clive twenty-two months after that. During the Second World War the family relocated to Southport, where two schools expelled Brian for laziness before the family returned to Liverpool in 1945, settling at 197 Queens Drive in Childwall, a house they kept for the next thirty years.

  Epstein moved through a sequence of boarding schools, including Clayesmore School in Dorset, Liverpool College, a Jewish school in Kent, and two years at Wrekin College in Wellington, Shropshire, where he learned the violin. Theatre was the one subject that consistently held him. His favourite childhood book was Pamela Brown's The Swish of the Curtain. Shortly before turning sixteen he wrote his father a long letter asking to become a dress designer; Harry refused. Epstein served a six-month apprenticeship elsewhere, then reported for duty at the family furniture shop at five pounds a week.

  Conscription came in December 1952, and Epstein was posted as a data entry clerk to the Albany Street Barracks near Regent's Park in spring 1953. He used London to explore theatre and galleries, was frequently reprimanded for not collecting his army pay, and by January 1954 had been seen by numerous Army psychiatrists. Their recommendation was an early medical discharge, which eventually came through, and Epstein confessed his homosexuality to a family psychiatrist on returning to Liverpool, who suggested that he leave the city as soon as possible.

• 3. RADA and the Law

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  In autumn 1956, Epstein enrolled in a two-year course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. His classmates included Susannah York, Albert Finney, and Peter O'Toole. He dropped out after the third term, later saying he had "become too much of a businessman to enjoy being a student." He told an interviewer in 1964 that he had "felt like an old man at the age of 21."

  In late April 1957, while still a RADA student, Epstein was arrested near the Swiss Cottage tube station for soliciting an undercover police officer. Homosexual sex between men was illegal in Britain at the time. He appeared in a Marylebone courthouse the next day, pleaded not guilty, and was sentenced to two years' probation. While serving that probation in May 1958, he was assaulted by a casual sexual partner in Liverpool and extorted for money. Epstein reported it to the police, which required him to testify in court and disclose his orientation to his family. The court barred the press from printing his name during the trial. His attacker was sentenced to two years in prison.

  On returning to Liverpool after RADA, Epstein was placed in charge of the record department of the family's new NEMS music store on Great Charlotte Street. He worked, in his own words, "day and night" to build the department, and it grew into one of the largest music retail outlets in Northern England. A second store opened at 12-14 Whitechapel, and Epstein ran the whole operation. Across the road at the Lewis's department store, he watched a salesman named Peter Brown and was sufficiently impressed to lure him to NEMS with a higher salary and a sales commission. The record department gave Epstein his first deep education in the pop music business.

• 4. Signing the Beatles

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  Epstein first noticed the Beatles in the pages of Mersey Beat and on posters around Liverpool designed by his commercial artist associate Tony Booth, before he asked the magazine's editor Bill Harry who they were. Harry had previously persuaded Epstein to stock the magazine at NEMS, with the Beatles on the front page of its second issue. On the 3rd of August 1961, Epstein began writing a regular column in Mersey Beat under the title "Stop the World - And Listen To Everything in It."

  The official origin story of how Epstein became curious about the group centres on a customer named Raymond Jones walking into NEMS and asking for the "My Bonnie" single. Taylor later said he had placed the order himself using Jones's name, knowing Epstein would notice it. Harry and McCartney both disputed Epstein's telling, noting he had been reading about the group for months. Whatever the truth, Epstein arranged for himself and Taylor to attend the Beatles' Thursday lunchtime concert at the Cavern Club on the 9th of November 1961, where the disc jockey Bob Wooler announced their arrival over the public address system.

  After the show, Epstein and Taylor went backstage to a room Epstein later described as being "as big as a broom cupboard." George Harrison greeted him with, "And what brings Mr Epstein here?" Epstein replied that they had "just popped in to say hello." Taylor declared the band "absolutely awful" over lunch, yet noted something "remarkable" about them. Epstein sat smiling for a long time before saying, "I think they're tremendous!" He then grabbed Taylor's arm and asked, "Do you think I should manage them?"

  At an afternoon meeting at NEMS on the 3rd of December 1961, Epstein formally proposed the arrangement. Lennon, Harrison, and Pete Best arrived late, having been drinking. McCartney was delayed because he had "just got up and was taking a bath," as Harrison explained. Epstein asked only one question: did they have a manager? On learning they did not, he said, "It seems to me that with everything going on, someone ought to be looking after you." The Beatles signed a five-year contract on the 24th of January 1962, giving Epstein 10 to 15 per cent of their income. A new contract in October 1962 raised his share to between 15 and 25 per cent depending on how much he helped them earn. Notably, Epstein himself never signed the contract. He told Taylor, "Well, if they ever want to tear it up, they can hold me but I can't hold them."

• 5. Reinventing the Stage

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  Before Epstein arrived, the Beatles wore blue jeans and leather jackets, started and stopped songs mid-set whenever the mood or audience requested, smoked and ate while playing, and sometimes pretended to hit each other. David Szatmary recorded Epstein's first impression: "They were a scruffy crowd in leather, and they were not very tidy and not very clean."

  Epstein's campaign to change their image moved in deliberate stages. He described the process himself: he first encouraged them to put away the leather jackets, then prohibited jeans at performances, then moved them to sweaters, and eventually, "very reluctantly, eventually, suits." He took them to Wirral to meet his friend, master tailor Beno Dorn, who made their first suits from a design they had already admired and that Epstein approved. He also insisted they stop swearing, eating, and drinking on stage, and he introduced the synchronised bow at the end of their sets. McCartney was the first to agree, partly because he attributed the approach to Epstein's RADA training.

  Lennon resisted, but later conceded: "I'll wear a suit; I'll wear a bloody balloon if somebody's going to pay me." Epstein also cultivated press relationships, which Lennon described as "charming and smarming … the newspaper people." McCartney observed that the gigs "went up in stature" and the pay, while slow to follow, did rise. The group now kept a single diary for bookings rather than using whoever happened to have one handy. Privately, the Beatles called Epstein "Eppy" or "Bri"; in interviews they used "Brian" or "Mr. Epstein." On the 1st of May 1966 they made their last official live appearance in Britain, at the NME Annual Poll-Winners' All-Star Concert at the Empire Pool, Wembley Park, an event that was televised but where the cameras were switched off while the Beatles played because Epstein and ABC TV had failed to agree on terms.

• 6. Fighting for a Record Deal

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  Starting shortly after he met the Beatles, Epstein made repeated trips to London to pitch them to record companies. Columbia, Pye, Philips, Oriole, and most infamously Decca all rejected him. On the 13th of December 1961, Decca's Mike Smith travelled from London to Liverpool to watch the group at the Cavern, which led to an audition on the 1st of January 1962. One month later, Decca informed Epstein the tapes were rejected.

  Epstein had also approached Ron White, an EMI marketing executive he knew through business, who agreed to play the Beatles' German recording of "My Bonnie" for EMI's A&R directors. White played it for only two of the four. In early February 1962, Epstein visited the HMV store at 363 Oxford Street to have the Decca tape cut to acetate. A disc-cutter named Jim Foy liked what he heard and suggested Epstein contact Sid Colman, head of EMI's record publishing division. Colman and his colleague Kim Bennett responded to the Lennon-McCartney song "Like Dreamers Do" and directed Epstein to George Martin, the A&R manager of EMI's Parlophone label.

  Epstein met Martin on the 13th of February, playing the Decca acetates. Martin was not impressed by the "lousy tape." Martin later said Epstein's personal conviction that the Beatles would become internationally famous was what finally moved him. In practice, EMI managing director L. G. Wood instructed Martin in May 1962 to sign them, largely to satisfy Ardmore & Beechwood's interest in publishing Lennon-McCartney songs. Martin met Epstein again on the 9th of May and offered a standard contract for six recorded sides in the first year, the equivalent of three double-sided singles. Epstein sent a telegram immediately to the Beatles, who were in Hamburg, and to the Mersey Beat journal in Liverpool.

  The initial royalty rate gave the Beatles one penny for each record sold, split four ways, reducing each member's share to one farthing per copy. Sales outside the UK were paid at half a penny for the whole group. Epstein later renegotiated, and on the 27th of January 1967 the Beatles signed a new nine-year contract with EMI, a contract that stipulated NEMS would receive 25 per cent for the full nine years even if the Beatles chose not to renew their management relationship with Epstein, whose management contract was itself up for renewal later that year.

• 7. Business, Missteps, and the Manila Incident

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  NEMS had a staff of twenty-five when it moved from Liverpool to London in 1964. The company booked concerts, presented opening acts, and collected money as promoter, booking agent, and manager in a single operation. Epstein once offered all four Beatles a fixed wage of fifty pounds a week for life; Harrison recalled earning twenty-five pounds a week at the time, which already exceeded his father's ten pounds. The group declined, believing they were worth far more.

  Merchandising became a costly episode. Before nationwide success, Epstein had allowed a cousin's company to produce Beatles sweaters for thirty shillings and badges for six pence. It sold fifteen thousand sweaters and fifty thousand badges as the group's fame grew. When Beatlemania arrived in Britain in November 1963, Epstein was deluged by novelty manufacturers. He then allowed his lawyer David Jacobs to give away ninety per cent of UK merchandising rights to Nicky Byrne, leaving only ten per cent for Epstein, NEMS, and the Beatles combined. Jacobs later renegotiated that figure up to forty-nine per cent in August 1964. Byrne set up Seltaeb in the United States, with Beatles spelled backwards. Capitol Records sent a Yorkshire woman named Wendy Hanson to filter Epstein's calls at the Plaza Hotel in New York; she later worked exclusively in his Albemarle Street office in London. Lennon said bluntly that Epstein "ripped us off on the Seltaeb thing."

  The Philippines tour of July 1966 created a different kind of crisis. The Beatles played two shows at the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium in Manila. Epstein had politely declined an invitation to a breakfast party hosted by Imelda Marcos, as the group's policy was never to accept official social invitations. The Beatles and their party were ejected from their hotel that same day and escorted to the airport by police. Epstein gave a televised apology, but static prevented it from being seen or heard. At the airport, Epstein and Beatles assistant Mal Evans were briefly removed from the plane. Epstein was forced to hand over six thousand eight hundred pounds worth of Philippine peso notes earned from the Manila shows and to sign a tax bond before being permitted to board.

  Chartered accountant James Trevor Isherwood set up a company called Lenmac on the 12th of May 1964 to collect Lennon and McCartney's PRS payments. When Isherwood first visited Epstein's office he was surprised to find the management commission was twenty-five per cent of gross income, not the ten per cent he believed was standard. Epstein deducted all expenses from that gross figure. Before his death he knew that the renegotiation of his management contract, due on the 30th of September 1967, would reduce his fee from twenty-five to ten per cent.

• 8. Death and Afterlife

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  After his father died in July 1967, Epstein sat shiva in Liverpool, having recently come out of the Priory Clinic in Putney, where he had been trying to treat acute insomnia and amphetamine addiction. On the 23rd of August he made his last visit to a Beatles recording session at the Chappell Recording Studios on Maddox Street in Mayfair, where they were working on Magical Mystery Tour.

  On the 24th of August, Epstein invited Peter Brown and Geoffrey Ellis to his country home, Kingsley Hill, in Warbleton, East Sussex, for the bank holiday weekend. When an expected group of friends failed to arrive Epstein drove back to London alone. At five in the afternoon on the 25th, he phoned Brown from his Chapel Street house, sounding, Brown thought, "very groggy." Brown advised him to take the train to Uckfield rather than drive under the influence of Tuinal. Epstein said he would eat, read his mail, watch Juke Box Jury, then call to say which train to meet. He never called.

  On the 27th of August, his butler could not rouse him through his locked bedroom door. His doctor and the butler broke the door down and found Epstein in bed, eyes closed, an open book near his hand and digestive biscuits on the bedside cabinet. The coroner, Gavin Thurston, determined that death was caused by an overdose of Carbrital, a preparation combining the barbiturate pentobarbital with carbromal, combined with alcohol. The pathologist Donald Teare stated the barbiturate level in Epstein's blood was a "low fatal level." The coroner ruled the death accidental. Epstein had taken six Carbrital pills, probably his customary dose, but the combination with alcohol reduced his tolerance fatally. At the time of his death, the Beatles were with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Bangor, North Wales. The second of two Jimi Hendrix shows at Epstein's Saville Theatre was cancelled that evening.

  Epstein was buried in the Long Lane Jewish Cemetery in Aintree, Liverpool. The graveside service was conducted by Rabbi Norman Solomon, who said, disparagingly, that Epstein was "a symbol of the malaise of our generation." The Beatles did not attend, to preserve the family's privacy and to avoid drawing fans and media. The day before the funeral, George Harrison gave Nat Weiss a single chrysanthemum wrapped in newspaper, with instructions to place it on the coffin on behalf of all four Beatles. Weiss and Geoffrey Ellis, both knowing that flowers are forbidden at Jewish funerals, watched workers begin to shovel earth onto the casket and cast the package unopened onto the coffin, where it was covered by dirt. On the 17th of October, all four Beatles attended a memorial service at the New London Synagogue in St John's Wood, officiated by Rabbi Louis Jacobs. Lennon later said of Epstein's death: "I knew that we were in trouble then. I thought, 'We've fucking had it now.'" The first management contract between Epstein and the Beatles sold at auction in London in 2008 for two hundred and forty thousand pounds. On the 27th of August 2022, the fifty-fifth anniversary of his death, a bronze statue of Epstein was unveiled near the site of NEMS; one of its sculptors, Jane Robbins, is a cousin of Paul McCartney.