The Admirable Epstein: 'Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles'
When Philip Norman was working on “Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation,” his landmark 1981 biography of the Beatles, writing about pop music was seen as a little disreputable. “I was told I was mad,” he said. “I didn’t like to mention the word ‘Beatles.’ I was embarrassed.” Today, it’s a much different landscape, and books about pop music are big business.
Books about the Beatles are still best sellers, even more than 50 years since the band broke up. There are scholarly, sober books such as Mark Lewisohn’s “All These Years,” whose first, nearly 800-page volume takes the story only up to 1962, the cleaned-up, bowdlerized history in Hunter Davies’ authorized 1968 “The Beatles” and sordid, sensationalist tripe like Albert Goldman’s “The Lives of John Lennon.” Wikipedia currently lists 43 books about the band, and that doesn’t include books by people who worked with the Beatles, such as “All You Need Is Ears,” by George Martin.
One figure that has been left behind is Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ gay, Jewish manager. With “Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles,” Norman aims to redress the omission. Even though he was responsible for much of the Beatles’ career from 1962 until his death at the age of 32 in 1967, there hasn’t been a substantial biography of Epstein since Ray Coleman’s 1989 book.
Source: jewishjournal.com/Steven Mirkin
