For 40 years since that fateful visit, I have wondered exactly what it was that Brian saw in this loud and dirty pop group. I remember saying years later to Paul that they sounded as if they only knew five chords. He replied, ‘Do you mind. We only knew three.’ I still don’t know, but something special happened that lunchtime in The Cavern. It was mind-blowing for both of us. They were loud and they weren’t very good but there was just this special ingredient. It was beyond charisma. It was beyond musicianship. It was beyond anything you could easily define.
They only played about five numbers. They sang ‘Money’, ‘’Til There Was You’, ‘A Taste of Honey’ and ‘Twist and Shout’ and, in a way, they were all equally terrible. What had clinched it for me was, towards the end of their set, when Paul had said, ‘We’d like to finish now with a number that John and me have written.’ That was ‘Hello, Little Girl’, which sounded like a decent pop song to me. They never recorded it. In fact, years later they gave it to the Fourmost, another of our groups. And it became quite a big hit. Brian and I exchanged a glance. So they could write songs as well as perform them. That was pretty unusual back in those days.
The famous fable goes that Brian went to see them in their dressing room and to impress them he introduced me as his personal assistant. That’s rubbish. It has been re-hashed time and time again that Brian introduced me as his PA just to dazzle the Beatles as a big-time businessman. That is simply not true. I was his PA. Brian was not struggling to impress the Beatles. You could see from the looks on their faces that he was already doing that quite convincingly.
We just said, ‘Hello’. The so-called dressing room was a cupboard. We couldn’t have all got in their dressing room if we’d tried. We recognised them because they came in the shop. We were amused that we’d thought they were some mystery German group when all the time they were Scousers. Brian said, ‘I just want to say we’ve seen your last five songs. You were great.’
They looked a little embarrassed and thanked us and we left. In the years since, the Beatles have recalled countless wisecracks and flip remarks they made to the smooth Mr Epstein over the years, but my memory is that the four of them were polite and extremely respectful.
We couldn’t hear ourselves think and we both wanted to get out of the place and have a proper chat. Brian and I went off for lunch and I remember we hardly spoke as we left The Cavern and walked to Peacock’s restaurant. They’d been so loud that I think our hearing took a little time to return to normal and we were still collecting our thoughts after a pretty shattering experience.
It took Brian less than half-an-hour to come up with the decision that was to change all our lives. He asked me what I’d thought of the Beatles and I said, ‘Frankly, I thought they were awful. What a din! And yet they do have something. They look scruffy and they are not in the least professional but they do have something.’
‘Yes,’ said Brian, with that famous half-smile beginning to form on his handsome face. ‘They are awful. But I think they are fabulous. What do you think about me managing them? I would like to know, Alistair, do you work for me or do you work for NEMS?’ asked Brian.
‘For you, Brian, I suppose. I’m your personal assistant,’ never having considered there to be a difference. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because I am thinking about managing the Beatles and I know it will mean a lot of work and reorganisation for us. I want to know what you think of the idea. If I took on the Beatles, would you come with me? Or do you want to stay at the shop?’
It took me a moment or two to realise that he was actually serious. And I understood what he had been leading up to. I don’t believe he had thought of the idea until we went into The Cavern. He was completely captivated by this remarkable raw talent that he’d seen and heard there. I believe he had an instant vision of how he could mould them into this amazing pop group that was nothing like the world had ever seen.
I was there when Brian first saw the Beatles and I don’t believe for a second the endlessly repeated view that he fell hopelessly in love with John. He fell in love with the sheer energy, wicked humour and irresistible charisma of the four of them. Brian was a brilliant man who could have succeeded in any one of a hundred fields. But I think that that day in The Cavern he saw the potential of the Beatles and he was transformed by it. Straight away, he said to me that he believed they could be bigger than Elvis. It wasn’t a gradual thing. There was no steady learning curve with Brian Epstein. From that day on, he just knew that he and the Beatles could conquer the world.
His enthusiasm was infectious and, of course, I wanted to be a part of his plans. He said at that lunch that he would have to set up a new management company and he invited me to join him. That sounded a whole lot more exciting than working in a record shop and I quickly told Brian that I was with him all the way. I’d love to say that I shared Brian’s vision, but it would not be true. I could see that the four lads had raw talent. John Lennon and Paul McCartney might not have been the sort of boys your parents would want you playing with but there was something about their strutting arrogance and wide-eyed energy that was undeniably attractive. George Harrison was much quieter and kept in the background that day and Pete Best, the drummer, scarcely spoke at all.
But it was Brian I backed to succeed. I didn’t have the remotest idea whether or not the Beatles were heading for the charts or the dole queue but I was by now convinced that Brian Epstein was going places. He simply exuded confidence and ambition. I was already in awe of Brian when we went to The Cavern. If he now had a dream to fulfil, I definitely wanted to be part of it.
Then he dropped a quiet bombshell on me. He said, ‘Alistair, since you will be very closely involved with the setting up and running of this new company, I would like to give you 2½ per cent of the Beatles’ contract.’
The conversation that followed is still very painful to recall. Estimates vary but I am reasonably certain that it cost me many millions of pounds. I don’t think Brian was testing me and my loyalty, but even 40 years later, when the man in question is sadly no longer around to verify it, I’m still not sure. But I said, ‘Brian, I can’t accept that, even though it’s so generous. I have no money of my own to put into the Beatles and I know it will cost an awful lot to set the business up.’
Brian persevered, ‘I don’t want your money. I want your loyalty.’
But I would not be told. I said, ‘You already have my complete and absolute loyalty. You will always have that. All I need is a decent salary and I’ll be happy.’
With the relentless agony of hindsight, I can only think that my financial problems at the time were so pressing that a rise of a couple of pounds a week in my pay packet seemed like a much better prospect than the doubtful chances of an unwashed foursome from Merseyside taking the entertainment world by storm. How wrong can you be?
Brian let it drop. His mind was full of plans for the Beatles. Over the years, I’ve learned that Brian had a history of taking up projects with enormous enthusiasm and then quickly losing interest. His family and older friends thought the Beatles would just be another passing interest. I never thought that, partly because I was only just starting to get to know him well and partly because I saw a definite change in Brian Epstein that day. On the strength of listening to four undisciplined louts sing five raucous songs in a sweaty cellar, Brian Epstein was 100 per cent convinced that he had discovered the most popular entertainers of the twentieth century. And he was right.
We organised a