The Beatles, George Martin, Brian Epstein, Astrid Kirchherr, Neil Aspinall, Fred R. Krug, Bob Eubanks, Bert Kaempfert

Beatle People

Jane Asher

Jane Asher was born in London, England, 5 April 1946, into a high society family. Her father was a well known physician and author of medical books; her mother, whose own family traces its lineage back to England's King Richard III, an accomplished musician. At the age of five, she appeared in her first film role in the picture "Mandy", playing a deaf girl and by age 12 she made her theatrical stage debut in Alice in Wonderland. (Her sister Claire also started acting on radio and BBC television, but later in life decided to become a school teacher. Her brother Peter became a musician and, as an adult, a Vice President of Sony USA.)

When Jane was seventeen and working on the BBC show "Juke Box Jury", she met the Beatles. Paul McCartney, particularly, became enamored of the beautiful redhead and soon became a frequent guest at the Asher family's Wimpole street home.
As their romance developed (and Beatlemania was at its height), Paul and Jane moved into a 3 story Victorian home together at 7 Cavendish Avenue, St. John's Wood, London, complete with maid and butler.
They also acquired High Park Farm in Scotland as a retreat from their hectic (and by now public) life in London.
Paul wanted Jane to give up her career, but she refused and, in fact began working with the Bristol Old Vic troupe, starring in Great Expectations and Romeo and Juliet.

On Christmas Day 1967, Paul proposed to Jane and everyone expected the two to be married soon. It was not to be.
One night, the following spring, Jane unexpectedly turned up at the Cavendish home and found Paul with another woman. For a while, the two of them maintained their accustomed schedule of public appearances, but by July 17, when Paul showed up without her at the premiere of "Yellow Submarine" the public knew that the relationship was finished. Three days later, July 20, Jane officially anounced that her engagement to Paul McCartney was off.

Jane Asher went on to have a successful career in films and on television, which continues to this day. In 1970 she met illustrator Gerald Scarfe whom she subsequently married. They have three children.
Besides her family and her acting work, Jane also manages several business interests ("Jane Asher Party Cakes", "Jane Asher's Home Baking Collection") and has found time to write more than two dozen lifestyle books (such as "Jane Asher Costumes")and several novels, including "The Longing" and "Trying to Get Out".

Jane's father, Dr. Richard Asher, died at the family home in London, of a combination of alcohol and barbiturates, in 1979.

Neil Aspinall

Neil Aspinall

Pete Best

Pete Best

Lonnie Donegan

Anthony James "Lonnie" Donegan, MBE

Brian Epstein

Brian Epstein

Brian Samuel Epstein was born to Harry and Malka "Queenie" Epstein on September 19,1934 in Liverpool. When he was sixteen, in 1950, Brian started to work at the family furniture store, which was located next door to the North End Road Music Stores, which the Epsteins subsequently acquired.

In 1954, when the NEMS stores were expanding from pianos and radios to include grammophone records, Harry Epstein put Brian, who exhibited a natural talent for salesmanship, in charge of the new record departments, featuring "The Finest Record Selection In The North". They als carried music publications, such as the new "Mersey Beat", which featured the Beatles from its first issue of July 6, 1961.
Brian, who was very much interested in the local music scene, asked Mersey Beat editor Bill Harry if he could contribute a record column. His first column appeared in the third issue on August 3, 1961. It was most likely Bill Harry who, early in November of that year, suggested to Brian to go down to the Cavern Club, just around the corner and across Whitechapel from NEMS, to see the Beatles. Epstein went and there met the boys for the first time on November 9th. Three weeks later, he approached John Lennon and offered to become the Beatles' manager (for 25%). The offer was accepted by the group at a meeting on December 10, 1961. Their first contract was for a five year period and was formally signed at Pete Best's house on January 24, 1962, with Alistair Taylor, Brian's assistant, as witness.

Epstein, who saw the Beatles' potential from the very start, got to work to get the group a recording contract.
After being turned down by several recording producers, including Ron White of EMI, the boys drove down to London (getting lost somewhere in the Midlands on the way) on New Years Eve for an audition at Decca Records the following day. At the audition for Mike Smith and Dick Rowe, head of Decca in London, on January 1, 1962, they performed almost their entire club act of some twenty songs. They were turned down, a few days later, with Rowe delivering one of the most wrongheaded statements in recording history: "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein."

These early failures notwithstanding, the first contract between the Beatles and Brian Epstein, for a five year period, was formally signed at Pete Best's house on January 24, 1962, with Alistair Taylor, Brian's assistant, acting as a witness. Brian thereupon set out to change the Beatles' appearance from their unpolished, blue jean and leather jacket greaser look to one of neatly tailored suits. He ordered them not to eat, smoke or swear on stage and to bow to the audience after each number.

In June of 1962, Epstein finally secured a contract for the band with George Martin at EMI's Parlophone label and the Beatles were on their way to stardom. (Brian later also managed other acts, including Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer, Cilla Black, the Fourmost, the Big Three, the Remo Four and Tommy Quickly.)

In January of 1967 Epstein decided to merge NEMS with the Robert Stigwood Organization, which managed, "The Who",among other bands. Epstein retained sole control over the Beatles. (The Stigwood deal was undone late in 1967, when the Beatles bought their way out of the arrangement.)

On August 27, 1967 Brian Epstein was found dead in bed at his London home at 24 Chapel Street, Belgravia, from a barbiturate overdose. His death was ruled an "accidental suicide by a gradual accumulation of Carbitral".

The Beatles learned of his passing while visiting Transcendental Meditation guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Bangor, North Wales and reacted to the news with something close to panic. John Lennon later said: "The Beatles were finished when Eppy died. I knew, deep inside me, that that was it. Without him, we'd had it."

Brian's funeral was conducted August 30 in Liverpool amid close family members only. None of the Beatles attended. A memorial service for Brian Epstein was held on October 17th 1967 at the New London Synagogue, with all four Beatles present.

Bob Eubanks, Fred R. Krug

Bob Eubanks and Fred R. Krug

Bob Eubanks
In retrospect, it seems hard to believe, but the management of the world famous Hollywood Bowl had to be persuaded and cajoled into "taking a chance" on letting the "upstart" Beatles perform there during their first American tour in 1964. They weren't at all sure, whether the British group was really a big enough draw to fill their amphitheater!

The man who did most of the persuading and cajoling was a Los Angeles radio DJ, artists' agent and promoter by the name of Bob Eubanks, who proposed to produce and promote the concert. The Bowl people demanded a non-refundable security deposit, just in case the British Rockers failed to bring in a large enough audience to cover expenses. Bob Eubanks actually had to go out and mortgage his home to raise the money!

As it turned out, Eubanks and Capitol Records, with some help from the local media, created an event, the likes of which Los Angeles and the Hollywood Bowl had never seen before.To this day, the Bowl concert dates, all produced by Eubanks, are recalled, and replayed, as among the most important live appearances of the Beatles' careers.

Bob Eubanks, born on 8 January 1938 in Flint, Michigan, USA, began his broadcasting career as a disc jockey and, by the early 60's, had become one of the most successful DJs at Los Angeles' premier rock-and-roll station, KRLA. Besides producing the Beatles Bowl appearances for three years running, Eubanks produced live concerts for Elton John, Barry Manilow, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones.

In 1966 the superbly telegenic Eubanks became the host of ABC Television's "The Newlywed Game", which became one of the top rated prime time game shows of all time.

By 1972 he had entered the country music business as a producer and artists manager, guiding the careers of performers such as Marty Robbins, Barbara Mandrell, Dolly Parton and Merle Haggard, for whom he produced over a hundred concert dates a year for a decade.

Eubanks continued to produce and/or host some of the most successful game programs and musical shows for the major television networks into the 1990's, but is probably best known to audiences around the world for his coverage of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade for KTLA-TV, which he has done every New Years Day since 1978!

And he will always be remembered as the man who brought the Beatles to the Hollywood Bowl.

Fred R. Krug
Fred R. Krug was the FILM & VTR Director of KCOP-TV in Los Angeles when the Beatles first came to Southern California in 1964 and subsequently in '65 and '66 and persuaded his station to give extensive television coverage to the band's encounters with the Hollywood press corps, including a now famous press conference at Capitol Records headquarters, which he filmed and got on the early evening news. It's been said that that telecast probably added a couple of thousand hysterical fans to the nearly out-of-control throng trying to get into the Bowl that night.

A Beatles friend ever since, Fred R. Krug, a now retired motion picture and television producer-director, created The Beatles Worldsite for the World Wide Web in the late 1990's and maintains the site on the Internet to this day, as a tribute to the Fab Four.
Bob Eubanks and Fred R. Krug are shown during the taping of a Eubanks program in the Santa Ynez Valley around 2001.

Mal Evans

Mal Evans

Bert Kaempfert

Bert Kaempfert

He is mentioned only briefly on one single page of their Anthology, but without Bert Kaempfert, there might never have been any Beatles.

In 1961, the boys were still struggling to make it as a band, playing on Hamburg's notorious Reeperbahn, when the successful German band leader, composer and record producer heard them one night at the Top Ten Club and decided to give them a chance to record for him. The rest, as they say, is history.

Bert Kaempfert was born in Hamburg on October 16, 1923 and died in Palma de Mallorca on 21 June 1980. Among his many world famous compositions are "Morgen", which gave Ivo Robic his first gold record, "Die Guitarre und das Meer", which made a European super star of Freddy Quinn, "Wooden Heart" for Elvis Presley, "Spanish Eyes", which launched Al Martino's career, "Danke Schoen", which became Wayne Newton's signature song, "Strangers in the Night" for FrankSinatra and songs for Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and many more.

For more on Bert Kaempfert, go to http://www.kaempfert.de/

Astrid Kirchherr

Astrid Kirchherr

Astrid Kirchherr was born May 20, 1938 in Hamburg, Germany. When she was about 19 years old she took up the study of photography at the 'Meisterschule für Mode, Textil Graphik und Werbung' (Master school for Fashion, Textile Graphics and Advertising), from where she graduated in 1960.

That year, Astrid, already working for a Hamburg magazine, became the very first photographer ever to shoot a series of professional pictures of the Beatles, after hearing them perform at Hamburg's "Kaiserkeller" nightclub. The boys, John, Paul, George, Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe, shared billing with another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes (whose drummer was Ringo Starr) and they were thrilled to have a real pro take an interest in them.

As it turned out, Astrid's interest focused on Stu Sutcliffe in particular and the two fell in love and became engaged.
Even if Astrid had never taken a single picture of the Beatles, she would go down in Beatle history for what happened next. She decided one day to give Stuart a different hair style. When Stu showed up at that evening's gig with his new mushroom shaped hair, John rolled on the floor laughing. But George decided to have Astrid do his hair as well. John and Paul gave in a while later and the Beatles famous "moptop" look was born.

In December 1960, the Beatles' stay in Germany came to a unpleasant end, when under-age George Harrison was deported for illegally working in a nightclub and Paul McCartney and Pete Best were shipped out of the country for allegedly starting a fire. John Lennon followed a few days later, but Stu Sutcliffe decided to stay in Germany with Astrid and left the band. The following year, Stuart's health began to visibly deteriorate, but repeated examinations did not reveal the cause of his condition. On April 10, 1962, he suffered a total collapse and had to be rushed to a hospital with Astrid accompanying him in the ambulance. They never made it. Stu died of a brain hemorrhage in Astrid's arms on the way.

In the following years, Astrid covered the Beatles extensively and became the pre-eminent photographer of the group's early years. She photographed the Beatles during the filming of "Hard Day's Night" for Stern magazine and created the cover picture for George Harrison's "Wonderwall Music". Although she had virtually quit professional photography by 1970, her pictures are still featured in exhibitions around the world to this day.

Sir George Martin

Sir George Martin

Tony Sheridan

Tony Sheridan

Stu Sutcliffe

Stuart Sutcliffe

THIS PAGE IS A WORK IN PROGRESS
(More Beatle People and Bios will be added regularly)