11/9/61: Brian Epstein Meets the Beatles on Their Turf - The Cavern Club

“He was incredibly honest and a little naive, but he entered a world that was totally alien to him. I don’t think the Beatles will ever acknowledge how lucky they were to meet up with a man who was devoted to them so completely and an honest man to boot.” -- George Martin, the Beatles' producer

Since it's been nearly a year since I've posted on this site, I thought I'd warm up with something that makes me feel, well, warm instead of numb, despairing, and anxious.

And it just so happens that it was 63 years ago today that Brian Epstein spent what would turn out to be most crucial lunch hour of his life witnessing the Beatles play a set at the Cavern Club, a jazz club in Liverpool that was turning toward pop music. By then, the Beatles had become the Cavern's house band. It was most likely at high noon on that November day that Brian Epstein first laid eyes on the group on their home turf. The Beatles already knew of Brian as they were all customers at the nearby NEMS (North End Music Store) he managed -- the hip component of his retailer family's business. What's more of a question mark is how Brian knew (or did not know) of the Beatles: the official story is that Raymond Jones, a teenage boy shopping at NEMS, asked Brian for the "My Bonnie" single, which had been pressed in Hamburg with the Beatles backing British rock star Tony Sheridan. Brian then apparently asked around about the Beatles, which led to his decision to check them out at the Cavern. Yet this version has been contested, as the Beatles were already being written up in Mersey Beat, a popular periodical Brian would've been aware of. Also, by that time, rock records were outselling classical records at his store. Finally, the Cavern Club itself was already on Brian's radar: not only was it a stone's throw from NEMS, but he'd gone there to book a jazz band for his 21st birthday several years back.

But whatever the truth was, Brian knew that he would stick out like a sore thumb in the gritty basement of a club crowded with young, working-class rock 'n' roll fans on their lunch break. (Indeed, caverns are very Scorpionic places.) So he wisely alerted the club's manager, Bob Wooler, in advance of his arrival (with a newly minted "assistant" in tow to make him look even more impressive). Brian was only 27, but in 1961, he was far more middle-aged "establishment" than the young men he was soon to manage and shephard to stardom. He dressed conservatively and was also from a far cushier class than the Beatles. Not that Brian had an easy time of it: he was Jewish in an environment that condoned casual antisemitism, and he was gay at a time when homosexuality was still illegal. But that day at the Cavern, he received the club's equivalent of the VIP treatment: he did not have to stand in line to enter the club, and Bob Wooler, announced Brian's presence over the PA system.

Unfortunately I do not have Brian Epstein's exact birth chart, but his noon chart (which would seem a good fit: a 10th-house Sun, a Venus-Neptune conjunction at the MC, and the Nov. 9 Sun at 16 Scorpio close to his ASC) interacts very strongly with the noon chart for the Cavern Club.

The ruler of the Cavern Club lunchtime-set chart is Saturn in its ruling sign of Capricorn, placed in the 1st house; by the time Brian said hello to the Beatles backstage, Saturn was probably conjunct the ASC. Saturn was also moving into a trine to Brian's Sun at 25/26 Virgo. While Saturn, Capricorn, and Virgo do not seem at all conducive to the wildness of rock 'n' roll in general and the Beatles rough style in particular, keep in mind that Brian Epstein was destined to become the band's manager -- very Saturn/Capricorn -- and he also "branded" them in a highly detailed-oriented way (Virgo), remaking them from an unkempt, all-over-the-place act who sometimes ate onstage into polished, suit-wearing perfomers who bowed at the end of pre-planned sets. Brian was also very much a father figure (Saturn) to the band.

What must have hooked Brian from the get-go is apparent in the Cavern Club chart: the Moon at 0 Sagittarius square Uranus at 0 Virgo and sextile Jupiter at 0 Aquarius. Three planets at zero degrees of a sign signal something new; in this case, the seeds of the 1960s revolution. The first iteration of the Beatles, the Quarrymen (talk about literal rock!), had formed four years earlier, but it was not until Uranus entered Virgo that they became stars, not just "big in Hamburg" or "big in Liverpool." Not only was Brian Epstein a Virgo; he was born with Uranus at 0 Taurus, exactly trine transiting Uranus. So Uranus moving into Virgo was like a bolt of lightning for him, and it manifested in the band known as the Beatles. Pluto was a little farther along in Virgo on 11/9/61 -- conjunct Brian's Venus, and as I mentioned before, Brian was born with a Venus-Neptune conjunction, giving him refined taste, a love of the arts (he'd studied acting in London before coming home to run his family's music store), but also an unhappy love life (he was attracted to the "rough trade" who beat him up, robbed him, even blackmailed him) and, thanks to insomnia, an addiction to sedatives that made the Beatles' drug use look like a teddy bears' picnic.

Brian later claimed to have been "immediately struck by their music, their beat, and their sense of humor on stage -- and, even afterwards, when I met them. I was struck again by their personal charm. And it was there that, really, it all started." What he could not say was that these slovenly yet attractive young men in leather jackets were the embodiment of his rough-trade fantasy -- especially John Lennon. Interestingly, Lennon shared an important placement with Brian: the Moon at an early degree of rebellious, eccentric, iconoclastic Aquarius -- the sign Jupiter, planet of good luck and expansion, had just entered in November 1961. Combine that with the Moon-Uranus square that occurred during this fateful lunchtime set, and it really was electric. After the set, when Brian went backstage to say hello to the Beatles, George Harrison asked cheekily, "And what brings Mr. Epstein here?"

Brian himself could not answer that question. He was a shop manager, not a rock manager, and they were clearly from different worlds. But a few minutes later, while Brian was having lunch with his assistant, Alistair Taylor, the truth came out: Alistair thought the band was a train wreck, but Brian thought they were phenomenal, and he wondered aloud if he should manage them. After returning to the Cavern Club several times over the next month, Brian broached the subject, and in January 1962 they signed a five-year management contract. In an interesting twist of karma, Brian would literally die of an overdose, either by accident or on purpose, in 1967, when the band was at the pinnacle of their success. For John Lennon, at least, this was the beginning of the end of the Beatles: their father figure, the man who turned a group of immature, provincial young men into a global phenomenon and the symbol of the Age of Aquarius, was gone.

It's the Great Conjunction, Charlie Brown (and the Great Mutation, Too)

“How many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
Yes,and how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?”

—Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ in the Wind”

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
—Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Six very long months ago, I threw a predictive hat into the ring that the upcoming Jupiter-Saturn conjunction would usher in “positive new developments, since it is clear to me that Saturn at 0 degrees of Aquarius (where it was in late March and early April of this year, and where it is currently) is a crucial factor for this particular pandemic. Aquarius rules groups of people, revolution, science, and technology. With Jupiter joining Saturn there at the end of this year, perhaps humanity will step up to the plate.” (From my blog post of 6/27/20.)

Little did I know when I was waxing so uncharacteristically optimistic in my usually downbeat astrology blog that this was to be no ordinary Jupiter-Saturn conjunction—not that any of them are, as so-called Great Conjunctions only occur every 20 years and serve as markers for societal epochs—but a Great Mutation. It came as mind-blowing news for me to learn that Great Conjunctions do not fall in random signs every other decade, as I had assumed ever since I began practicing astrology; instead, Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions occur in a single element for 200 years before jumping to a different element for the next 200 years—although there is a preview of the Great Mutation in the penultimate conjunction of each 200-year cycle. (Indispensable source material for this article: https://www.astropro.com, “Astrologer Richard Nolle’s 3000-Year Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction Table," published 4/26/98.)

In other words, by the time you read this article, we will have just emerged from an earth-element Great Conjunction cycle that began on January 26, 1842. Let that sink in for a New York minute: on a societal level, this cycle has been almost entirely focused on the material world. Even the flower children of the 1960s who turned on, tuned in, and dropped out of the dog-eat-dog rat race for at least a few years, wanted to (as per Joni Mitchell’s song “Woodstock”) “get back to the land to set my soul free […] And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”

Our most recent glimpse of the air-element Great Conjunction cycle was the 1980–81 Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Libra, which marked the next two decades with the rise of the personal computer, the internet, and dramatic shifts in the institutions of marriage, law, politics, and borders. There was the rise of Reagan on the one hand, the fall of the Berlin Wall on the other.

In 2000 the final earth-element Great Conjunction occurred, in Taurus. With the exception of the preview of 40 years ago, our last Great Conjunction in the air-element cycle occurred on January 16, 1405—and it happened in Aquarius.

I am writing this with Jupiter and Saturn still playing tug-of-time in Capricorn, so I am finding it difficult to evade the clutches of earth-sign logic, which is empirical, not theoretical; rooted in the five senses and the mundane world. Perhaps it is the Capricorn influence that is encouraging me to fixate on an identical pattern during the last elemental shift from earth to air: Libra (1186) to Taurus (1206) to Aquarius (1226) rather than ditch history and simply predict that the coming Great Mutation in Aquarius will send humanity to group therapy…. Yet even if history doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes.

The countless generations of astrologers who lived before the outer planets were discovered would probably slap me upside the head for not being aware of this Great Conjunction pattern, but back in the long-ago day, Jupiter and Saturn really were the naked eye’s final frontiers of our solar system. Every 20 years, they appear in the night sky to merge into one extraordinarily bright star, which in the year 6 BC was conjunct in Pisces three times (May, October, and December) and christened the Star of Bethlehem or the Christmas Star, alerting the Three Wise Men (code for astrologers) to the birth of a great spiritual leader. Before the outer planets were discovered, Jupiter co-ruled Sagittarius and Pisces, while Saturn co-ruled Capricorn and Aquarius. These final four signs of the zodiac are associated with transpersonal matters; appropriately, the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction is also known as the Great Chronocrator, Markers of Time.

The Great Mutation at 0 degrees of Aquarius occurs on December 21, 2020, on the heels of the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, when the Sun enters the Saturn-ruled sign Capricorn. Saturn is clearly still a force to be reckoned with here, not ready to cede its dominance of 2020, and is putting its harsh taskmaster stamp on the “dark winter” that US president-elect Joe Biden has been warning us about concerning the pandemic. Although expansive, optimistic, gambling Jupiter will have an easier time transiting through Aquarius than in Capricorn (sign of its fall), it will still be dominated by Saturn, as the latter planet is still the co-ruler of Aquarius.

The chart for the Great Mutation in Washington DC points to a classic earth-air conflict, as the Ascendant at 0 degrees of Taurus (conjunct Joe Biden’s Moon at 1 degree of Taurus) exactly squares the Great Mutation, with wild-card Uranus in Taurus in the First House of identity, while the Sun-Mercury conjunction at 0–1 degrees of Capricorn trines the Ascendant. Consider, too, that the Sun on Inauguration Day conjuncts the Great Mutation, literally spotlighting its significance. I do not want to come off as Chicken Little here, but…the sky could very well be falling.

The seeds of Saturn in Aquarius were sown at the very beginning of last spring; this winter, they will bloom as social distancing (a manifestation of Saturn in Aquarius) moves into a new phase with new or enhanced forms of online or virtual technology (Aquarius) in an attempt to normalize on a collective scale what this time last year was unthinkable or unimaginable for most individuals. Social media will be more policed (Saturn) at the same time it expands (Jupiter); Zoom may roll out a Zany offshoot while Slack rolls out Slick. This past spring, I predicted that multiple breakthrough Covid-19 vaccines would be invented on the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction; at the time of this writing, approvals of various vaccines are already occurring in some countries, without necessarily finishing the standard protocol (Jupiter and Uranus going rogue on Saturn).

The most significant aspects of the winter of 2020–21, following the Great Mutation, are profoundly challenging: the Jupiter-Uranus square (1/17/21) and the first of several Saturn-Uranus squares (2/17/21), during the same period that Mars is conjunct Uranus in Taurus. As Mars is an inner planet, and debilitated in Taurus, there is no way for us to opt out of these challenging squares, and they will involve the same signs of the Jupiter-Uranus and Saturn-Uranus squares of 2000—just flipped. Rhyming history, anyone?

Think back to 2000, the final Great Conjunction in the earth element, specifically Taurus; reflect on the past 20 years of societal matters, and how they have all been tied into the sign of money and possessions. Particularly in the US, the gap between the haves and the have-nots has widened into a canyon. Unfettered capitalism, tax breaks, and the stock market have mainly benefited the 1%. Nearly all politicians are in the back pockets of corporations, which recently were determined to have the same rights as people (but not vice-versa). 9/11 occurred and has had the effect of dismantling certain personal liberties (e.g., Big Brotherish surveillance) in the name of security (an earth-element desire). Even as the internet, virtual reality, and AI gained traction with Uranus in Aquarius, the tech bubble burst in 2000 and true communication between disparate groups (Jupiter and Saturn) got bogged down in the bullheaded “my way or the highway” modus operandi that is the dark side of Taurus.

This time around, however, Uranus has moved from the sign of its rulership to the sign of its fall, which suggests that the effects of this square will be even harsher and involve not just public health and economic misery for millions of people, but the climate-change emergency that is mainly kindling young activists who will be most affected by the coming devastation if nothing is done very soon to mitigate it (as it may already be too late to stop the damage entirely).

During the spring of 2020, millions of individuals lost their jobs due to the pandemic, and a global recession ensued;
Saturn backed off from the exact square, but starting this winter, the square will be in full force. While the Jupiter-Uranus square willencourage conspiracy theories, cultlike groups, rampant fake news, and gambling with money and literal lives, the real crash will come on the exact Saturn-Uranus square. Incoming president Biden may say “Bye Don” as the Lame Donald Duck is removed from the White House with a butterfly net (or, depending on what he attempts during the Jupiter-Uranus square, in handcuffs). But unless the US Senate is flipped in the January runoff in Georgia or the Senate Majority Leader candy-flips, Americans may not be helped in any real way this winter as Covid-19 ravages the nation and vaccines are at the very earliest stages of being distributed. As of this writing, there are talks in the Senate of passing a compromised stimulus bill to help individuals and businesses; if there is no significant improvement, and individuals are being evicted and going hungry, even more people will take to the streets in protest of this utterly avoidable mess than the Black Lives Matter movement (though there will be overlap). And the protesting could easily turn violent.

The stubborn nature of this Great Mutation in Aquarius squaring Uranus in Taurus also indicates that another bubble will burst, with more potential violence: the information bubble, which has polarized our society and is yoked to money in the form of corporate interests and hucksters. Critical thinking has become a lost art, as has compassion and a sense of fair play. Every opinion is a fact; every fact is an opinion. Many of us, no matter how nice, educated, or “evolved” we are, have our own set-in-stone beliefs on just about everything, gleaned from such disparate sources that when op-ed columnists opine, newscasters speak, epidemiologists weigh in, the CDC flipflops, Facebook friends post, or twitterers tweet, they are all preaching in echo chambers to their very separate choirs. Very recently, I became aware of Parler, a far-right social media platform that formed in response to pushback from Facebook.

Federal mask mandates and strict three-month lockdowns may work in some countries, but not here, and particularly not during a 20-year cycle defined, as in the last 20-year cycle, by Jupiter and Saturn squaring Uranus in fixed know-it-all signs. Freedom has become such a loaded term, used by many people to define their right to not wear a mask to protect other people, that I nearly scrapped the Bob Dylan reference at the beginning of this article. As the poet William Butler Yeats put it so eloquently in “The Second Coming,” just following the First World War and the last pandemic:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Now that we are trying to tame the worst public health crisis since Yeats wrote that poem in 1919, the center must regain its footing if we are to make it as a species, or at least as Americans, to the next potential renaissance (as occurred in Italy midway through the last air-element Great Conjunction cycle). We need not to “get back to normal,” as recent normal was not working out so well for many of us, but to be inspired by a long-ago era.

An era when the newborn Magna Carta was used as a springboard for common law outside of England. An era when the populace (symbolized by Aquarius) hungered and fought for human rights (Aquarius again) that would benefit as many people of all races, religions, and walks of life as possible instead of sinking into tribalism, cynicism, nihilism, and authoritarian populism (which has enabled fascism, holocausts, ethnic cleansing—and most recently, a mentally ill psychopathic grifter to become the President of the United States). An era when ideas and communication (domains of the air element) were valued at least as much as things and ownership (ruled by earth).

Tribunals and revolutions may be unavoidable during this elemental societal change. But if enough humane humans unite, we can get the true Age of Aquarius rolling…with the great transformer Pluto transiting through Aquarius, to boot. This winter, let us mask up, take a deep breath, and begin a 200-year-long journey.