Credit: Joop van Bilsen / Anefo

The Beatles song aimed at Brian Epstein

Sat 15 July 2023 20:00, UK

Nobody was more responsible for The Beatles’ success than Brian Epstein. The record shop owner had seen something truly special in the Fab Four when he first observed them playing in The Cavern Club. He sought to clean them up and make them presentable for the general public, paying for better suits and facilitating their auditions with Decca Records and EMI.

In the process, Epstein became a very rich man once The Beatles became global superstars. Paul McCartney claimed that the band members never read the contracts provided by Epstein, trusting him blindly. “Well, he was alright. I’ve found out since, of course, that he wasn’t quite as honest to us as he made out,” John Lennon later observed. “We had complete faith in him when he was running us. To us, he was the expert.”

Epstein died in August of 1967, almost three months to the day after The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Although Esptein’s role had diminished following their retirement from touring in 1966, he was still a key player in their business dealings and was a trusted member of their inner circle. Just before his death, the band even penned a quasi-tribute/dig at Epstein, ‘Baby You’re a Rich Man’.

“That’s a combination of two separate pieces … put together and forced into one song,” Lennon told David Sheff in 1980. “One half was all mine. [Sings] ‘How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people, now that you know who you are, da da da da.’ Then Paul comes in with [sings] ‘Baby, you’re a rich man,’ which was a lick he had around.”

In his book A Hard Day’s Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song, writer Steve Turner quotes Lennon as saying: “The point was stop moaning. You’re a rich man and we’re all rich men.” Turner also mentions that McCartney was supposedly inspired by Epstein when he came up with the song’s refrain.

However, George Harrison had a different view on the lyrics. “The idea was to show that we, being rich and famous and having all these experiences, had realized that there was a greater thing to be got out of life – and what’s the point of having that on your own?” Harrison said in 1987. “You want all your friends and everyone else to do it, too.”

Following that logic, Harrison played the song for fans when he made his pilgrimage to San Francisco in August of 1967. The experience wasn’t everything that Harrison believed it would be, with the atmosphere being more depressing than illuminating.

“Somehow I expected them to all own their own little shops. I expected them all to be nice and clean and friendly and happy,” Harrison told author Geoffrey Giuliano. “I went there expecting it to be a brilliant place, with groovy gypsy people making works of art and paintings and carvings in little workshops. But it was full of horrible spotty drop-out kids on drugs, and it turned me right off the whole scene.”

Check out ‘Baby You’re a Rich Man’ down below.