Remembering Brian Epstein

Current events kept me from commenting on this event in Beatles history on anniversary of the day, but it was fifty years ago this past Sunday (August 27) that Brian Epstein, the Beatles' legendary manager, died of an accidental drug overdose.

The son and grandson of department store owners in Liverpool, Brian Epstein had been the Beatles' older-brother figure, a manager who took care of their needs and always gave them an honest deal.  An introvert in an outgoing Jewish family (and also a closeted homosexual at a time when his sexual orientation was illegal in Britain), he discovered his talent for promotion and for presentation when he took over the management of the record store his family opened in central Liverpool.  His customers' interest in a record the Beatles had made in Germany was what brought the group to his attention.

Epstein wasn't an ethically dubious man like most pop impresarios, and he knew that the Beatles had talent when he discovered them in 1961, and he could see their ability to make it to the top at a time when electric-guitar music was in decline (as it is today).  His refined manner and polished demeanor would make him as much a celebrity as the Beatles themselves, and he also guided other Liverpool acts - Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer, and Cilla Black - to stardom.  But the Beatles remained his biggest success and his most personal concern.

In the last year of his life, Epstein  had little to handle for the Beatles once they stopped touring, and he fell into a depression.  Many people still say he committed suicide, but there are two facts that dispel that theory. First, his father had died in July 1967, and he would not have burdened his mother with another family death by deliberately killing himself.  Second, though he had been in a bad mood for much of the summer of 1967, the near end of the season found him in good spirits.  He was already looking forward to life beyond the Fab Four after having failed to convince them to continue annual concert tours (although there was talk of a one-night-only Beatles concert in New York to promote Sgt. Pepper, with backing from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Leonard Bernstein's direction).

Epstein had planned to travel to the United States and spend the month of September 1967 in New York and Los Angeles (and celebrate his thirty-third birthday in the States on the 19th).  I have been led to understand (but I can't say for sure if this is true) that he was planning to get involved in a stage production in New York.  He'd already been a successful show producer in London, having owned and operated the Saville Theatre there.  The plan was to arrive in New York, where he was to confer with his American business associate Nat Weiss, and look for apartment in the city; he was due to arrive in New York on Saturday, September 2, at the start of the American Labor Day holiday.  Ironically, he died during the British summer bank holiday the previous weekend; after failing to find any diversions at his country house in Sussex, he returned to London and - despite his ongoing battle with drug addiction - he took some sleeping pills to overcome an apparent bout of insomnia.  He took too many, and he died in his sleep.

The Beatles remain Brian Epstein's legacy.  Sadly, his influence did not extend to pop management itself.  A rarity among music moguls, Brian Epstein was a man who always honored a deal - the Beatles had to play shows for a pittance well into the earliest stages of Beatlemania because the deals had been made before they became famous, and Epstein thought it was unethical to renegotiate deals with promoters for more money - and he was more comfortable with a handshake than a signed document to seal a deal.  He also took care of all his artists and groomed them for success - it was he who got the Beatles to wear suits - and he never exploited any of them the way Colonel Tom Parker exploited Elvis Presley.  But Epstein was a minnow in a pool of sharks.  He could never have competed with the likes of Allen Klein or David Geffen; he was just too damn honest, and he was too much of a gentleman to play hardball.

Had Epstein lived (he would have turned 83 this year), the Beatles might have stayed together for some time into the 1970s, and the financial disputes that tore them apart might have been averted.  For all of the independence the Beatles exhibited in Epstein's last year on this earth, making him look like a manager in name only, the foursome needed him more than he needed them.  After being told that Brian had died, John Lennon thought to himself, "We're f--ked now."