Beatles (28 page)

He was only interested in those groups which had made records, because records were what he sold. None of the Liverpool groups being written about in
Mersey Beat
had made a record. So there was no reason for him to take any notice of them.

He was aware that there were flourishing beat groups and clubs in Liverpool. But he wasn’t interested in them personally. At 27, he was well out of the age range for the coffee bars and beat groups. He’d also been, for most of the previous five years, a full-time businessman, with little time for any sort of leisure activities, apart from the theatre.

But he was annoyed by his lack of knowledge of the new record he was being asked for. Surely if this group, wherever they
came from, had produced a record,
he
must know about it. So when Raymond Jones made his request he promised to get it for him and wrote down on a pad: ‘My Bonnie. The Beatles. Check on Monday.’

Raymond Jones had also mentioned that the Beatles record came from Germany. So that was something to go on. He telephoned a few agents who imported foreign records. But not one of them had the record in stock, or had even imported it.

‘I might have stopped there, but for the rigid rule I’d laid down that no customer should ever be turned away.

‘I was also intrigued to find out why a completely unknown disc had been asked for three times in two days. Because on Monday morning, before I’d started making enquiries, two girls came in and asked for the same record.’

He talked to various contacts around Liverpool and found, to his amazement, that not only were the Beatles a British and not a German group, but that they also came from Liverpool.

He asked the girls in his store about the Beatles. They told him the Beatles were fabulous. Then he found to his surprise that they’d even been in his store. He must have seen them many an afternoon without knowing who they were.

‘One of the girls told me they were the boys I’d once been complaining about, hanging around the counters all day listening to records but not buying any. They were a scruffy crowd in leather. But they were supposed to be quite nice really, so all the girls told me, so I’d never actually asked them to leave. Anyway, they filled the shop up in the afternoon.’

Brian decided to go along to the Cavern himself and get some details about the Beatles and their record. If there was such interest in them, especially being a local group, it might be worth his while to import some of their records himself, being a good businessman.

‘I wasn’t a member of the Cavern and I was very shy about going along to a teenage club. I was frightened they might not let me in. So I asked
Mersey Beat
if they could help me. They rang up the Cavern and said who I was and could I come.’

His first visit was the lunchtime session of 9 November 1961. ‘It was dark, damp and smelly and I regretted my decision immediately. The noise was deafening, amplifiers sending out mainly American hits. I remember as I listened to the records they were playing thinking that there might be some tie-up possible between the Cavern and my top-twenty selection.

‘Then the Beatles came on and I saw them for the first time. They were not very tidy and not very clean. They smoked as they played and they ate and talked and pretended to hit each other. They turned their backs on the audience and shouted at people and laughed at their private jokes.

‘But there was quite clearly enormous excitement. They seemed to give off some sort of personal magnetism. I was fascinated by them.’

It was John, the main shouter and jumper-about, who particularly fascinated him. This wasn’t apparent at the time, as he didn’t know which was which, but he realized it later. He couldn’t keep his eyes off John.

But he hadn’t come to watch. He’d come simply to do a bit of business. The Cavern DJ, Bob Wooler, announced over the microphone that Mr Epstein of NEMS was in the audience and would everybody give him a big hand.

This helped when he at last managed to get within shouting distance of the Beatles themselves. ‘What brings Mr Epstein here?’ said George, slightly sarcastically. He explained that he’d had a request for their German disc but didn’t know which company produced it. Could they help? George told him the company was called Polydor. George only very vaguely remembers talking to Brian that lunchtime. The other Beatles – John, Paul and Pete Best – don’t remember him at all this first visit.

Just for company, to hide his shyness amongst all the kids, Brian began to take along one of his assistants from his store on his visits to the Cavern. This was Alistair Taylor who worked on the counter at NEMS but was also Brian’s personal assistant. Like sending memos to his staff, when he could have talked to them
all in a telephone booth, Brian liked anything that added to the executive image.

It took Brian some time to get his thoughts clear. ‘All I was interested in was selling records. But in a few weeks I’d found myself coming to the Cavern more and more often, just to listen and watch. I also found myself asking my record contacts what managing a group meant. How did one do it? What sort of contract would one have with a group, supposing, just supposing, one wanted to become a manager?’

His contacts weren’t all that expert on management problems. They were, naturally, mainly on the retail side of records, not the production. But during a trip down to London, purely on retail business, he talked more than usual to people like the general manager of HMV in Oxford Street and the manager at Keith Prowse’s shop, picking up any tips he could.

He also contacted the German record company and ordered 200 copies of ‘My Bonnie’. ‘I was so fascinated by the Beatles that I thought it was worth taking a chance on selling them all.

‘I suppose it was all part of getting bored with simply selling records. I was looking for a new hobby. The Beatles at the same time, though I didn’t know it and perhaps they didn’t either, were also getting a bit bored with Liverpool. They were wanting to expand and get on to something new.

‘I began talking to them at lunchtime sessions. “You should have been here last night,” Paul said to me one day. “We were signing autographs. I signed one on a girl’s arm.” I always seemed to miss their greatest moments.’

He also found out what their present situation was about a manager. He found that Allan Williams had been associated with them at one time and had been the one who had organized their first Hamburg trip. ‘I went to see him and he said, “They’re nice boys, but they’ll let you down all the time.”’

On 3 December 1961, he invited them along for a chat at his office at the Whitechapel store. He told them it was just a chat, as he hadn’t worked out everything in his mind.

He’d seen a lot of them, prior to that first proper meeting at his office, but the Beatles themselves had still scarcely taken him in. He was just a fringe figure. They have few real memories of him before that meeting.

‘He’d looked efficient and rich, that’s all I remember,’ says John. George says he looked the executive type. Paul was impressed by his Zodiac car. They decided to give him a try.

For that first official meeting the Beatles decided to bring Bob Wooler along with them, just to show they weren’t completely alone in the world. John introduced Bob Wooler as his Dad. It was many months before Brian realized that Bob Wooler was not John’s dad. It was even longer before he realized John didn’t know who or where his dad was.

John, with Bob Wooler, arrived at the appointed time of 4.30. And so did George and Pete Best. But there was no sign of Paul. After half an hour, during which Brian was becoming very irritated, he asked George to ring Paul. George returned from the phone to say that Paul was in the bath. ‘This is disgraceful,’ said Brian. ‘He’s going to be very late.’ ‘Late,’ said George. ‘But very clean.’

Paul arrived at last and they discussed the future of the Beatles – what they all wanted to do, what sort of terms they would like. Nobody knew what contracts were arranged in such circumstances because no one had ever seen one.

They all arranged to meet again the following Wednesday. By that time Brian had been to see a lawyer friend, Rex Makin. Brian was looking for enthusiasm as well as advice. ‘Oh, yes,’ he was told, ‘another Epstein idea. How long before you lose interest in this one?’

They met again on the Wednesday and Brian this time said he definitely wanted to manage them. He said he’d want 25 per cent. They said why couldn’t he take 20? He said he needed that extra five per cent as it would entail many expenses in promoting and working for them. He expected to lose money for many months to come.

The contract was signed the following Sunday at the Casbah Club, Pete Best’s home and the Beatles’ headquarters. Each Beatle signature was signed in the presence of Alistair Taylor. Brian didn’t sign.

‘That was a great boob,’ says Alistair. ‘I signed my name as a witness to Brian’s signature. It made me look a right fool.’

Brian never did sign the contract either. ‘I had given my word about what I intended to do, and that was enough. I abided by the terms and no one ever worried about me not signing it.’

He agrees the Beatles liked the idea of him managing them because they liked the look of him. ‘I had money, a car, a record shop. I think that helped. But they also liked me.

‘I liked them because of this quality they had, a sort of presence. They were incredibly likeable.’

His parents sensed something was happening. They came back from a week in London and found him waiting for them.

‘Brian said he wanted us to listen to this record,’ says his mother. ‘It was “My Bonnie”. He said take no notice of the singing, just the backing. He said they were going to be a big hit and he was going to manage them.’

Before his father could interrupt, Brian added that of course it would just be a part-time interest, but he wouldn’t mind if he took a little time off work?

His father wasn’t too thrilled. He realized that Brian once again had found something new, but at least this time it was in Liverpool.

Brian decided to start a new company to manage the Beatles and he called it NEMS Enterprises, after the record stores. ‘That was a fortunate decision. I might easily have run them simply under the same company as NEMS, without Enterprises. When we sold NEMS, the record shops, years later, that could have been very complicated.’

Clive, his brother, came in with him in setting up NEMS Enterprises. ‘This was partly because I needed more money, but partly because I was scheming to get Clive interested in perhaps helping me.’

Their next and third Hamburg trip was as good as fixed long before Brian Epstein came along. Not long after they’d left Hamburg, Peter Eckhorn of the Top Ten and several other club managers came across to Liverpool, scouting for talent.

The Beatles had promised Peter Eckhorn they would come back to his club, but when he arrived in Liverpool, to discuss details with them and see any other likely groups, he found they now had Brian Epstein as manager.

‘Brian wanted a lot more money than I was offering,’ says Peter Eckhorn. ‘I tried Gerry and the Pacemakers, but I couldn’t get them either.’

In the end, Peter Eckhorn returned to Hamburg with a drummer, which was all he could get. This drummer, Ringo Starr, was to back Tony Sheridan.

Eventually, other Hamburg club owners came and offered better terms. Brian in the end accepted an offer from Manfred Weislieder, who was opening a brand new club in Hamburg, the Star Club. This was to be bigger and better than any of the others. His offer for the Beatles was 400 marks each a week, about £40. The Top Ten offer had been around 300 marks a week.

These were very good terms, but months before that was settled, Brian was already holding out for better terms wherever they played locally in Liverpool. He made a rule, the minute he took them over, that they would never play for less than £15 a night.

But Brian Epstein did his biggest and most immediate work in generally smartening up the Beatles – in their organization, in their appearance, and in their presentation.

Brian immediately had taken over all the bookings from Pete Best and put them on a properly organized basis. He also made sure that each of them knew exactly where and when they were playing.

‘Brian put all our instructions down neatly on paper and it made it all seem real,’ says John. ‘We were in a daydream till he came along. We’d no idea what we were doing, or where we’d agreed to be. Seeing our marching orders on paper made it all official.’

Brian’s instructions were all beautifully typed, usually on paper with his own crest on the top, a clever typographical sign made of his initials, BE. He also added little homilies about looking smart, wearing the right clothes and not smoking, eating or chewing during their performance.

‘Brian was trying to clean our image up,’ says John. ‘He said our look wasn’t right. We’d never get past the door at a good place. We just used to dress how we liked, on and off stage. He talked us into the suit scene.’

Brian also smartened up their presentation on stage which up till then had been all ad-libbed. ‘He said we must work out a proper programme, playing our best numbers each time, not just the ones we felt like playing,’ says Pete Best. ‘It was no use just laughing and joking with the kids at the front when there might be 700 or 800 at the back who had no idea what was happening. He made us work out a strict programme, with no messing about.’

Things have changed enormously since then and swung completely the other way. Later John regretted slightly their smartening up, because he knew it wasn’t really them, or anyway not really John. But he went along with it. He knew that at the time it was the only way, to join the suit set.

‘It was natural we should put on our best show,’ says John. ‘We had to appear nice for people like the reporters, even the ones who were snooty, letting us know they were doing us a favour. But we would still play them along, agreeing with them, how kind they were to talk to us. We were very two-faced about it all.

‘Trying to get publicity was just a game. We used to traipse round the offices of the local papers and the musical papers asking them to write about us, just because that was what you had to do.’