Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

What ever happened to it? When Epstein died, of course, his contract with the fabs was about to expire. But NEMS also was Brian's family's music stores.

His father died before he did. His Mom was still alive, though. Anyone know how long the stores stayed in operation and who took over NEMS?

Good question Glenn. All I can remember reading is that Clive Epstein (Brian's brother) took over. The last I heard about him was when he was trying to get John and Paul to buy out Brian's portion of the publishing rights. I am interested to hear what others may have to offer. Nice job Glenn!

February 1969 - EMI loaned The Beatles enough to buy NEMS but Klein dissuaded them. Clive Epstein sold control of NEMS to Leonard Richenberg (Triumph Investment Trust) on 17 February. The Beatles instructed EMI not to pay any more royalties to NEMS and Triumph sued for NEMS’ 25%.

April 1969 - Klein made a deal with Richenberg (24 April) which gave The Beatles control of NEMS, Nemperor, Subafilms, and some Triumph and NEMS Northern Songs stock. Triumph’s 25% “management fee” was cut to 5% for the last 5 years of the contract from 1972 to 1976.

February 2, 1988 in History - Clive Epstein, brother of Brian Epstein, dies at 51.

That's more than I knew, Brian. Thanks. I wonder if Clive had kids to carry on the family business.

So, NEMS owned a portion of Northern Songs. I wonder how that worked. It's funny to me how these managers got a chunk of the publishing. Same with Allen Klein and the Stones.

Thanks, Mike. I suppose the actual NEMS stores were separate from the publishing. I wonder how long they stayed open.

Nice bit of history Mike. What a mess things became with them.

Clive only lived to 51.

John Explains the Origins of Apple Corps:

•John: See, although Apple turned into the Beatles' baby, Apple was conceived by the Epsteins and NEMS before we took over, before we said: "It's going to be like this". They had it lined up so we would do the same as Northern Songs, sell ourselves to ourselves. And what happened with Northern Songs is we ended up selling Lenmac, or one of them, forever. That's what f***ing Epstein did to us. We lost all our copyrights and Lew Grade's got'em. And the same thing was behind the Apple thing. They were going to set it up, sell eighty-percent to the public, and we were going to be the twenty-percent minority shareholders, with five-percent each, and God knows who else running it. And that was the idea for Apple. But I dunno, it got screwed up somehow (McCabe/Schonfeld p. 102. For the Record).


•Interviewer:Wasn't Apple Paul's idea, basically?...a sort of foundation.
John: Oh, no. No. That was us all talking, just about what we wanted to do. See, initially Clive Epstein came up to us and said, "You've got so much money and we're thinking of investing into retail shops for you".You can just imagine the Beatles with a string of f***in' retail shoe shops-that was the way they thought. They were still on Queens Drive in Liverpool, mentally. Clive Epstein still is,all he wants to do is get back to the hills. So we said, "We don't want to be. Imagine us owning f***ing retail shops". So we said, "We don't want to be in that. At least if we're going to open a shop, let's open something that we'd want, that we'd like to buy". We were thinking, "Let's be the Woolworth of something". Or how great it was to go into Marks and Spencer and get a decent sweater when you were about eighteen. Cheap, but good quality. We wanted Apple to be that. So we were just tripping off, having a joint and saying, "Well, we could have films, and we could help young artists, so they wouldn't have to have the trouble we had with all that tramping round, being undiscovered. So we just built it up. That's what we were going to do. We could have a foundation, and all that, which could have been feasible...We ended up with a clothes shop. I don't know how (McCabe/Schonfeld p. 103-04. For the Record).

I think Apple started around 1967. I believe that Magical Mystery Tour has a reference to Apple. I'll have to pull the album out to see.

Even the back cover of Sgt. Pepper's has reference to the Apple.

I believe on MMT it is referred to as "the Apple" and there is an early version of the Apple logo (an illustration) that I believe was replaced by the famous photo, the earlier version never to be seen again.

Great Picture Kent!

Indeed, though Ringo looks quite bored. Must have been a drag posing with just a snare. I wonder how long the stores stayed open.