A Life in Pop Management-- the Beatles, Brian Epstein and Elton John

Inside front cover I Should Have Known Better A life in pop management – The Beatles, Brian Epstein and Elton John Geoffrey Ellis Thorogood Publishing Ltd 10-12 Rivington Street London EC2A 3DU Telephone: 020 7749 4748 Fax: 020 7729 6110 Email: [email protected] Web: www.thorogood.ws © Geoffrey Ellis 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser. No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action as a result of any material in this publication can be accepted by the author or publisher. Every effort has been made to trace the owners of the various photographs included in this book. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to identify the owners in all cases. If further information should become available then attribution will be given, or the material removed, in subsequent editions. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1 85418 342 7 Book designed and typeset by Driftdesign. Printed in Great Britain by Marston Digital Press. For Daniel Martin Blank Contents 1 Tomorrow Never Knows 7 2 A Day In The Life 21 3 Taxman 29 4 With A Little Help From My Friends 43 5 Here, There And Everywhere 47 6 Eight Days A Week 65 7 Ticket To Ride 79 8 It’s All Too Much 97 9 Baby You’re A Rich Man 115 10 A Day In The Life 129 11 Magical Mystery Tour 147 12 Only A Northern Song 161 13 How Do You Do It? 169 14 Back In The USSR 177 15 Do You Want To Know A Secret? 191 EPILOGUE When I’m Sixty-Four 197 THE AUTHOR SKETCHED BY LIONEL BART C.1966 1 Tomorrow Never Knows The world changed in the 1960s. Sexual intercourse, wrote the poet Philip Larkin, began in 1963. Youth, it seems, was liberated. Carnaby Street and its flared trousers became the fashion. And the Beatles happened. As for me, I moved from a stable job in New York to exciting, but less secure, work in London, helping to manage the most successful, most famous entertainers in the world. But, for me, the sixties ended in August 1967. The 27th of that month, to be precise. The day Brian Epstein died. At the time, I was a Director and the Chief Administrator of NEMS Enterprises, the company set up by Brian Epstein a few years earlier specifically to manage the Beatles. I did much of the unglamorous work, running the office, overseeing the staff and, in particular, making use of my legal knowledge by helping Brian to negotiate and conclude the many contracts involved in furthering the careers of the best-known popular performers in the world, as well as those of the many other artistes NEMS was by then managing. I was an old friend of Brian’s – a principal reason for my having the job – and after a particularly difficult period, both for Brian and NEMS, he had invited another old friend of his employed by NEMS, Peter Brown, and myself to spend the August Bank Holiday weekend with him at the small country house he had recently bought in Sussex, about fifty miles south of London. The plan was to do very little, simply relax and enjoy a few days in the warm late summer in the country. The Beatles were away in North Wales with the Maharishi, their giggling Indian guru; 1 TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS 9 Brian was to join them there the following week. Another more recent friend of his, Simon Napier-Bell, himself an up-and-coming manager of pop stars, including The Yardbirds, had also been invited to Sussex, but at the last moment had told Brian that he could not come. Brian was disappointed. He called a contact in London (unknown to me) and suggested that this person could arrange for a few people to come down later that evening to make up something of a party. This arrange- ment seemed somewhat inconclusive. Peter Brown and I had arrived late on Friday afternoon and after dinner, served by Brian’s recently acquired staff, he announced that he was going to drive himself up to London and seek more company and entertainment. Although we tried hard to dissuade him he was adamant, and left in his convertible Bentley. He said that he would probably spend the night at his London house, in Belgravia, and come back to Sussex in the morning. A short time after he had left, and somewhat embarrassingly, a London taxi arrived with three or four friends, or rather contacts of the person Brian had called earlier, expecting entertainment at the hands of the Beatles’ manager. However, they took his absence in reasonably good part and we were able to rustle up food and drink for the unexpected guests. They later stayed for the night, left in the morning and were never seen or heard of again – by me, at any rate. Brian did not reappear that morning, but he called to say he felt tired and would probably stay in London until the evening. So Peter Brown and I were left to our own devices, and to enjoy our absent host’s hospitality for the whole of that Saturday. It was not for me a particularly agreeable time: Peter Brown and I had never been especially close, and we were both worried about Brian and when he would reappear. He called during the afternoon, apologized for his absence, but said that he would probably stay another night in London. 10 I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER The next day, Sunday, we received an agitated telephone call from Brian’s Italian butler: he and his wife, the cook-housekeeper, were very worried that Brian had not appeared from his bedroom since arriving on Friday evening. Brian’s secretary and General Manager, Joanne Newfield and Alistair Taylor, both in London, were summoned to the house, a Doctor, John Gallwey (not Brian’s regular doctor, who was away), came in response to an urgent call, the bedroom door was broken down, and Brian was discovered, dead in bed, with several bottles of pills beside him. Peter Brown and I, who had remained on the phone to the house in London during these events, immediately drove to London. The near two-hour journey gave me time to reflect on how I had come to be involved in the music business and, in particular, in the management of the most famous pop artists in the world; when my upbringing, education or earlier career had by no means prepared me for work of this kind. I did not even like pop music. Nevertheless, I was to become a very senior person in the management organi- zations of two of the greatest entertainment phenomena of the time, the Beatles and, later on, Elton John. Nothing in my life before 1964 had presaged my entry into any branch of show business, let alone the business of pop music. I had always been, and remain, a lover of classical music and a devotee in particular of opera. My early life had been fairly conventional for the times: childhood in a middleclass Liverpool suburb; evacuation during the first year of the Second World War to a remote part of North Wales; subsequently, eight reasonably contented and successful years at a Midlands boarding school, Ellesmere College, where my talents were revealed as more academic than sporting; National Service in the Army, wherein I achieved commissioned rank; and three happy years at Oxford, at the end of which I graduated with a degree in law. After leaving university I decided not to pursue a legal career, but to put my knowledge of the law to use in business. Not, however, knowing 1 TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS 11 initially what business to enter, and being unwilling to continue to live off my parents’ generosity, I applied for a trainee position in an insurance company, as a stopgap, I thought. However, I found that I liked the work, which was more interesting than I had expected, and I quite rapidly advanced to a position of some responsibility. After a few years I was asked if I had ever thought of working for the company in one of their offices abroad. I had not, but answered that if it were to be somewhere like Paris or New York, I would be interested. Taking to the idea, I studied for a qualification in insurance in French, passed the examination, and was surprised to be shortly afterwards sent to New York. A friend of my father’s had recently married a Czech lady, who enjoyed telling fortunes. She had told me earlier on that my career would be out of the ordinary. I assumed at this time that my moving to America was the fulfilment of her prophecy but much stranger things were to happen in the years to come. The company I worked for was the Royal Insurance Company, whose head office was in Liverpool; but at the time the most important part of their international operation was in the USA, so it was viewed, not least by me, as a great opportunity for advancement.

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