I know about hit songs, hit numbers, hit sounds': The man behind The Beatles
Brian Epstein, the Fab Four's manager, guided them from Liverpool's Cavern Club to global fame. When he died 58 years ago this week, the band was left suddenly adrift. Three years earlier, Epstein had told the BBC how he knew they would be "the biggest attraction in the world".
When The Beatles were told that their manager, Brian Epstein, had been found dead in his London home on 27 August 1967, they were sent into a tailspin. "It was shattering, sad, and a little frightening," Paul McCartney told Barry Miles in his 1997 biography Many Years from Now. "We loved him."
Epstein had been instrumental in the Fab Four's rise from playing local Liverpool clubs to being the biggest band in the world. He had shaped their early image, helped them get a recording contract, managed all their business affairs, and championed them relentlessly. And he had always believed in them. When the BBC's Panorama profiled him in 1964, the pop impresario said that when he signed the band in 1961, he already knew they would be "one of the biggest, if not the biggest attraction, theatrical attraction, in the world".
By the time of the Panorama interview, Epstein was managing a whole roster of artists, including Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla Black and Tommy Quickly. He had "unique judgement of what will be a hit and who will make it", said BBC reporter Michael Charlton. "When only one in 50 of the multitude of pop records catches on, Epstein's young stars have captured hit parades all over the world."
Source: bbc.com/Myles Burke
