I Should Have Known Better: A Life in Pop Management--The Beatles, Brian Epstein and Elton John (Hardcover)

~ Geoffrey Ellis (Author)
Key Phrases: new advisors, New York, Brian Epstein, Dick James (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

During the 60's Ellis was Chief Executive of NEMS Enterprises, Brian Epstein's company, at the time when the Beatles became global super-stars. This is an insider's account of how he took a leading role in turning NEMS from a ramshackle organization into one of the most successful entertainment companies in the world and helped to launch the careers of many of the most significant players.

About the Author

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 His book contains insights and stories, many previously unpublished, concerning the often tortuous business and personal affairs of Epstein, and the aftermath of his death.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.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Thorogood Publishing (November 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1854182196
• ISBN-13: 978-1854182197
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,680,611 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars There are some good books on The Beatles, but this isn't one of them, July 29, 2009

By	cathy earnshaw (Berlin, Germany) - See all my reviews

It was the brilliant, troubled Beatles manager Brian Epstein (1934-1967) who plucked Geoffrey Ellis - a boyhood friend from Liverpool - from his job as Assistant Underwriting Manager for an insurance company in New York to become a personal assistant to him and The Beatles at NEMS Enterprises in October 1964. Assisting the supergroup in their administrative affairs (drawing up contracts, doing accountancy work, advising on tax law), Ellis was made Chief Executive in 1965, becoming Co-Director of Dick James Music Ltd after Epstein's tragically premature death.

You would think, given his proximity to The Beatles (and other stars such as Cilla Black and Elton John), that Ellis would be spoilt for choice in terms of what to tell. But instead we get a 250-page narrative that is low on insight and insider news, and big on a rather snobbish attention to who has been made a Lord and who hasn't, and whether the stretch limousine which picked him up from the airport had a TV and a well-stocked minibar (yes, really). Such is Ellis's concentration on conservatism and moral values, that it is hard to imagine on the basis of his account that the swinging sixties saw any sex, drugs and rock n' roll at all. Take, for example the wild, druggy Sergeant Pepper release party attended amongst others by three Beatles, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull ("I was invited of course", Ellis tells us proudly, like a peacock spreading its feathers). Ellis's only anecdote for this evening is: "I went to bed and to sleep quite early...There were twin beds in the bedroom, and I woke to find the late comedian, Kenny Everett, in the other bed. We had no conversation as, by the time I left the house, he had not yet surfaced." It was scenes such as this that led The Times' music journalist Caitlin Moran to call the book "so bad it's good" when it came out in 2004.

Curiously, the only time Ellis seems to allow his narrative to become at all passionate is when he engages in a long vitriol against John Lennon. He seems to hate everything about the man, from "his scorn of the fans, his sharp tongue and his conscious nurturing of his 'working-class hero' image", to his general manner ("too clever for his own good"), and his treatment of his first wife Cynthia ("unkind and eventually beyond a doubt ungenerous"). Even the drawings Lennon did in his art college days when he was still a teenager incur his censure: "His simple line drawings are the work of a very minor talent indeed". Labouring the point, Ellis concludes: "I cannot overcome my distaste for his memory." More problematically, Ellis states that Brian Epstein - who experienced a painful sense of alienation growing up as a Jewish homosexual in upper middle class surroundings in the Liverpool of the 1940s and 1950s - "made problems for himself by his homosexuality", as if his sexual orientation was something he could or should have repressed. Aside from this apparent heterosexism, let us not forget that when Brian was alive, homosexuality was still illegal in England and Wales and was punishable by law. It was only in July 1967 - merely weeks before Epstein died aged 32 of an accidental overdose - that sex between consenting male adults over the age of 21 was decriminalised. Hardly an easy situation for the public Epstein to be in.

On a more affirmative note, Ellis admits that he likes the song 'Yesterday' (finally something positive!). It gets better: "I always found Paul very agreeable, and he can indeed be charming and co-operative". But - and with Geoffrey, there almost always seems to be a 'but' - "he can be waspish, too". Indeed "he had displayed his wilful side when he left the country on holiday when he was needed...".

Over the years some great memoirs and monographs have been written on The Beatles, as individuals, a group and as a phenomenon - Ray Coleman's biographies of John Lennon (1984) and Brian Epstein (1989), for example, or Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head (1994) - but, in my experience at least, this wasn't one of them.

4.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile for the committed Beatles reader, September 9, 2006

By	Col. Mustard (The Drawing Room) - See all my reviews

Rather than rehash the famous story one more time, or seek to glorify his own contribution, former Beatles accountant Ellis provides a brief but enjoyable trot through what he saw and did inside the history-making Beatles machine.

It's written in a clipped and somewhat fractured style, almost as if the author had to be persuaded to record his recollections for posterity's sake rather than his own, but it's all the more refreshing for that.

Look elsewhere for gossip, opinion or a Beatles bio, but pick it up if you're looking to round out your Beatles library.

And I do hope the other reviewer will soon be able to finish the book, and then his review.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I Should Have Known Better, March 21, 2006

By	L. Fears - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

So far, I have been unimpressed with this book. I am interested in the subjects, but don't care for the author's rather bland writing style.