"He loved this role of being the power behind the scenes"
Brian Epstein
"No press conference was run without Brian having it under his control. No statements were made, no deals were made without Brian being in complete control. It was a one-man operation."
- Nat Weiss
- Nat Weiss
1
Why not number one?
"I was increasingly worried that everything that Brian brought to me was gradually getting not quite so good. I had the Beatles to begin with, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer, Cilia Black, the Fourmost. After that we started going downhill with other acts which weren't as good as those. It was part of Brian's attempt to build up his empire."
«Brian thought that all you had to do was to get a good song and a reasonable artist. Then I would come along, get them into the studio, sprinkle a little bit of fairy dust and we'd have number-one records. He wasn't involved in the hard grind of making a record a success. He was the one who put the things into place and expected them to lock in and become gems. And when they didn't, he didn't quite understand why.»
George Martin
Producer
New York, USA. First tour in America
2
Cars
"I started chauffeuring him and there were the Rolls, the Silver Cloud, the Bentley and I think one of the 1100s that had all been tarted up, really a nice little car. He got rid of that and then he got himself a Mini Cooper Radford conversion. He wasn't happy at all with that car and he crashed it in the finish. He decided to get rid of it; it was too dangerous. It was like a rocket, a wonderful machine. Then he bought a second-hand Phantom Five. It had belonged to John Bloom and I said, 'It's no good. Don't buy this one, sir.' But he put the deposit on it. He said, 'Yes, yes, I'm gonna have it. It's a Rolls-Royce.' I said, 'I don't care. It's not a good Rolls-Royce/ slammed the door and a quarter of the door fell off. It had been filled up with China plate and we got rid of that one in the finish."
Image, that's what he wanted, image. The Silver Cloud was the same colour as Buckingham Palace cars: burgundy. It had dark windows, and just by coincidence it had EXR, not ER but EXR 100c plates, and that worked wonders sometimes with the police.
Bryan Barrett
Personal driver
Brian Epstein and cars
3
Bullfighting
"I think his fascination with bullfighting and bullfighters has something to do with his strange preoccupation with the concept of death and dying.
Bullfighting is dangerous and Brian was always fascinated by dangerous situations. It was almost as if danger was a turn-on for him and bullfighting provided the opportunity for him to witness danger. It was a psychological confrontation with danger and death right before his eyes."
Bullfighting is dangerous and Brian was always fascinated by dangerous situations. It was almost as if danger was a turn-on for him and bullfighting provided the opportunity for him to witness danger. It was a psychological confrontation with danger and death right before his eyes."
Top left and bottom right pictures: Brian, Pattie and George at the bullfights in Spain.
Top right picture: Brian.
Bottom left: El Cordobés, the portrait in Brian’s bathroom
Bullfighting, Brian Epstein
“
Bullfighters were to Brian what the Beatles were to music fans. They were his idols.
4
wore his colors proudly
Excerpt From: Stone Free, Andrew Loog Oldham
“As the evening of the day came to collect him, and darkness squeezed out the last beat of his heart, it was that heart, so broken in some ways and so true in others, that really mattered. He made his way up and through the tough world of the Liverpool show business underground, taking on the most established local promoters if he saw the Beatles getting some advantage out of it, and if he was given an inch he’d demand a mile—such as the time he was offered a 50-50 share of promoter Sam Leach’s lucrative gig at the Tower, and promptly demanded a two-thirds cut, as his brother would also be involved. He may have seemed green when he got to London, but in the ‘pool, Epstein wore his own colors proudly.”
Andrew Loog Oldham
the former manager of The Rolling Stones
“He was not a hustler—he was a lover—and that was both his glory and his downfall. We are all better for his love because Brian Epstein hustled with his heart.”
-Andrew Loog Oldham
-Andrew Loog Oldham
5
From "Stone Free"
Other places to visit that night
If one were reasonably well spoken and well-dressed one might find oneself enjoying the right sort of bar with the man himself. But Brian would have been better dressed than you and probably glancing at his gold wristwatch because he had other places to visit that night. Once he left the exclusive night spots we managerial types frequented on our rare evenings off—the Ad Lib, the Cromwellian, and the Scotch of St. James—he sauntered off into the night to even darker venues where neither his money nor his success were likely to impede the rough treatment he was after.
6
| Having it under his control "I think the image of Brian was that of a very soft, sensitive person, which was not the case. He was a very strong- willed person. I remember when John Lennon refused to do an interview during a tour because the people out there were fascists or something like that. Brian went nose to nose with him. He took his tie and said, 'John, you're soft/ and stared him down. And you could see it, John backed away. Brian had full control and they respected his thinking." |
"Nobody got to the Beatles without having to go through Brian and he controlled every facet of their professional career. No press conference was run without Brian having it under his control. No statements were made, no deals were made without Brian being in complete control. It was a one-man operation."
Nat Weiss
