Brian Epstein sat in his box at his own London theatre, the Saville, watching with boyish excitement as the “Fame In 67” company completed a “Batman” routine.
“I can tell the mood of each artist at every performance,” he murmured; “Georgie Fame is in fine form tonight. I’m making this theatre quite my home… been here every night of the show.”
This man, who once watched an unknown beat group in an obscure Liverpool cellar club with similar enthusiasm, is now founding a second major career.
The hunches, astuteness, and charm which steered the Beatles to millionairehood and M.B.E.s are at work again.
For since Epstein engaged America’s Four Tops for his first Saville pop concert in November, his Sunday shows there have been sell-outs.
And business at his first pop-show season is good enough to justify its extension from two weeks to three.
In his private sitting room adjoining his box Epstein, now 32, talked of his 1967 plans.
THE BOYS
This year the public will see him more as a personality in his own right than in the wake of the Beatles.
“I am not belittling my Beatles’ management in any way - l want to continue with their management and see them in their future activities.” he said.
“The boys would want me to do other things successfully. They are interested in this theatre, and have made very valid and intelligent suggestions. At the moment they are working on recording, then comes their third film, and possibly a television spectacular. There are no plans for personal appearances at the moment.
“I want to see Cilla Black as the first international singer in the world, and I am negotiating a film for her. Gerry Marsden has enormous potential, and I will include him in Saville activities.
“And I am still responsible as personal manager to the Fourmost, Sounds Incorporated, Billy J. Kramer and the Remo Four.
EXCITEMENT
“Obviously, though, at this moment, I am centring my activities on my theatre. I want to be in absolute control here.
“My schedule up to March includes artists who cause excitement, in the main, rather than screams: The Who, The Cream, Lee Dorsey, Chuck Berry, Garnet Mimms, Edwin Starr, Fats Domino.
“I’m also including a Ballets Africains season and a Tahitian dance company, and I’m negotiating to present Tom Jones. I’m hoping to give midnight film shows.
“I do not intend taking on a second theatre: I would not like the responsibility. I like my eight hours’ sleep and I don’t want to do all that much. I’m aware that if one does too much, one’s health suffers.
“I have tried to do other things in the theatre, and would still like to direct plays. I did one at the Arts. It was described as one of the most promising flops of the season.
“I am a gambler on horses, at the gaming tables, and in show business. This theatre is still at the breaking-even stage. I have gambled more heavily than the Beatles, and if I ceased today I would have a lot less money than the Beatles!”
Can Epstein’s yesterday last until tomorrow? The question must be asked not only of the song, the most financially successful product of the Lennon-McCartney team, but of the era as a whole.
The lasting quality of the Beatles’ music is no easier to assess than the value of the social pattern which it started.
It is true that you seldom hear people whistling songs from their first or even their fourth L.P. - but it could be because they are whistling instead tunes from their latest disc.
It may be that, when they have stopped producing new music, people will unconsciously select the most memorable Beatle songs, just as they did with Cole Porter’s massive output.
The Beatles’ undoubted ability and readiness to undertake musical adventure especially in the last 18 months, have set new standards in the pop world.
Because of their efforts we are now able to able to distinguish between pop that is good and pop that is rubbish.
John, Paul, George and Ringo are experimenting constantly, using classical jazz and Indian traditional formations in their work - as they did so successfully in the Sgt. Pepper’s Band L.P. Eventually, perhaps, they may open up the way to marrying the extremities of music, or even find an entirely new form.
While the Beatles are undoubtedly the leaders of the movement of the mid-’sixties, their success has also encouraged thousands of youngsters to have a go.
Next month the first course in pop and light music sponsored by a local education authority starts at Leeds Music Centre. Already more than 100 students from all over Britain have applied.
At the peak of the era, in 1964, it was estimated that 700 beat groups, plus individual singers, were performing in halls, clubs and pubs all over Britain, all aiming at that paper promise of a fortune - a record contract.
Most of them failed to make it, and handing back their instruments to hire purchase firms, they drifted away to ask for their old jobs back so that they could eat again.
But a handful succeeded, some for a short time, others like the Rolling Stones, almost to reach a par with the Beatles.
Young men of Epstein’s age, watching his dividends rise every week, thought it was easy - and became managers of groups that were practically swept from off the streets.
Most of them gave up after running out of capital.
Others were sensible, getting their education with the master before launching out on their own. Men like Andrew Oldham, who was the Beatles’ first London publicity officer, left them to manage a then unknown group introduced to him by Beatle George Harrison - the Rolling Stones.
And Derek Taylor, once a journalist, became his personal assistant, ghosted Epstein’s autobiography, then went to America and became part-owner of groups such as The Byrds and The Beach Boys.
People like them will try to out-Epstein Epstein, looking for the new craze before it’s happened, promoting it the moment they sense a simper of interest.
For the recording companies, the era has been bonanza time. In 1960 sales of British records at home and abroad totalled 72,670,000, a monetary value of £14,996,000.
By 1964 they had catapulted to 101,996,000, value £25,602,000.
After a temporary recession the outlook is still healthy. The monthly total for May, most recent Board of Trade figure, was £2,016,000 - representing a 19 per cent increase on the same month last year.
This is big-time money, and E.M.I. who have enjoyed the major share since giving the Beatles their first chance when other record companies turned them down, are especially unwilling to let the Americans recapture the market.
The company will almost certainly put in a bid for NEMS, should the directors decide to sell in order to pay the enormous death duties that will be due on Epstein’s estate.
The alternative is to let the mighty empire go to America, the buyers reaping the rewards still pouring in from past successes as well as present.
The Americans would like nothing better, of course. For despite their efforts with groups like The Monkees, The Mamas and the Papas, and The Beach Boys they still cannot rival the total sales of the British groups.
The zenith of the Epstein era was a magical time when extraordinary gestures were made that nevertheless seemed justified. Like Prime Minister Harold Wilson handing the Beatles the M.B.E. for services to exports.
And, just as this cannot be repeated with the same effect, neither can the influence which this era had on the whole country.
The freedom for youth that it promoted will stay. Tigers, once having broken out of their cages, fight against being shoved back inside.
This freedom existed on several planes. The hysterical screaming, the sacrificial fainting of girls in the suffocating crowds, desperate to touch a lock of their idols’ hair if not to yank it out by the roots, we had seen before.
What we hadn’t seen for a long time, partly perhaps because the impetus of the previous generations had been sliced off by war, was the great desire among the young to see something constructive happen to Britain.
The result was a youth movement which thumbed its nose at the Establishment, trying to destroy it through ridicule and contempt for its traditions.
Probably it went too far too quickly. While it is easy to destroy, it is more difficult to reconstruct.
The young society that now predominates is nihilistic, looking for a substitute for the religious and moral principles which have slipped away, leaving them floundering in the muddy hole that remains.
Flower Power, freak-outs, love-ins, transcendental meditations - all are an attempt to find this substitute. None will last long.
They are not new. They are merely the dust of the Epstein era. When it settles the era will really die.
What will replace it is anyone’s guess.
It may be that the young will go on floating through temporary phases, each one more disturbing than the last, until the next Epstein arrives to collect the rebels into one stream, and regalvanise them into concerted action.
Whatever happens, things will never be the same again. They never are.
It was a zany period… young people grabbed Beatle music and the society it bred
The Epstein Era
By ALIX PALMER and JUDITH SIMONS
The Epstein Era began on October 28, 1961, and ended the day before yesterday. Six short years of spiralling success unmatched in the unpredictable history of show business. Its influence reached far beyond the tread of the teenage revolution - some would say it sparked it off - clearing the way for new crazes, new outlets for self-expression, new trading posts.
By the time Epstein arrived, the scene was made up of a whole generation of young people born since the end of the war.
They were bored, feeling they were outsiders in a society they didn’t really understand and which was clinging to traditions they despised.
They belonged to a generation that was maturing more quickly than the provisions their parents were making for them.
When Beatle music and the kind of society it bred appeared - they grabbed it and made it their own.
Those who thought they had seen it all happen before were cynical. “It will have the same impact as rock ‘n’ roll in the ‘fifties,” they said. “Here today, gone tomorrow.”
But the cynics had underestimated the need for a new mood, the need of the young to feel important, the need for a new libertarian attitude reminiscent of the sixteenth - century troubadours of France.
In the beginning, the Beatles and their stable-mates offered no deep messages. They weren’t protesting - that was to come later from America, with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.
Their lyrics were somewhat crude - but the emotions they expressed were understood by all.
Their romanticism was as raw as the smell of the Mersey it sprang from. You couldn’t smooch to their beat - so you made up new dances.
And while you were making these uninhibited movements, you found your old clothes uncomfortable, staid and fit for the dustbin or the scissors.
Your parents may laugh - but you were spending your own money. And it was fun to go without lunch to be able to pay for this week’s top pop.
It was a zany period, an era of fantasy, and as with all such revolutions, it eventually reached a point where it could no longer remain uniform. Off-shoots of extremism were the natural progression, the time for even greater experiment, the realisation for some that simplicity was not enough.
And so to drugs and deeper self analysis, the feeling of restlessness that follows a concentrated effort of enjoyment.
And guiding the whole movement were the profit-makers, the people who saw the opportunity for a quick sell.
But it was not all bad. Those who were making money for themselves were also making money for Britain.
Sales of British records in the first half of 1963 rose by 12 per cent to a record total of £8,386,000.
By 1964 it was not unusual to find eight British names in America’s top ten - at one point the Beatles alone held the first four places. The No. 6 spot was filled by Lorne Green singing a song called “Ringo.”
By the end of that year Britain’s beat stars had earned £20 million from the U.S.
Never before had Britain been so clearly the leader of the international pop scene, and the enthusiasm that grew out of this spilled over into other industries.
For the fans - who have bought more than 200 million Beatles’ records - not only wanted to listen to their idols. They wanted to look like them too.
Which brought in the fashion designers and clothing manufacturers.
It is no coincidence that this era brought success to the young fashion designers who began to compete and even take over from Paris, people like Mary Quant, Angela Cash, Caroline Charles and John Steven on the men’s side - all striving to kill routine in clothes, behaviour and attitude.
Musical magazines and newspapers prospered too.
Sales of the top-selling musical paper, the New Musical Express, rose by one-third in 1963, from 236,000 to 326,000.
Epstein himself went into publishing. He took over the local Liverpool pop paper Merseybeat, now merged with Disc.
And so was created a country of new ideas, where the young were as important as the experienced middle-aged, finding their own identity, changing it from month to month, wearing an army uniform one day, a flowered shirt the next, scorning Auntie B.B.C. to offer their devotions to the with-it pirates.
It could well be that all this would have happened without Epstein. But he was the man who picked up the first loose threads and wove them into a design for living.
The sage starts when an 18-year-old boy called Raymond Jones, walked into the Epstein family record store in Whitechapel, Liverpool, and asked for a record made in Germany by a group known as the Beatles.
Epstein, then 27, who was serving behind the counter, had never heard of them.
He was only vaguely aware that the kids of Liverpool had stopped spending their spare time on the street and had gone underground to listen to a new type of rumbustious pop music bashed out on drums and guitars, echoing with a deafening roar sound the mostly undecorated walls of the many clubs that had sprung up.
Two days later, a couple of girls asked for the same record, and Epstein found that The Beatles (”an odd and purposeless spelling,” he thought) were playing in The Cavern club.
Already loth to walk into a tangle of teenagers a decade and more younger than he, Epstein found the sweaty, greasy atmosphere of The Cavern slightly distasteful.
But he became enamoured of the four untidy boys on stage, swiping the air with their guitars and cracking jokes with the audience.
The first words spoken between them were hardly world shattering.
“Hello there,” said George Harrison. “What brings Mr. Epstein here?”
The Beatles at this time were earning 75 shillings a night each. A few weeks later Epstein offered to become their manager.
A contract was drawn up and signed - but not immediately by Epstein, who was by no means confident that he could fulfil the promises he had made to the four.
The next few weeks were ironic. People who missed out on the Beatles don’t like to be reminded of them.
Epstein touted the tapes round Decca, Pye and the Embassy record companies.
But they all turned him down.
It wasn’t until July 1962 that Epstein’s big break came. He took the tapes to Parlophone, part of the mighty E.M.I set-up - and met George Martin, who was to become almost as important to the Beatles’ development as their instruments.
Martin liked what he heard, and Epstein got a recording contract.
The first record - “Love Me Do,” with “P.S. I Love You” on the B side, was released on October 4, 1962. Beatlemania had begun.
Once the first tentative steps were taken, it surged on like a feather whipped up in a whirlwind
The Epstein Era
Day 2
By ALIX PALMER and JUDITH SIMONS
The Beatles’ first record produced under Epstein’s management reached No.17 in the hit parade. Promising but not paralysing. That was in October 1962. Little more than a year later, the four brush-haired lads from Scouseland were earning £3,500 a week.
By the end of 1964, they were collective millionaires: qualification - earning of a minimum of £100,000 a year. John Lennon and Paul McCartney became millionaires in their own right in 1966, and George and Ringo have almost certainly caught them up this year.
Brian Epstein, taking 25 per cent of their earnings, plus income from his other artists, got there before any of them.
Making such an incredible amount of money in so short a time defies the ordinary imagination.
Even those five whose pockets were ready to receive it could hardly believe what was happening.
Once the first tentative steps had been taken, the whole thing surged ahead like a feather whipped up by a whirlwind.
By the spring of 1963 Epstein could not be stopped.
In that year his boys - the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer - under recording manager George Martin, topped the hit parade for 32 weeks.
The all-male family were given a baby sister in September of that year.
She was a typist in a Liverpool office by day, a cloakroom girl at the Cavern Club by night.
Her name was Priscilla White. But Epstein took one look at her flaming red hair and wicked eyes and rechristened her - Cilla Black.
Her first record, “Love of the Loved,” written by Lennon and McCartney, was not a great success.
But her second, released in January 1964, was a haunting song called “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” It made her the first girl to top British pop charts in more than two years.
In the next two years, she became the highest paid and one of the most successful girl singers in Britain, producing hit songs, conquering television, parading at the Palladium, romping through the pantomime seasons - and bringing a smile to the lips of Epstein as the cash rolled in.
Meanwhile, Epstein had filled in his spare time by signing up not so successful artists like Tommy Quickly, Sounds Incorporated, and Haslam.
His ranks were formed, groomed, and ready to conquer.
He sent an advance guard in the person of Tony Barrow, still NEMS Press Officer, who with a secretary opened the first NEMS office in London.
It was not easy for him to go to London. In Liverpool, he had been a big fish in a smallish pond. In London there were impresarios, managers, agents much bigger than he was.
But not for long. For in 1964 Epstein went international - and became the most powerful pop man in the world, with rewards previously unheard of.
The business side of the Epstein empire is a complex maze of twists and turns which his accountants and lawyers are trying to sort out at this very moment.
It is impossible to answer the question that everyone asks: How much exactly are the Beatles and Epstein worth?
The biggest money spinners of all are the records.
Royalties have varied through the years. On about half the 200 million sold, they received about 4½d. a single disc, 2s. an L.P. On the remaining half, they have acquired about 6d. on a single, 6s. an L.P.
Lennon and McCartney also receive royalties on the songs they write, which is why they are richer than Harrison and Starr.
In 1963, a company called Northern Songs Ltd. was formed to which Lennon and McCartney sold their right to publish their songs in return for about 30 per cent of the capital plus royalties - about one penny per song per play.
Sheet music, published by the same company, brings in royalties of about 1½d. on every song sheet sold.
In 1965, the company sold some of its shares. Within a few months, they had doubled their issue price.
The closing price yesterday was 17s. 9d., a recovery from 16s. 6d. at lunchtime, giving a valuation of 4,125,000.
Paul McCartney holds 750.000 shares, making his stake worth £665,625.
John Lennon owns 650.000, worth £576,875. George Harrison and Ringo Starr each have 40.000, worth £35,500.
But all four have a further interest in the company through NEMS Enterprises, in which they have a small stake, which in turn has a substantial holding in Northern Songs.
Epstein had a 70% holding in NEMS.
Last year, Lennon and McCartney sold their share in the company Lenmac Enterprises Ltd. to Northern Songs, which brought them £146,000 cash each.
Epstein followed suit, netting £73,000.
At that time it was estimated that Epstein had received around £400,000 from his stake in John and Paul’s songs. (Not records.)
George Harrison has his own company of Harrisongs Ltd., while Ringo owns half the capital of the Brickey Building Co. Ltd.
There are various other companies floating around, formed mainly to keep as much money as possible away from the taxman.
Other sources of income include performance fees, performing rights, television shows, and proceeds from their films - owned by their own company.
The two films alone have netted more than £1 million for them.
At their peak in America in 1964 they were earning £350 a minute for a half-hour show.
They receive £2 for every 30 seconds one of their songs is heard on television and about £1 on radio.
In 1966 NEMS Enterprises combined with the Vic Lewis Organisation to form the biggest agency for live entertainers in the world.
In America the company of Nemperor Artists and Music, directed in New York by Nathan Weiss, controlled the American circulation of the British artists. Epstein was due to fly out there next Saturday to finalise plans to extend the company, taking on new artists.
Epstein’s theatrical ventures were by no means a success.
His attempts to put on Sunday Night pop concerts at the Prince of Wales Theatre failed miserably, and cost him money.
The Saville Theatre cost him £3,000 a week to run and was just, but only just, breaking even.
Epstein spent little of his wealth except on the business. He did have his £30,000 house in Belgravia and had recently invested in another mansion in Sussex where he spent his last public hours.
The big question now is: will the era which Epstein created continue?
And perhaps more significant still, has the social change which the Epstein era gave birth to left the Epstein Organisation behind?
AND TODAY THE NEWS OF WHO TAKES OVER
The man to head the multi-million pound organisation run by Beatle boss Brian Epstein will be named tonight.
The six directors of NEMS Enterprises met yesterday, but their decision, one the whole pop world would like to know, will remain with them until tonight.
Strangely, the Beatles themselves do not appear to have been consulted.
Brother
Favourites for the position are Epstein’s brother Clive, and Mr. Robert Stigwood, the present managing director.
Telegrams of condolence have poured in from all over the world. One from Elvis Presley read: “Deepest regrets and condolences on the loss of a good friend to you and to all of us.”
An inquest on Epstein will be opened by the Westminster coroner today.
But it will be only formal. And an adjournment will be ordered for analysis of certain organs that were removed by Home Office pathologist Dr. Donald Teare.
After an extensive search, no Epstein will had yet been found last night.
To keep Epstein’s funeral a strictly family affair no announcement is being made of the date or the place. A memorial service will be held in London within a few weeks.
The Beatles have never been great sticklers for convention, either in manner or dress. But they came very near to it yesterday when they arrived at the memorial service to the man who discovered them - Brian Epstein.
True, Paul McCartney was sporting a dark red tie and Ringo Starr a light mauve one. But they all wore formal black suits, though in somewhat way out styles.
George Harrison’s was in velvet. John Lennon’s had a shadow stripe. McCartney’s had a long Edwardian jacket.
But it was the girls who provided the real surprises. Cilla Black wore a dark red coat, with black shoes and stockings.
And Lulu’s outfit had a Western touch - fawn leather trench coat and large slouch-brimmed mustard coloured hat.
The service was held at the New London Synagogue in St. John’s Wood only a few yards from the studios where five years ago Mr. Epstein took the unknown group to cut their first record.
The Beatles, pale-faced, were given skull caps at the door. It was the first time any of them had attended a synagogue.
Others there, apart from members of the Epstein family, were Beatles’ recording manager, George Martin, their music publisher Dick James, lawyer David Jacobs, Cilla Black and her fiancé, and pop singer Lulu, the Fourmost beat group, Bernard Delfont, Kenneth Tynan and Alan Freeman.
There were Jewish traditional hymns and Epstein’s favourite Psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”
For his address, Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs took as his text: “Sayest thou the man diligent in his work, he shall stand before kings.”
He spoke of Brian Epstein as “this extremely capable young man with a great gift for discerning extraordinary talent and helping it on its way.
He added: “Teenagers all over the world found in him a hero. He was diligent in his work and he stood before kings.
“He helped to teach young people to express themselves in song and to sing of love and peace, rather than of hatred and of war.
“It would be asking too much of us older people to view with equanimity other manifestations of youth’s search for self-expression. But we could not fail to recognise the many positive elements in the accomplishments of Brian Epstein.
