At last ... the truth about how the man who made the Beatles died

MOST music fans will never have heard of Alistair Taylor.

The mystery man of rock rarely appeared in pictures, and when he did he was just an anonymous face in the crowd.

But he was centre stage at two of the most momentous events in pop history.

As personal assistant to Beatles manager Brian Epstein, he helped discover the most famous group the world has ever seen.

And when Epstein was found dead at his London home, it was Alistair who was again on hand.

Here Alistair - nicknamed Mr Fixit by the Beatles - talks fully for the first time about one of the most controversial and mysterious deaths in showbusiness. And more than 30 years on, the moment still has the power to reduce him to tears.

Alistair had just flown back from America, where he had been touring with the legendary band Cream, when he got a call from Epstein's secretary, Joannne Petersen.

Worried that she couldn't raise him on the phone, she had gone round to his house in Belgravia to find out what was wrong.

There she discovered the bedroom door locked and no answer to her knocking.

She made two calls - one to Epstein's doctor and the other to his best friend Alistair.

"I'd just got off the plane and I was dressed in denim shirt and jeans and open-toed sandals - but when I heard the nervousness in Joanne's voice I leaped into a cab and went straight round," says Alistair.

"On the way I started thinking about what she had told me. I didn't read too much into the bedroom door being locked."

"Brian took a lot of drugs - prescription drugs and other stuff like marijuana and LSD - and he wasn't keen on anyone else seeing what he was smoking or popping.

"When I got there the doctor was about to break the door down. I was three yards behind him when it smashed open.

"What I saw will remain with me for the rest of my life. Brian was lying on his side in his huge bed, to all the world as if he was in a deep sleep.

"The doctor didn't waste any time. He examined him, felt for a pulse. I didn't want to believe what was happening.

"It's nothing, is it, doctor?" I kept on saying. 'He's just asleep, isn't he?'

"Finally the doctor stood up and said, 'I'm afraid he's dead'.

"I couldn't believe it was the scene of a death." Alistair says. "Everything looked so normal. Brian was lying there surrounded by business letters he'd obviously been reading.

"On the counterpane there was a plate of chocolate digestive biscuits and on the floor by the side of the bed a glass of bitter lemon.

"On the bedside table were his bottles of pills. There were about half a dozen of them.

"Brian took a lot of pills. He needed pills to get him up in the morning, pills to get him to sleep, pills to calm him down and pills to get him through the day.

"But the thing I remember was that they were all half full with the tops screwed on.

"If you were going to commit suicide, would you only take half the pills and then put the tops back on the bottles?"

Ever since that day, and despite the coroner's verdict of an accidental overdose, rumours have persisted that Epstein took his own life at the age of 32.

There was even supposed to have been a suicide note, which was somehow smuggled away and destroyed. "All nonsense," says Alistair, vehemently. "There wasn't a note anywhere."

Alistair even went through Epstein's belongings looking for clues. "The doctor went downstairs to phone the police and I quickly searched through the bedroom drawers and Brian's clothes looking for drugs that might have caused his death," he says.

"The only thing I found was a marijuana joint. I put it in my pocket and took it away with me."

When he died, Epstein was one of the richest and most successful entrepreneurs in rock history.

But there were also huge pressures going on inside his life at the time.

"I think he felt he was being eased out and sidelined," Alistair says.

"The boys - The Beatles - were getting advice from elsewhere and weren't relying on him totally like they used to."

It was also an open secret that Epstein was gay.

"Thirty years ago, to be a practising homosexual was to risk prosecution. This fear was something that Epstein had to live with, day in, day out.

"For him it was like living on a volcano," Alistair says.

"He was quite promiscuous. "At one point he was beaten up badly in a public toilet."

Brian Epstein is also known to have had a history of emotional stress - he had been invalided out of the Army with nervous problems.

To add to his inner turmoil around the time of his death on August 27, 1967, his father Harry had died not long before.

Epstein and his parents had an incredibly close relationship and his father's death would have been a terrible strain on him.

"Even though he was a grown man, he still always called them Mummy and Daddy," says Alistair, who is now 63 and living near Derby.

"But that's another reason why I know that Brian Epstein would never have committed suicide.

"Quite simply, he would never have made Queenie, his mother, deal with another death so soon afterwards.

"He just wouldn't have put her through anything like that.

"No, it was an accident, pure and simple. Brian just misjudged the dose of the pills he was taking... and it killed him."

Copyright 1998 MGN LTD
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