The Beatles were more Jewish than you think

More than half-a-century on, the release of the series has been the cultural event of the year’s end and everyone has got their particular take on the secrets it bares. Even my 13-year-old Beatles fan daughter: having recently read The Godfather, she’s convinced the band members are close matches for the Corleone clan (best is her notion of Ringo Starr as level-headed consigliere Hagen).

Myself, I was struck by one moment early on in the first of the three episodes when George Harrison wails: “Ever since Mr Epstein died, it’s never been the same.” That stopped me in my tracks and made me reconsider these four men, seemingly grown old before their time, having been put through the meatgrinder of all-consuming fame for almost a decade.

All still in their twenties, their world had been rocked to its foundations by the death of Brian Epstein little more than a year before. The plummy-voiced public-school-educated son of a middle-class Jewish family had been far more than an ordinary manager to the Beatles. 

It was his vision that first primped the earthy rock ‘n’ rollers from the Cavern Club to make them into the band you surely would let your daughter marry, and gave them the space first to become artists who wrote their own songs — a novelty in the early Sixties — and then (for better or worse) eke out psychedelic sonic soundscapes in the recording studio when they decided they’d had their fill of touring. 

When Harrison says “Mr Epstein”, it’s not with the tone of sneering mockery that the boys were so often quick to deploy. Instead, there’s a note of respect and even reverence. The Beatles felt increasingly lost in the wake of his death from a drugs overdose in 1967, both musically and spiritually (just watch the half-unhinged, if fascinating, Magical Mystery Tour that they filmed later that year if you need reminding).

You don’t need to have read Kubler-Ross to know that denial, depression and anger are all part of the way in which people deal with loss. They’re all on display in Get Back: McCartney throws himself into the work of recording. John Lennon is for much of the time a heroin-addled shadow of his former self. Harrison storms out.

There’s something strikingly familiar about all of this, as they sit low in the studio with their guitars, struggling to work through their emotions and still hardly coming to terms with the loss of the man the world called “the fifth Beatle”. 

Epstein was just a few years older than the band, but he had the bearing of a father figure and his loss and absence were still felt as a gaping wound and a looming shadow. 

In the film, Eighteen months have past since his death, but it might as well be yesterday. They may not be Jewish but these boys are clearly doing shivah.