The First Beatles management contract to fetch £250,000
The first management contract between The Beatles and their manager Brian Epstein is expected to fetch £250,000 at auction.
The document, billed as the most important music contract of all time belonged to “fifth Beatle” Epstein, the businessman who helped launch The Beatles to international fame in the 1960s after seeing them play at Liverpool’s now-famous Cavern Club.
He became the band’s manager in 1961 but the contract was not signed by “John Winston Lennon”, “George Harrison”, “James Paul McCartney” and “Richard Starkey” (Ringo Starr) until January 24, 1962.
Epstein only inked his name on the document on October 1, 1962, after getting the Fab Four a deal with EMI for the release of the single Love Me Do, following rejections from other record companies.
The valuable piece of music memorabilia also features the names of Harold Hargreaves Harrison and James McCartney, giving consent on behalf of their sons as they were under 21.
The contract is being sold by a Beatles’ collector at The Fame Bureau’s It’s More Than Rock and Roll auction on September 4 at the Idea Generation Gallery in London.
Fame Bureau managing director Ted Owen said: “It is the most important music contract to have ever appeared. There’s no other artist that’s going to be historically, socially or politically as important as this.”
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