BRIAN EPSTEIN
The
manager of The Beatles, Brian Samuel Epstein was born to Harry and Malka
Epstein on September 19, 1934. His father called his mother "Queenie"
because Malka is the hebrew word for "queen". Next to the furniture
store that the Eptein family owned was The North End Road Music Stores.
James McCartney Sr.'s family was one of the local families that bought
pianos there one time. The Epsteins' later expanded and took over NEMS.
When Brian started to work at the family furniture store at 16, it was
soon discovered that he was a born salesman. In 1954 when NEMS expanded
from pianos and wireless sets to grammophone records, his fahter put Brian
in charge of the new record department. A brief stint as an actor, and
then jobs at the successuve new NEMS stores as the family business expands,
finally finds Brian working behind the counter to help out with the weekend
rush at the Whitechapel NEMS store on October 28, 1961, when, as legend
has it, a regular NEMS customer, came in and asked Brian for My Bonnie
by the Beatles. Being billed as "The Finest Record Selection In The
North", it was NEMS policy that if a record was avaliable they could
get it. Thus began Brian's search for The Beatles. It was ironic that Brian
hadn't heard of the Beatles, as NEMS was just across Whitechapel and around
the corner from The Cavern Club, where the Beatles were playing to enthusiastic
crowds. In 1967, Brian accidentally overdosed due to mixing sleeping pills
with alcohol. Many people think that Brian commited suicide because of
his feeling of uselessness concerning the Beatles and the fact that he
was being blackmailed because homosexuality, at this time, was not an open
subject.
Information from the Internet Beatles Album (Beatles Album source:
Shout! by Phillip Norman)