#clive epstein

[modrockmocker]

Brian Epstein's family and the Beatles

"Harry was indignant about [Brian signing the Beatles], just furious. He'd put so much faith in Brian, and now—this! Another harebrained scheme. The bottom line was that the family would suffer, and NEMS along with it."—Rex Makin via The Beatles by Bob Spitz

"[Brian] had a lot to say and [the family] became very animated. Brian told me privately he believed John was a genius, and of course he assured my parents and me that they would be bigger than Elvis Presley, even before the first single was a small hit."—Clive Epstein via John Lennon by Ray Coleman

"If Queenie wasn't any more optimistic [than her husband], neither would she take a dim view of Brian's 'project.' She treated it like the musing of a gifted genius, one of his 'artistic things.' Where was the harm in it? she chided Harry. Besides, she knew how stubborn Brian was. No one could talk him out of something once he was fixated on it."—The Beatles by Bob Spitz

"Childwall, where Brian grew up, was en route to Speke, and George [Harrison] thought nothing more of it when his manager stopped to show him around the lovely house at Queen's Drive. According to an account George later gave Bob Wooler, it was an entirely innocent gesture.... It was only when his brother, Clive, showed up unexpectedly that anything untoward was insinuated. 'Clive took one look at the scene and exploded,' says Wooler. 'The family anguished over Brian's vulnerability, and here he was, alone in an empty house, with this quite adorable boy.' With George standing there, smoking a cigarette, befuddled by the commotion, screaming broke out as the brothers, their faces white with fury, disappeared between closed doors to hurl and deny accusations.

"Afterward, in the car, Brian was visibly 'flustered.' The remainder of the drive to Speke was uncomfortable, silent. It wasn’t clear to George what had occurred. The whole baffling incident seemed to have come out of—and to—nothing, and George, who had never seen Brian look so debased, couldn't think of anything to say. Finally, he broke the awkward silence. 'Clive's younger than you, isn't he?' George wondered. Brian, seized with self-loathing, could only nod. 'Well, he shouldn't talk to you like that.' George's naïveté served to shade the undertones and rescue Brian from complete humiliation."—The Beatles by Bob Spitz

"Yoko Ono told Marnie Hair* that just before Brian's death John had come around to [visit him]. Something had aroused his passion, and he had behaved in his accustomed manner, seizing Brian's arms and twisting it up behind his back as he bent him forward. John was preparing to bugger Brian—or was actually flagrante delicto—when Queenie, hearing the sound of a tussle, walked into the room. Horrified to behold her son being sexually molested, she rushed out and called the police. When John heard the call going out, he panicked. Dashing out of the house, he jumped into his car and... demanded that arrangements be made immediately to get him out of the country.

"Meantime, the police arrived at 12 Chapel Street—as they had done on many past occasions for similar reasons—where they were met by Brian. Speaking with his best West End accent, he assured the officers that the call had been a false alarm. His mother, in delicate health owing to the recent demise of his father, had discovered her son in a playful tussle with an old friend and had misconstrued the situation entirely. Brian offered the officers his apologies and showed them to the door."—The Lives of John Lennon by Albert Goldman

*"Marnie Hair, a neighbor of the Lennon’s in New York City, is another key Goldman source. Goldman doesn’t tell his readers that she sued Yoko for $1.5 million in 1983, after her daughter was injured in an accident at Yoko’s Long Island house. Hair settled for $18,000 paid by the insurance company into a trust that will become available to her daughter in the mid-1990s. It’s possible that [Fred] Seaman and Hair are telling the truth about John and Yoko, but neither of them can be called neutral observers." —"Crushing a Dead Beatle: The Lives of John Lennon by Albert Goldman" by Jon Wiener, Los Angeles Times, 4 September 1988

[mrepstein]

A thank-you card that was sent by Queenie Epstein to Freda Kelly in February 1988. Clive Epstein (Brian’s younger brother) had died on February 1st, aged just 51.

---

Queenie wrote a message in the card which reads:

Dear Freda & Brian [Brian Norris, Freda’s husband]

Thank you for all your words and visit of comfort

Queenie

[beatlesficrecs]

Through Your Window

By with_eyes_closed

the soft look of a deer, George has the knock-kneed one of a foal. All elbows and eyelashes –

http://archiveofourown.org/works/41951568.

Summary

1962. Brian detours while driving George home, and things come to a head. Loosely based on the story from Bob Spitz' biography.

Why I like this fic

A Beatles fic that just explores the dynamic in the band during the early days through the eyes of Brian with platonic John and paul . Yep love that. The way the author writes Brian and George's budding relationship (platonic) here and how they both gain each other's trust is so interesting. Of course the bits about Paul and John's protectiveness over George is very endearing too.

Link to fic

@with-eyes-closed

[classicrocker2000]

"When I arrived at Beaconsfield, Brian was quite a personality," his brother recalled. Brian had a good singing voice and was in the school choir - "I don't know why he didn't do anything with the voice.

Clive Epstein (via Ray Coleman's The Man Who Made the Beatles [page 24]

[amoralto]

Often the best insights into the Epstein family were [Wooler’s] anecdotes of their every day life. “The Epsteins had a luxurious detached house in Queen’s Drive and when I had a Sunday lunch with him and Clive once, they had a maid waiting on them. I had always been taught to eat quietly and I was on my best behaviour. I also knew that from watching films that you spooned the soup away from yourself. I am not saying they were using a labourer’s technique but I noticed that they were very noisy eaters. The main course was oxtail, and they chomped away at it. The meal was very nice indeed. I am sure that they discussed my table manners when I left.” But first, Brian’s anger. “Brian wasn’t always polite and I have seen him very angry. I saw him livid, foaming at the mouth, as it were, with one of his employees, Peter Brown, in his office in NEMS. I felt very uncomfortable, but Brian didn’t tell me to leave. Brown said he wanted another meeting with Clive present as well, someone to arbitrate as it were, but I don’t know what the row was all about. Peter Brown flounced off, and he was like Brian in that respect. They were both RADA flouncers. “Brian was a considerable gambler: there was not much of a gambling scene in Liverpool then, but he was often in the Odd Spot. I can’t tell you much about this as he knew I didn’t approve of gambling. He gambled a lot, but always within his means. I don’t want to make him sound like the Cincinnati Kid. “Also, I don’t want to give the impression that Brian was a drug addict, but, as he became more involved in the business, he was popping Prellies, Purple Hearts and God knows what else. He’d take anything, especially if the Beatles had them. They’d say, ‘Come on, Bri, be one of the lads, you’re too stuffy.’ The pills didn’t make him incapable but sometimes you could see the lesions in his eyes. Still, the drug scene was comparatively low-key in Liverpool, and was nothing like what he experienced in London. Later on, I’m sure Brian took cocaine, LSD and heroin because he wanted to be seen as ‘one of the lads’.”

Bob Wooler, c/o Spencer Leigh, The Best of Fellas: The Story of Bob Wooler. (2002)

[letsdeinen]

Brian with Cilla Black

With John Lennon and another girl

And Dinner together with family

[aunti-christ-ine]

September 19, 1934 - August 27, 1967 

Brian Epstein would have been 84 today 

[mrepstein]

Clive Epstein’s Foreword to the 1984 edition of ‘A Cellarful of Noise’

A Cellarful Of Noise first came out in 1964 when we were all very young - Brian, too, although we never thought of him that way. It feels strange now, even a bit frightening, to look back at the original photographs and realise how young he was to have the whole world on its ear. We’ve all aged and, maybe, grown wiser since then. Brian’s wisdom came all at the beginning. It wasn’t conventional wisdom, the sort that professors or politicians are supposed to have. Brian himself would never have admitted it. Still, that’s the quality I remember in him even now, nearly seventeen years after he died. And I do - often - remember him.

In this book, I think he tried hard to be honest about himself. It wasn’t as fashionable a thing to be in 1964 as it is now. He could easily have left the whole job to the ghost writer. But, as you can see, when Brian got his proofs, he added his own personal foreword, perhaps because he felt the book as it stood was too glib. That kind of honesty - doing his best to come clean, whatever the pressure - was characteristic of him.

Even so, you shouldn’t believe all he says about himself. He wasn’t such a dunce at school as he liked to make out. He wasn’t a failure at RADA or in his family business. In Liverpool, you can still meet people who’ll tell you how hard he worked before he was famous, or even dreamed of it. He always had the knack of making people work - or over-work, gladly. He was old fashioned in a lot of ways: he believed you had to set an example.

It’s misleading to say, as some do, ‘Ah - he had money and advantages - he succeeded the easy way.’ Nothing was easy for Brian, but he made it seem so. When people first met him, all those years ago in Mathew Street, what impressed them was his professionalism. He showed The Beatles, who didn’t really care, how to have a goal and how to reach it. I only wish he’d been as certain about what he wanted for himself.

You’ve heard the stories - how Brian made The Beatles ‘respectable,’ and put them into suits and ties instead of leather. Some people say he watered down the music they were playing in Liverpool, but I can tell you that’s not right. He never interfered with what they played or pretended to be a musician. He did the hard slog around London and put up with rudeness and indifference and doors being slammed in his face. In Liverpool, in London, on all the roads The Beatles followed around the world, he stayed the same - always there, taking care of things. It saddens me to think that many of us only really appreciated him when it was too late. Perhaps he made mistakes, but who didn’t? We were all relatively young and, with The Beatles, bouncing the world up and down.

What would Brian have done if he had lived? Being Brian, he’d have been doing a lot. He’d still be on three telephones at once. He’d probably be involved in the theatre, which was always his first love. He might have become a performer in his own right. You probably didn’t know that he was negotiating for a chat show of his own on Canadian TV just before he died. I feel certain he’d be doing a lot for Liverpool, possibly in the form of a Centre for the Performing Arts. He always loved and valued the place, even though it wasn’t the kindest of home towns to him. He may have wanted to take on some of the problems which Liverpool is suffering today.

There’s no future in saying ‘if’. But you should remember people - especially when they give you as much as this to remember them by. I’ll remember my brother, in the early and the unreal days, for fun and friendship, and the honesty I mentioned, when he need not have been honest. I hope you think as I do that his character shines through this book. Brian Epstein changed the world but didn’t do it any harm. Isn’t that reason enough for history to remember him?

Clive Epstein

February 7, 1984