In My Life: The Brian Epstein Story

By Debbie Geller

Without the determination, magnetism, vision, good manners, respectable clothes and financial security of Brian Epstein, no one would ever have heard of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. In Liverpool, in December 1961, Brian Epstein met the Beatles in his small office and signed a management deal. The rest may be history, but it's a history that Epstein created, along with a blueprint for all pop groups since.

Out of the public eye, Epstein was flamboyant and charismatic. He drank, gambled compulsively and took drugs to excess. But people remember his wit, charm and capacity to inspire affection and loyalty. That's when he wasn't depressed, even suicidal. Epstein was Jewish in a society filled with anti-Semitism. He was homosexual at a time when it was a crime to be gay, and from his teenage days to the end of his life he suffered arrests, beatings and blackmail--all of which had to be kept secret.

In In My Life: The Brian Epstein Story, Debbie Geller tells the story of Epstein's complicated life through the reminiscences of his friends and family. Based on dozens of interviews--with Paul McCartney, George Martin and Marianne Faithfull, among others--plus many of Epstein's personal diaries, this book uncovers the truth behind the enigmatic young man who unintentionally caused a cultural revolution--and in the process destroyed himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Mar 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781466865945

Debbie Geller

Debbie Geller (1952-2007) was a BAFTA Award-winning television producer and writer. She is the author of In My Life: The Brian Epstein Story.

Book preview

1. Could Try Harder

Stella Canter: My father Isaac was born in Lithuania in a village called Hodan. He arrived in England when he was probably about eighteen or nineteen, somewhere round there. He came to Liverpool and eventually met my mother, who lived in Manchester with her parents. I think my mother was born there but her parents came from abroad also. I think they were from Poland. My mother and father moved to Liverpool when they got married and they had six children. I came very late on, eleven years after my next sister. Harry was the third eldest. I think he was about sixteen years older than me. I had a sister older than him and another brother and then two more sisters between him and me. So I came as rather a shock.

My father was in the furniture trade. He had a furniture shop and he worked very hard. He used to go in exceedingly early and work all the hours that God gave him because in those days, I suppose, that was the only way to make a living and he had six children to support. It was very hard work.

Eventually he bought another shop, which was next to the furniture shop and which he called NEMS. It was a music store and the word NEMS actually stood for North End Music Stores. He made a way through the two shops so that you could get from one to the other. Eventually, they had another shop and two more shops in town also called NEMS.

Rex Makin: Brian’s grandfather started the business that was a furniture store. They certainly didn’t have much in the way of musical instruments but I suppose they had an odd twang or two.

Harry was born in England. The family lived in Anfield, which was by the football grounds, as a number of families did, and that is why his business was near by in Walton or County Road, the north end of the city.

I think that you might describe the store as very enterprising from someone who recently arrived here and had aspirations for a business progression.

Aunt Stella: Queenie came from Sheffield. She was eighteen and she may have met Harry in Bournemouth on holiday – I’m not absolutely sure. Maybe they met at a dance. I do know that he was absolutely nutty about her; she was very pretty and they were very much in love. Then they got engaged and eventually married.

I know that Queenie was eighteen when they got married in 1933. So Harry must have been twenty-eight, twenty-seven, because I have a picture in my mind of my brother at twenty-seven. For me he was always twenty-seven.

Rex Makin: The route from the City upwardly was from the centre. You started off with the gentry living in Sefton Park and from Sefton Park people moved up to Colderstones, Childwall and Mossley Hill.

Harry and Queenie definitely moved up in the world when they moved to Queens Drive. They lived at 197. I later moved next door at 199. The particular stretch of Queens Drive that we lived in might be described as the Bishops Avenue of Liverpool. Prestigious people lived here and the houses were somewhat above the normal standard for the age. It grew from the late twenties onwards and you can see by the architecture how it developed. We lived in the better, if I may call it the swisher part.

The dual carriageway wasn’t always here. When I came to live here forty years ago there was a single carriageway. There were two lines of what appeared to be forest trees. When the city chopped all the trees down and they made a dual carriageway, the whole character was changed.

Aunt Stella: They built their home for themselves. They lived on Queens Drive. It was a detached house with five bedrooms and plenty of living rooms and so forth. It was very nice indeed. A lovely garden.

I thought it was a beautiful house and I suppose they did too. In those days that house was not as it is now. Queens Drive is now a very built-up area but it wasn’t when they first built the house. There wasn’t very much around there at all really when they first moved there. It was pretty open. I think their house was probably the last house along the road there. Now there’s a big pub on the corner and there are other houses and shops very close by, but they weren’t there then.

Uncle Meier: Harry and Queenie took continental holidays – that was highly unusual. I didn’t see the South of France or, should I say, the Mediterranean until I was in the forces. We couldn’t afford holidays in the South of France in those days but I think Harry and Queenie probably could because at that time Harry was in business with his father and his elder brother, Leslie. Of course they had quite a business in Liverpool and probably could afford a holiday in the South of France where we lesser mortals couldn’t.

Rex Makin: They were very well known and very well respected and took their part in the local community. Harry was involved with Green Bank Drive Synagogue where he was a regular worshipper. He was also one of the founders of the Old Age Home and became a treasurer.

Aunt Stella: Brian was born a year after Harry and Queenie were married and actually he was born on Yom Kippur, which is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. That was 19 September. I presume it was in 1934. Then two years later Clive came along and they were a very happy family. It looked in those days that the Epsteins were a golden family, quite like a fairy story. Unfortunately, later on things became very