Liverpool, England: one afternoon in November 1961, a well-dressed man arrived at the entrance of a wildly popular club. He carefully descended the narrow, precipitous steps to a dark, dank, smoke-filled cellar reeking of boiled hot dogs, rotting fruit, and cleaning fluid. Pushing his way across a crowded floor filled with the younger set on a lunch break, the man observed the band playing on a tiny illuminated stage. Everyone at the Cavern Club that afternoon was there for one thing: gritty, sweat-infused rock ’n’ roll. The four young men delivering it were what had attracted that well-dressed man, Brian Epstein. He wanted to see for himself what was causing such a shaking underneath the city’s Mathew Street.