主播大秀

by Bob Stanley

I thought 'I don't like this man, he's poison...'

Brian Matthew on Allen Klein

Brian met many, many times in the sixties, and I'm looking forward to talking to him about them in the weeks to come. He was also close to their enigmatic and troubled manager, Brian Epstein. "I knew Brian Epstein very well, through the Beatles" Brian tells me over coffee. "I met him when they first came to Broadcasting House, and we became extremely good friends."

It was Epstein who invited Brian on a trip to America with the Beatles. Later on, they talked about a subject close to both their hearts - the theatre. "I dreamed up the idea of building a theatre in this area (Orpington, Kent) and the council agreed. They gave me a potential site at a place called High Elms, which is a huge woodland estate, and they would charge me a peppercorn rent. We could have built it for 拢24,000 - it's unbelievable now when you think about it. Brian said he'd arrange the raising of the funds and I'd run it. In the meantime, the theatre in Bromley burnt down and it was put about that I'd set fire to it. Absolute nonsense! It was raised in council meetings - I had a friend on the council. They said 'we don't want this Matthew chap building a theatre because we'll have our new one' - and their new one cost 拢3 million."

So the Epstein/Matthew Theatre wasn't to be - that really is Bromley's loss. I asked Brian if he was aware of what was going on in Brian Epstein's private life? "I knew he was gay" he says, "but I didn't know he had quite serious problems in that area, which he had. I didn't know that he was so heavily into drugs, very, very hooked. And generally his life was a bit of a mess. Then the Beatles hooked up with that awful man in America, Allen Klein. A pretty fearsome man."

On his trip to the States, Brian got to meet Klein, the man who also ended up managing Phil Spector and the Rolling Stones, in person - and he was less than impressed. "When I was over there Brian (Epstein) said he had a meeting with him and would I like to come. Well, he had armed guards, literally, in this room in a baseball stadium. I don't know why, it was just his nature. I thought 'I don't like this man, he's poison.' Of course Brian didn't know what to make of it; he thought 'he can do things I can't do', which was true, unfortunately. Anyway, Klein got in there eventually and fouled it up for everybody. Poor old Brian. Very sad."