I Should Have Known Better - A Life in Pop Management: The Beatles, Brian Epstein and Elton John
Language: English
Pages: 171
ISBN: B00KRO4W62
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Pop management – The Beatles, Brian Epstein and Elton John
Geoffrey Ellis spent forty years in the music business, working closely with the Beatles and Brian Epstein during the 60s, and Elton John and his management in the 70s. From an unrivalled position he has written a highly informed account of the music business from the 60s to the mid 90s and an insider’s view of the careers of many of the most significant players. His insight is less than adulatory and often critical, in particular of the Beatles and Brian Epstein, his friend.
During the 60s Geoffrey Ellis was Chief Executive of NEMS Enterprises, Brian Epstein’s company, at the time when the Beatles became global superstars. His book contains insights and stories, many previously unpublished, concerning the often tortuous business and personal affairs of Epstein, and the aftermath of his death. There is also much about Elton john, of whose management Ellis formed a vital part from the earliest days with Dick James Music and then with John Reid Enterprises, including a trenchant account of the High Court action brought by Elton John against Dick James, in the course of which Ellis himself spent two and a half days in the witness box.
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Round me taking a great many photographs. Next morning, the Munich paper carried a head and shoulders shot of me with a story describing how Herr ‘George Ellis’ had come to Munich to sign the contracts for the Beatles to come back, at last, to Germany. Even the German press, it seems, never gets everything right. At this time, Brian Epstein was taking a short holiday in Madrid, one of his favourite cities, and he asked me to visit him there on my way back to London to report on the German.
I gave in my notice on the spot. “Giving in notice had become something of a ritual, I must admit. One Saturday morning, I was doing my turn and Brian had sworn he would be in by ten. I had to speak to him as we were giving a rather large dinner for Cilla the next night, Sunday, and the venue had to be decided. This was the kind of detail Brian still liked to decide himself, so I phoned the house (for the umpteenth time) asking to speak to him. Finally he came to the phone and told me to wait for.
Same format in their theatres; the programmes were financed by the advertisements in them. When approached, I agreed that the Saville should introduce free Playbills instead of the traditional individual-style programmes. We would be saved the trouble and cost of printing our own programmes, and I believed audiences would like the free Playbills. But the experiment was not a success, the entrenched printers and suppliers of programmes fighting back hard, and the Playbill publishers withdrew from.
Considerable consolation in the fact that the record of the new songs composed for the film had performed just like all other Beatles’ records and shot to the top of the charts. Their record-buying public, at any rate, remained faithful and the record royalties continued to pour in. I had some other items of business to attend to during that New York trip and then had to return to London with the disappointing news. As for Walter Strach, he went back to Nassau without the prospect of further.
Opportunity to buy the shares themselves. Dick believed, rightly, that they would not have been able at that time to raise the money needed for this purpose, and he wanted a quick deal. In this he was disappointed since the Beatles, guided by Allen Klein, mounted a counter-offer. This was a complicated affair, whereby they would buy only four out of seven shares owned by each holder, or two out of seven if they were able to secure all those already committed to ATV (i.e. Dick’s and Charles’s); in.