Given the sheer wealth of movies and documentaries that have been made about The Beatles over the past 60-plus years, it seems crazy that we’ve had to wait this long for a dedicated biopic of their manager Brian Epstein.
Midas Man, headlining Bodies actor Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, arrives on Prime Video on 30 October, and at last puts as the person Paul McCartney called “the fifth Beatle” under the spotlight, telling the full story of his short, and ultimately tragic life.
Of course, Epstein has been depicted on screen before — by Brian Jameson in 1979’s Birth of the Beatles, by David Angus in 1991’s The Hours and the Times, by Rory Kinnear in 2003’s Lennon Naked, and by Ed Stoppart in 2014’s Cilla — but almost always as a fringe figure, a bit-part player in the Merseybeat story.
Which seems shockingly unjust, seeing as The Beatles as we know them almost certainly wouldn’t have existed had the then-28-year-old record store owner not walked down the steps of Liverpool’s Cavern Club on 9 November, 1961.
So it is that Epstein remains a somewhat unknowable character in the Beatles tale. That he died young, aged just 32, and features in few interviews from the time, only adds to the sense of mystery around him. Certainly his 1964 autobiography, A Cellarful of Noise, sheds little light on the real Brian, and he left behind no partner to help us understand what his life was like beyond the Fabs.
But there’s a common misreading about Brian Epstein, that he was a ‘straight’, the quiet, suit-rocking, short-back-and-sides-sporting business brain, a world away from the unruly, boorish rock’n’rollers he managed. Looking back at photos from the time, he has the appearance of the ultimate establishment figure, a man who managed to look 50, even at the age of 30.
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But that sensible, Savile Row-tailored exterior masked a life that was, in many ways, more rock and roll than many of his artists on his roster (aside from The Beatles, he also looked after Cilla Black, Billy J Kramer and Gerry and The Pacemakers). From the moment he began his career in pop, Epstein had developed a drug habit that would eventually lead to a spell in Putney’s fabled Priory Clinic. He was also gay at a time when the simple act of sleeping with another man could result in a lengthy prison sentence.
In fact, it was only a month before Epstein died, on 27 August, 1967 from an overdose of barbiturates, that same-sex relationships were (partially) decriminalised in the UK. If rock’n’roll was the club for misfits and outsiders, Epstein was, in spite of appearances, the ultimate odd man out, whether it be his homosexuality, or, at a time of widespread anti-semitism, his Jewishness.
Despite once being arrested for “persistent importuning” outside a men’s toilet, Epstein’s sexuality was never public knowledge. But within the generally liberal entertainment industry, his orientation was no secret, and The Beatles were typically quick to defend their manager, whom they affectionately referred to as ‘Eppy’, against homophobic gibes.
When a friend of John Lennon’s asked the band, “Which one of you does he fancy?”, he found himself immediately ostracised from the group. A few days later, Epstein’s lawyers sent the man a letter demanding a retraction.
Every Beatles fan knows how Epstein discovered and then shaped the band into the Fab Four we know. It was Brian who got the boys out of their Hamburg leathers and into those sharp Chesterfield suits, and it was their manager who helped secure them their record deal at EMI.
He was also instrumental in breaking the group in America, arranging an appearance on the insanely popular Ed Sullivan Show, while negotiating for them to be given top billing in return for a reduced performance fee. Yet once The Beatles decided to stop touring in 1966, Epstein’s influence began to wane.
By then, he’d given over much of the running of his business (named NEMS, standing for North End Music Stores) to impresario Robert Stigwood, and there was no boyfriend at home in Belgravia to share his life with. “He was very lonely,” his butler Lonnie Trimble said, “because he couldn’t find a partner. The only partners he could find were the ones that he had to pick up.”
With less work to fill his time, Epstein’s drug use had begun to escalate. Though he’d been a user since the early 60s (like The Beatles, he’d started popping amphetamines at the beginning of the decade and had been introduced to pot by Bob Dylan), by 1966/67, his intake had surged to the point that uppers were regularly followed by downers before the whole vicious circle started again.
Brian Epstein died on 27 August, 1967, at his home in Chapel Street, from an overdose of the later-banned sedative Carbitrali. The inquest later concluded that the death was accidental with the pathologist stating that Epstein had been taking the drug for some time, and that the barbiturate level in his blood was a “low fatal level”.
The Beatles narrative is littered with ‘what ifs’, but perhaps the greatest is, what would have happened to the Fab Four had Epstein not downed those six pills that night? Though the years after yielded much of The Beatles’ most celebrated work, some of those more calamitous decisions, whether it be the Magical Mystery Tour TV disaster or the grand chaos that was Apple Corps, would likely have been avoided. Eppy’s death created a power vacuum that would tear the band apart.
“I knew we were in trouble then,” Lennon reflected to Rolling Stone in 1971 about their manager’s death. “I didn’t really have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music and I was scared. I thought, ‘We’ve f***in’ had it now.’”
In the 57 years since Epstein’s passing, there have been a few books and documentaries, but little to truly illuminate this most cryptic of figures. In 2006 Cynthia Lennon said of him, “I think Brian’s one of the forgotten people,” claiming that he’d “written out of the [Beatles] story.”
That’s set to change. Midas Man will be the first movie to put Brian Samuel Epstein front and centre. Directed by Joe Stephenson (Doctor Jekyll), from a screenplay by Brigit Grant and Jonathan Wakeham, it promises to be “the definitive telling of an extraordinary life”, spanning “a period of extraordinary cultural change and convulsion, from desolate streets of wartime Liverpool to the psychedelic haze of Abbey Road.”
Epstein was just 32 when he died and his death arguably derailed the Fabs and set the course for their eventual disintegration. He was the glue that held those four disparate, abrasive personalities together. And he seemed, even early on, to know the lasting cultural value of his most prized clients.
When he was asked whether their music would last: “The children of the 21st century,” he stated, “will be listening to The Beatles.”
How right he was.
Midas Man is streaming on Prime Video 30 October.