All you need is luck — and maybe a stroke of fate.
That was the case in 1961 when one of Brian Epstein’s customers in the record department he managed at NEMS — his family store in Liverpool, England — asked for the single “My Bonnie” by The Beatles. It was, despite all his retail intel, the first moment that the Fab Four’s future manager had heard of the band.
Curious about the group that had recorded “My Bonnie” in Germany but turned out to be locals, Epstein saw The Beatles for the first time at Liverpool’s Cavern Club — where they played lunchtime concerts — on Nov. 9, 1961. The mind-blowing moment that would change his life — and pop music — is depicted in the new biopic “Midas Man,” which is now streaming on Olyn.
“That day is the big bang,” Beatles historian Martin Lewis told The Post about Epstein’s culture-shifting discovery. “He had some kind of X-ray vision and X-ray hearing. He’s hearing it, and he’s looking at it, and he sees magic. These guys had something. It wasn’t just the music … it was the charisma, the presence, the energy. The Beatles had that life force.”
And Epstein gave The Beatles new life, proposing to manage them on the spot backstage despite having no previous experience.
“He just instinctively, intuitively senses there’s something here, and there may be a mission for him,” said Lewis, who wrote the companion narrative for the 1998 re-publication of Epstein’s 1964 autobiography “A Cellarful of Noise.”
“The Beatles are completely nonplussed by this, because they’ve been … going nowhere just playing in Hamburg [Germany] and Liverpool. That’s it. They have zero expectations of success.”
Indeed, after a few years as a (mostly) covers band, The Beatles were hardly poised to break out of their working-class town about 200 miles from London.
“It was a crucial moment, because Brian shows up, really, almost exactly when they needed somebody to believe in them,” said Kenneth Womack, whose Fab Four bibliography most recently includes 2023’s “Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans.”
“How much further they would have been able to go [without him] is debatable … I mean, you can only wait so long to be discovered.”
After officially becoming their manager with a five-year contract signed on Jan. 24, 1962, Epstein — who Paul McCartney has called “the fifth Beatle” — would go on to take the quartet to an unprecedented level of Beatlemania before his death from an accidental overdose in 1967. As he once wildly predicted, he indeed made them “bigger than Elvis” — all while remaining largely behind the scenes and in the shadows as a closeted gay man.
“A lot of people know a lot about the Beatles, very few people know a lot about Brian,” said “Midas Man” director Joe Stephenson. “He deserves to have his story told and his life celebrated.”
“I remember my agent saying I got an audition for Brian Epstein, and I didn’t know who that was,” added “The Queen’s Gambit” actor Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, who plays Epstein in the film. “Once I got the role, I would tell people about him, and a lot of people didn’t know … I was surprised at how little he was known.”
After once contemplating becoming a fashion designer and an actor, the shy, introverted Epstein wasn’t seeking the limelight himself when he finally found his true calling as Beatles manager.
“He was looking for some purpose in his life,” said Lewis. “He was looking for something that he could do that would make his life more meaningful.”
Epstein’s flair for presentation helped The Beatles sharpen up their rough edges to make them more telegenic for the golden age of TV.
“When Brian met them, they were eating on stage, they were wearing leather,” said Womack. “Brian gets them to clean up their act. He puts them in suits … He does some really key moves in that way that get them to professionalize a little bit.
“They needed somebody to intervene and really help them to elevate just the way they were operating,” he added.
Epstein used his music industry connections as a record retailer to score meetings with potential labels to sign The Beatles. But there was rejection after rejection until his passionate pitch to George Martin at Parlophone Records.
“He’s listening, and he can hear some promise, but it’s not great,” said Lewis. “But what George Martin is impressed by is the passion and the belief in The Beatles of Brian.”
But Martin — who would go on to become the famed Beatles producer — had one deal-breaker: Epstein had to get rid of original drummer Pete Best.
“The Beatles are young guys, and they did not have the guts to fire this fellow who’s been with them for a couple of years,” said Womack.
Enter Ringo Starr to join McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison as The Beatles were launched into superstardom, becoming the biggest act in the UK with hits such as “Love Me Do,” “Please Please Me” and “She Loves You.” But that wasn’t enough for Epstein, who wanted to conquer the US too.
That would involve a face-to-face meeting in New York with Ed Sullivan himself for The Beatles to appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show” for three nights — at the usual single-night rate of $10,000.
“This is a bargain,” said Lewis, “because Brian was savvy and thinking, ’It doesn’t matter how little money we get. It matters how many people see us.’ He wants the exposure.”
Epstein leveraged the “Ed Sullivan Show” booking to secure a US label deal with Capitol Records. After Epstein got the major American networks to cover the Beatlemania happening in the UK — resulting in a CBS piece that got prime placement in the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination — it all exploded with the rush release of “Meet the Beatles!” the month before their historic “Ed Sullivan” debut on Feb. 9, 1964.
From there, it all kept coming together for The Beatles as Epstein also managed other Liverpool acts such as Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla Black and Billy J. Kramer.
Epstein worked relentlessly for his artists, perhaps compensating for what he was missing in his personal life as he had clandestine sexual encounters to protect himself, his family and, most of all, his “boys” — as he affectionately calls the Fab Four in “Midas Man.”
“As a gay man, the type of oppression that he [faced] led him to being a workaholic, and that whole workaholic attitude is what led him to the drugs, which is what led to his death,” said Stephenson. “He was obsessive in his work, which led to his overworking and reliance on uppers and downers.”
But The Beatles — growing weary of the mania, while evolving musically and personally — decided to stop touring and focus on studio recordings in 1966. “At a certain point, they start spending so much time in the studio that Brian felt like his role had been diminished,” said Womack.
Still, Epstein was still making major moves for The Beatles, including their appearance on “Our World,” the first live international satellite TV production on June 25, 1967. Although The Beatles were in their “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club” era after that classic album was released a month earlier, Epstein convinced them to write a new song that would unite the world for the occasion — which was the classic “All You Need Is Love.”
Two months later, Epstein died at 32 from an accidental overdose of barbiturates and alcohol.
“Here’s this man who created the most loved band in history, those songs like ‘All You Need Is Love,’ as a man who struggled with love in his own life, struggled with his own romantic life, struggled with loving himself,” said Fortune-Lloyd.
And although The Beatles would go on for a couple more years — making classics such as 1969’s “Abbey Road” — they were never quite the same after Epstein’s death, leading to their eventual breakup in 1970.
“After Brian died, we collapsed,” said Lennon in a 1971 interview with Rolling Stone.
But Epstein’s legacy lives on: Lewis spearheaded a campaign to get him inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which happened in 2014, and runs the BrianEpstein.com website. And the man with the golden touch gets his close-up in “Midas Man.”
“The Beatles changed our world,” said Lewis, “but only after Brian changed their world.”