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The Man Behind the Curtain
Ask a casual Beatles fan to name the “fifth Beatle” and they’ll say George Martin, the producer. Ask a more dedicated fan and they might say Pete Best, the drummer who was replaced. Almost nobody says Brian Epstein—which is one of the more remarkable oversights in the mythology of a band whose trajectory has been examined from every conceivable angle.
When he approached the Beatles, Epstein was not a music industry insider. He was the son of a wealthy Liverpool Jewish family, educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, restless and unhappy in ways he couldn’t fully articulate, running the family’s NEMS record store in Liverpool when customers started coming in asking for a record he’d never heard of. “My Bonnie” by a local group called The Beatles. He kept getting the request. He decided to find out who they were. 🎵
