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Monday, Oct 13, 2008
An oral history of the real fifth Beatle shows the visionary genius of the man who discovered the Fab Four.
Dec 5, 2000 |
To me, in terms of popular music, the Beatles express a cross quality of happiness and tragedy, and this is, basically, what the greatest form of entertainment is made up of. I'm very much a Beatles fan.
-- Brian Epstein as quoted in
On "The Flintstones," where the character of a British rock agent was inspired by him (the episode where Pebbles and Bam-Bam become rock stars), he was called Eppy Brianstone. And in fact "Eppy" was the nickname used by his most famous clients -- the ones he always called "the boys," even long after they'd grown out of that endearment. He must have loved the offhand manner of the name. Jaunty and confident, it was everything he dreamed of being and never quite pulled off.
If you subscribe to the inevitability theory of history, then the Beatles would have made their mark on the world whether or not they had ever met Brian Epstein. And perhaps some London impresario, hearing about their regional popularity, would eventually have journeyed north to Liverpool and made them minor British stars in the same league as Cliff Richard or Tommy Steele -- big at home but virtually unknown in the rest of the world.
But the fact is, there was no one else in the Beatles' orbit with the vision or persistence to see what Epstein did when he ventured into the dank recesses of the Cavern Club to see one of the band's sloppy and rude lunchtime sessions. How else do you explain a proper, mannered record-store manager raised on classical music with no experience in band management suddenly deciding to manage the Beatles the first time he saw them? How do you explain his persistence in the face of rejections from almost every British record label, and the laughter that accompanied his unwavering assertion that one day the Beatles would be bigger than Elvis?
The only possible explanation is that Epstein possessed a visionary genius. The various histories of the Beatles (including the best, Philip Norman's "Shout!") have made much of Epstein's limitations as a businessman (a disastrous deal for American merchandising of Beatles paraphernalia cost the band members millions and tied them up in lawsuits), and it's true that none of his other signings -- Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Cilla Black -- survived their few hits. But whatever instincts he showed as record-department manager at his family's NEMS store in Liverpool, accurately predicting what records would sell and what would stiff, reached their full flower when he saw the Beatles.
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. The book is presented as an oral history with reminiscences from, among others, Paul McCartney; his American business partner, Nat Weiss; his personal assistant, Joanne Petersen; and other friends, family and business associates. There are also amazing passages from the secret memoirs Epstein wrote (considerably more frank than his "A Cellarful of Noise," actually written by his press officer, Derek Taylor). The interviews originally appeared in the two-and-a-half-hour British documentary "The Brian Epstein Story," which has yet to be seen in its full form in this country. (A version of about 40 minutes ran on the A&E network. According to Greil Marcus, who has seen both, it's a mutilation.)
Epstein sometimes said his bond with the Beatles was something indescribable, nearly mystical. But he remained an outsider. It wasn't exactly because of his Jewishness (Taylor says there was anti-Semitism in Liverpool, but there were also a lot of Jews throughout the city), and despite the stories that have always swirled about (particularly regarding Epstein's relationship with John Lennon), it may not have been because of his homosexuality either. It's often been said that Epstein decided to manage the Beatles because his first sight of them, unkempt and sweating in their leather outfits, was the embodiment of his rough-trade fantasies. But lust has never been a good gauge of talent, and the Beatles simply wouldn't have connected with the worldwide audience they did if they had merely been Epstein's sexual fantasy.
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