A Cellarful of Noise by Brian Epstein

Author:Brian Epstein [Brian Epstein]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-11-05T04:00:00+00:00

I said: ‘Me, for one. Would you care to have a manager? I can’t promise anything yet but I think you would be a very good recording artiste.’ Cilla said ‘Hmmm. Well, it’s a bit risky but I love singing and if I could make a success of it, it’d be great.’

So a few days later I made a firm offer of management and asked Cilla to take a long time to think it over. She did and she signed a contract with me in September, 1963. Eight months later she had become the girl-symbol of British youth, the most exciting singer in Britain and a limitless source of pride to me.

Cilla has never given me a moment’s anxiety. Her style and her natural ease make her a joy to manage but, curiously, she was innocently involved in one of the most frightening experiences of my life.

News that I was soon to sign a management agreement with her had spread swiftly around Liverpool and in the small hours one morning I had an anonymous telephone call. On the other end of the line there was a thick, coarse voice which said, baldly: ‘Keep off Cilla White, Epstein. She doesn’t need your management. She’s signed with friends of mine.’

The caller then hung up, leaving me wondering why I should buy myself a problem like this. The following morning, I realized that this was precisely what the caller had wanted-—to scare me off.

I spoke to Cilla and she assured me she had no agreement with anyone else and I decided to take no more notice of the call. But at about two a.m. another call came. It was a different voice but the message was much the same. This time I was able to speak and I said: ‘Neither Miss White or I are the least bit interested in this nonsense,’ and this time I hung up. The calls persisted for a few days but the claims and threats became more and more feeble until they finally stopped. I was very relieved because I didn’t wish—and never will want—to pirate artistes.

Cilla was the last Liverpool artiste I secured and she is, of course, the only girl. This is not accidental; for I was finding it difficult, in the first case, to select talent from so much in the beat city, and, in the second case, I didn’t care to dilute the special attention I wanted to give Cilla by managing a girl-competitor. The disc charts cannot stand very many girls, however gorgeous they may look on stage.

After the Beatles and Gerry, with great care and precision, I selected four more Northern groups to present Tin Pan Alley with an irresistable onslaught. I signed Billy J. Kramer from Liverpool and linked him with Manchester’s four-man Dakota group, not only because I like the Dakotas’ work, but also because Billy’s own group, the Coasters—now with Chick Graham—did not wish to turn professional.

Billy Kramer had in fact won a prize as a result of a poll organized by Merseybeat for the best-known non-professional group in Liverpool.

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