#queenie epstein

[nemperor]

"In those days, you didn't talk about those things. The army rang up. I said, 'Well, what is wrong with my son?' I was the only one in the house when they called. They said, 'This unfortunate man.' A few months later, Brian told us. I don't ask for self-pity, but it was a pretty difficult situation. I mean, we were middle-class Jewish people. It was very difficult for my husband to understand. I've had a terrific guilt complex myself, because I had the feeling that it must have been something else. But anyway, we got over it. And from then on, I felt that whatever Brian wanted to do, he must do."—Queenie Epstein on her son’s sexuality via All You Need Is Love by Peter Brown.

[mrepstein]

Though still palpably in shock from his [Brian’s] death, she admitted it had at least made her more open-minded about his sexuality; in its aftermath, the greatest kindness she’d received had been from those she termed ‘Brian’s people.’

Philip Norman recalls speaking with Brian Epstein’s mother, Queenie, in the late 1970s (whilst researching his Beatles biography, Shout!)   

Quoted in Mr. Moonlight by Philip Norman (2026)

[emily-watson]

Emily Watson on the set of Midas Man

[classicrocker2000]

Queenie Epstein: (talks about Eppy always complaining about school)

Me: (also hated school) You say that like it's a bad thing.

[letsdeinen]

Brian with Cilla Black

With John Lennon and another girl

And Dinner together with family

[beatlequotes]

He asked his father and myself to listen to a record. He said, 'Forget about the singer, just listen to the backing group.' Actually, we were always fairly interested in all the records, because being in the business [NEMS record store]. And he said, 'They are four boys and I'd like to manage them. It wouldn't take any longer than two half days at a time, it's just sort of a part-time occupation.' He said it would never interfere with business.

Queenie Epstein, Brian’s mother. 

[nemperor]

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

[nemperor]

i'm curious what you mean that brian became less of a conformist?

Throughout 1967, Brian broke many of his own rules and became a more carefree, outspoken person, very in-line with the sentiments endorsed by the Summer of Love. You could argue that this is a conformity of its own, but in my personal opinion, he took it farther than most hippies of the era, especially considering how much he had to lose.

He started dressing in the styles of the era, finally shedding his immaculate business suits for brightly-colored floral shirts. He also did away with his famous curls and for a time combed his hair down into something of a moptop, the result of which made him appear shockingly young whenever he visited the Beatles in-studio with their mustaches.

He also promoted recreational drug use and admitted to having used such substances as LSD himself. Granted, this seems the most involuntary change, as initially his confession was meant to detract from the drama of Paul McCartney's drug use, but for a man who'd previously kept his image squeaky clean, admitting that he'd used these drugs at a time when they were illegal was a huge step for him.

He and the Beatles also leant their names to some sort of petition which was pro-recreational drug use, probably with the intent of lessening Mick Jagger's possible sentencing (sorry this is so vague, I literally read about this yesterday but can't find it in the book to get the specifics).

The rule that Brian specifically broke which shocked me was the no-talking-about-politics. For years the boys had been chafing under this rule, wanting to discuss things such as segregation and Vietnam, and they did manage to do so in their own special way, just with heavy limitations on what they could say. I'll admit that, while overwhelming, this rule wasn't useless; look at the bigger than Jesus controversy to see what happens when the boys spoke about politics off the cuff. But by 1967, all their political ideas had matured, and so had Brian's.

One of the most significant was his view of Israel. As someone from an orthodox Jewish family, undoubtedly he felt pressured to support Israel (sixty years later, I'm from a purely cultural Jewish family and even then the pressure is immense), and in the late-50s he even intended to give all his clothes to the country of Israel in his will. More recently, in 1964 he planned to have his new-signing The Cyrkle play in Israel. As he revealed in what might be his final interview, with Melody Maker, his opinions on Israel had changed drastically, undoubtedly in response to the third Arab-Israeli War.

I believe you were asked to help the Israeli cause in the recent Middle East crisis and refused. Why? I refused to help because I’m as sorry for a wounded Arab as I am for a wounded Israeli. People fundamentally are all the same and I can’t discriminate between Israelis and Arabs. Did your refusal to help upset your Jewish friends? I think Bernard Delfont and Cyril Shane who were among many who particularly asked me to help, were somewhat surprised at my negative reaction! But I can’t help it. I feel that people should have no greater concern for the suffering of one race than they have for any other. I believe in and want to help, as far as I can, to understand mankind whatever colour, creed, religion or nationality. And I think this sort of philosophy, however broad and general it sounds, is the only basic one the leaders of the world can work from to attain world peace.

As Brian has said, even his private refusal to help Israel had gotten him into hot water with his Jewish friends. Imagine the backlash he would've received for broadcasting this on a grand scale, and in Britain, no less, the very architect of the country of Israel! And yet he didn't seem to care anymore. He was placing authenticity over reputation for the first time in his life.

This is especially evident when he compares the criminalization of marijuana to something particularly close to home:

There is a parallel with homosexuality when that was a cardinal sin. Isn’t it silly that we have had to wait all this time for the reforming legislation to go through? Do you, then, support the provisions of the new bill which legalises homosexual acts between consenting adults in private? Of course! In fact, the majority of people do, I’m certain. You hear of very few prosecutions for homosexual offences these days.

Mind you, he brought this up entirely on his own. The interviewer literally has to steer him back to questions on drugs. For a man who would previously take legal action against anyone who claimed he was queer, this is beyond unprecedented.

The largest leap, in my opinion, was only revealed posthumously by Hunter Davies, author of the 1968 authorized Beatles biography, and was prevented only by his family:

As [Brian] was now dead, the Epstein family demanded to see the manuscript. Legally, his mother had inherited his estate. I was therefore technically beholden to Mrs Queenie Epstein, an old lady who knew nothing about the pop world, and, even worse, nothing about Brian's secret life, for the final clearance on the book. You can imagine what she thought about any suggestions that Brian might be homosexual. She denied it. As far as she was concerned, it wasn't true. I needed her signed agreement... Clive Epstein, Brian's brother, was helpful, though of course he wanted to keep his mother happy. As her beloved son had died only recently, it was thought unseemly to go into all the sordid details of his last couple of years... In the end I was persuaded to steer completely clear of his sex life, but I thought I did manage to make it fairly clear at the end of Chapter 15, where I said he had only one girlfriend in his life—and then continued to talk about his unhappy love affairs. I also described him as a 'gay bachelor'. The word was not in such common use in England in those days, but it was enough to let many people know the truth. Did it matter, Brian's homosexuality? I did regret having to disguise it, as he himself had given me permission to mention it and it has been publicly stated since. With most people, their sex life is not relevant, either way, to their work, although... with Brian I think it did matter and it was a vital clue to his personality, to his death, and also to the birth of his interest in the Beatles.

So, there you have it. Brian was planning to be completely open regarding his queerness by 1968. I'd say that's pretty non-conformist, even by Summer of Love standards.