re: Beatles obsession thread

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I've read the first Brown, Tony Bramwell's memoir, the Mal Evans & am in the middle of Alistair Taylor's book.

Leaving aside Evans, these memoirs all have one thing in common: their authors barely mention other Epstein assistants.

You NEVER see phrases like "Alistair, Tony & I sat down to lunch". It's always the author alone w/Epstein: "I said to Brian" & helping him make crucial decisions.

I specifically recall Brown not mentioning Taylor except to express surprise that Allan Klein had fired him. Why this was such a shock is never made clear, as Brown had not mentioned him before, nor did he mention Taylor again.

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Out of those, I've only read the Mal one, but this is the sense I get too - they all want to be thought of us "the main guy".

I think I mentioned I recently listened to that 4 hour Rolling Stone interview of Lennon and Ono from 1970. Lennon lashed out at most people on that list - notably refraining from doing so for Mal. He even badmouthed Neil. To be fair, it was mid-H and he later went on to sort of pshaw a lot of the things he said as just drug-induced nonsense. But it's hard to think Mal didn't occupy a special position in their hearts.

I thought the most shocking thing in the Mal book was when he had the tiff with Paul and Paul said something like "remember, you are my servant and you are here to serve me". I always try not to put too much emphasis on individual moments, because it was such a crazy time, so many drugs and so many conflicting data points that I know it's a rich and complex tapestry. Still, that just feels out of all character for any of them.

John also came down pretty hard on Esptein and Martin. I totally get the perspective that the artist is obviously the vast majority of story. But particularly with Martin, who knows how far they would have gone? He was absolutely relevant. I also think Epstein was relevant too. It's almost bizarre how willing they were to listen to him.