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.