There did come a chance to be creative, when John Fernald, the ex-boss of RADA, who had taken Brian in as a student and whom Brian took on later to work for him, fell ill during rehearsals of the play A Smashing Day and Brian took over as director.
‘He’d been ill at the time, recovering from jaundice, but he threw himself into rehearsals completely,’ says Joanne. ‘I don’t think I ever saw him as happy in all the three years I worked with him. He stayed up all night with the cast, waiting for the reviews, and adored every minute of it.’ But the play soon came off.
The urge to be creative never found another outlet. He didn’t know what he was looking for, and nothing presented itself the way the Beatles had done. Instead it turned him more and more against a strictly business life. This was one of the reasons he withdrew so much from NEMS.
‘He didn’t really like being a businessman,’ says Joanne. ‘He didn’t like business meetings. He so wanted to be a creator. He used to cancel even the most important meetings. Sometimes I had to say he was ill, or had an urgent conference. The real reason was that he was still in bed, having been awake with insomnia all night. It was awful. He would leave me notes telling me which meetings I had to get him out of. I had to cancel Bernard Delfont four times in one week. I don’t know what he must have thought.’
But there were several things which did give him great pleasure. He loved Kingsley Hill, his house in Sussex. He also loved bullfighting. He backed a fighter and was financing a film about bullfighting at the time of his death.
The other things he took up were more occasional whims, like drugs and gambling. He took LSD several times, when he heard from the Beatles the effects it had had on them. But on not more than a handful of occasions. He seems to have given it up about the same time as the Beatles — which was well before his death.
He had spasms of gambling. He enjoyed it and was successful. Joanne often found a note waiting for her when she arrived in the morning with a pile of money, perhaps around £300, which he’d won the night before. ‘He would say in his note that I had to go and bank his happiness.’
Peter Brown, who usually went with him, says he was a good gambler because he knew when to stop. ‘This was because he wasn’t really carried away by it. The whole point of gambling was somewhere to go very late at night and to meet people.’
Apart from the Beatles and Cilla Black, none of his artists lasted as big stars and many of them soon faded away completely. Quite a few, naturally, resented his over-attention to the Beatles and then, as he drew out of NEMS, his complete lack of work on their behalf. Brian regretted this as much as anyone. It would make him feel very guilty. ‘He believed in so many of them really,’ says Joanne. ‘He honestly did. He would promise them great things, absolutely sincerely. They’d go away, feeling hopeful again. In a few months they’d be back, accusing him of having let them down.’
But the only really important row he had with any of his artists was, ironically, not with any of the ones who were doing badly, but with Cilla Black, his most successful single star.
She had felt for a long time that she wasn’t getting the personal attention she’d had from Brian in the past and which she felt she deserved. At the beginning of the summer of 1967, she decided she’d had enough. Brian had gone off somewhere again, leaving her. So that was that. She was leaving him.
As Brian was away, Peter Brown was the first to hear the news of her decision. He knew how badly it would affect Brian and he was worried about telling him. He consulted Brian’s doctor for advice, who told him to do it slowly and carefully. When Brian heard, he made the mistake of allowing others to go and try to pacify her first, but they eventually met in Chapel Street. After several hours of discussions with Cilla, and then agreements, it was all patched up. They became friendlier than they’d ever been and remained so, up until his death. Cilla realized she would never have left Brian anyway.
There were never ever any rows with any of the Beatles. He loved them all as much as ever, and they loved him. But with the end of touring, their main point of contact ceased to exist.
They still saw a lot of each other. Any business decision came through his hands. But at the end of 1966, when the touring stopped, their concern was with themselves, working out what sort of life they would lead, what they would do with themselves, what the point of it all was. This was when the drugs, and then religion, started to enter their lives. They almost became hermits for several months, seeing only each other.
Brian went his own way, a way which had always been completely different, in so many respects, to theirs. If he hadn’t become their manager, it’s unlikely they would ever have been friends. He was of a different age, class and background, with different attitudes and, most of all, different pleasures. But for five years his life had been his work for them. When that finished, the Beatles had each other, and their wives. He was alone, obsessed by himself, worrying about his worries, worries which he hadn’t had much time to think about for five years.
The Beatles had no idea how he was leading his last year, how he had become increasingly dependent on pills, as his worries, real and imagined, took over and obsessed him. They were amazed to hear, a long time after his death, that he’d hardly been at his office for so many months and had rarely been up and out in daylight. They knew nothing either of his personal affairs.
They had heard he’d been mildly depressed early in 1967, but thought he’d got over it. When he was with them, he was certainly always happy. This was true. His greatest pleasure was to be with them. He loved doing anything for them.
‘He had Pattie and me for a week’s holiday in the south of France in 1966,’ says George. ‘When we arrived, he had every little thing worked out, each meal, each visit, each place we would go to, for the whole week. A private plane arrived one day, which he’d organized to take us to a bullfight.
‘He was always like this. He so wanted to please people that he worked everything out, down to the last detail.’ When he had a dinner party, he went to great lengths to know each person’s favourite cigarettes and had them laid out by their plate at the table.
Pattie says she did once hear from Joanne about the amount of pills Brian was taking. ‘I said why couldn’t she or Peter stop him, but she said they couldn’t. I said to George that he should speak to Brian himself, but he said it wouldn’t do any good.’
Brian had at first been attracted most of all to John, from those early days in the Cavern. John was the only one he’d ever spent a holiday with alone, that time they went to Spain together, leaving Cyn in Liverpool.
His relationship with Paul was the most subtle and complicated, at least Brian felt it was. He felt he had to overcompensate towards Paul. He admitted it himself once. ‘I think Paul thinks I’m closer to John than I am with him. It’s not really true. I was earlier on, but now I love them all equally.’ He always gave Paul particularly lavish presents. They rarely gave him any.
‘Paul was the only one who ever gave him any little worries,’ says Joanne, ‘when he rang up to complain about something, or ask things. The others might ask exactly the same, but he always worried more about pleasing Paul. He could be upset by talking to Paul on the phone, but never by any of the others.’
This was probably because, in 1967, Paul, for the first time, had become interested in business affairs. Formerly, George had been the only one to cross-examine Brian on contracts, or how much they were getting, and couldn’t he do better. But George, when his interest in religion arrived, stopped worrying completely about materialistic things.