At the height of Beatlemania, Epstein was nearly as famous as the group he managed, yet today he is barely more than a pop music footnote despite defining a new style of manager/artist relations. Television journalist Geller has compiled excerpts from interviews she conducted with 28 Epstein associates for a 1998 BBC documentary (unfortunately, Paul McCartney is the only Beatle included). These voices provide a moving oral biography of the man whose unswerving devotion to the Beatles led to unprecedented fame, which hastened a drug dependency that resulted in his death in 1967 at 33. The book also explores at length Epstein's attraction to dangerous homosexual liaisons, which more than once left him physically beaten and blackmailed. In My Life's real strength lies in the eloquent and brutally honest excerpts from Epstein's own diary, available here for the first time. Recommended as a strong complement to Ray Coleman's The Man Who Made the Beatles (McGraw-Hill, 1989) and Epstein's 1964 autobiography A Cellarful of Noise (Pocket, 1998. reprint).
Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.