The day Brian Epstein discovered the Beatles. The date was November 9th, 1961 – the location was Liverpool. Brian Epstein, then aged twenty seven, was working for the family business; a furniture and music store called North End Music Stores. Brian, who had been privately educated, was in charge of the music department of the store. He knew nothing whatsoever about pop or beat music – he was a classical music lover. Nevertheless, he was the man who would take a rough-and-ready local group, known as the Beatles, to stardom. At the time, he knew nothing at all about how to run a musical act. He had spent some time at RADA studying acting but that – and his record-selling business – was the extent of knowledge of the entertainment world. The story – embellished The mythical story about how Brian Epstein first found out about the Beatles goes like this: Alistair Taylor worked for Brian in the record store. He claimed that people were going into the store looking for Beatles records which of course, the store did not stock. In fact, the group at that time had made only one recording as the backing band on a record by fellow Liverpudlian, Tony Sheridan. Sheridan had been living in Germany when the Beatles had been playing there and chance dictated that his management assigned the Beatles to play the backing track. Taylor claimed that he was tired of telling local fans that the store didn’t have the record so he invented a name – Raymond Jones – and wrote in the order book that the mythical Mr Jones had ordered a copy. It was one of Brian Epstein’s boasts at the time that he could get any records that his customers ordered. Taylor says that the system was that twenty five copies of any ordered record had to be purchased. When they arrived from Germany, Epstein put and hand-written sign in the store window reading ‘Beatles records available here. Taylor said that they were sold out within an hour. He also says that he and Epstein assumed that the group was from Germany. The writing on the record sleeve was in German and they became aware that the Beatles were playing at the local Cavern Club billed as ‘direct from Hamburg’. The group had been playing on and off in...