CONEY ISLAND
how by Bob Whitaker
Gerry & the Pacemakers, Cilia Black
and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas.
Career-wise, Epstein first entertained
becoming a dress designer. But after he
was arrested and freed for "importun-
ing" a suspected gay man, while taking
acting classes at London's Royal
Academy of Dramatic Arts, he chose to
join the family business and began sell-
ing records in the music section of his
father's store.
He set his personal taste for classical
music aside, though, upon discovering
the Beatles playing the Cavern Club in
November 1961. By accepting an offer
to manage them, a 27-year-old Epstein
embraced entrepreneurship.
Yet Epstein's huge dreams and aspira-
tions were inconsistent with the think-
ing of Britain's stifling middle class,
Geller contends.
"Coming from the fact that he was an
outcast, he did his best to sidestep that
notion that you had to conform to
lockstep British
society or be
completely out
of it," Geller
says. "Managing
the Beatles gave
him a sort of
public and inter-
personal strength
that he'd never
had before.
"No British
group had ever
made it in
The new
America,
and
Svengali of pop
Brian
knew
that
with producer
to
be
the
biggest
George Martin.
in the world,
bigger than
Elvis, he had to
come here. He was very much in charge
and it changed his whole demeanor and
sense of himself, as not being this
searching, unfulfilled person.
"And I don't think Brian managed the
Beatles because he was in love with John
Lennon, either," she adds about the
often speculated liaison that supposedly
occurred during a 12-day vacation that
Epstein and Lennon took in 1963 to
Barcelona. "He's been cast as a dimin-
ished figure, and the idea of him and
John Lennon has been nasty talk.
Obviously, he was interested in John
Lennon, but there was so much more
to it.
According to Geller's research,
Epstein's morally compromising sexuali-
ty was a trap door that hindered him
from ever finding a lasting relationship.
And he often put his life in danger, the
book's participants recall.
53
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Many Fried traded his drumsticks for a law degree, but
not before his band, The Cyrkle, toured with the Beatles.
Cyrkle Game
Attorney Marty Fried, one-time drummer, for
The Cyrkle, recalls his days on tour with the Beatles.
MARTIN NATCHEZ
Special to the Jewish News
I
f the Beatles had written a
song titled "All You Need is
Luck," it would certainly have
applied to Marty Fried.
In 1965, while pursuing his physics
degree at Lafayette College in Easton,
Penn., Fried was moonlighting as a
drummer in a band called the
Rhondells.
The group's professionally polished
performances of Top-40 songs by the
Beach Boys, the Four Seasons and
others seized the attention of Nat
Weiss, a New York divorce attorney
and a close friend of Beatles manager
Brian Epstein. Weiss caught the act
during a summer engagement at The
Alibi, a bar near Atlantic City's
famous boardwalk.
For Fried, lucky horseshoes weren't
clinking so fast. He was strongly cyni-
cal about Weiss' offer for him and
bandmates Tom Dawes, Don
Dannemann and Earl Pickens to
come to the Big Apple and be scout-
ed for a recording contract.
"I was brought up to be skeptical
about almost everything," says Fried,
56, now a bankruptcy attorney in the
Southfield firm of Goldstein,
Bershad, Fried & Lieberman. "[But} I
wanted to see it happen. And because
of Nat's connections with Brian, he
got some record producers to hear us
play.
"We eventually wound up in a
suite at Columbia with [label presi-
dent] Clive Davis and met Brian
Epstein. He didn't know I was Jewish,
and I didn't know if he could tell. We
just shook hands, contracts were
wheeled in on dollies, a photographer
took a couple of pictures, and that
was it."
From that point on, the Rhondells
were no more. Epstein renamed them
The Cyrkle — a suggested I.D. by
Beade John Lennon — and by July
1966, "Red Rubber Ball," a tune co-
written by singer - songwriter Paul
Simon and Bruce Woodley of the
Seekers, became The Cyrkle's first hit,
peaking at No. 2 on Billboard's Hot
100 chart.
The Cyrkle's surging popularity
convinced Epstein to add the band to
the list of opening acts on the Beatles'
last American tour, which included
the Ronettes, Bobby Hebb and Barry
and the Remains.
The entourage debuted in Chicago,
followed by a second stop at Detroit's
Olympia Stadium on Aug. 13, 1966,
where more than 30,000 Beatles fans
paid between $3.50 and $5.50 a ticket
to see the Beatles live. But amidst all
the hoopla, Fried recalled that he did-
n't personally rub shoulders with the
Fab Four until the tour's third show at
Cleveland's Municipal Stadium.
"The first time we met them was in
the bowels of the stadium, and it was
hot," he remembers. "There were
security guards at every turn, and,
eventually, we got into this small
room, and they were just sitting there,
in this dark, ding place.
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