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Our Most Famous Old Boy
Hugh Thompson looks at Brian Epstein's few terms at Iwerne.
During the mid l960s Brain Epstein's groups The Beatles, Billie
J Kramer and the Dakotas, Cila Black and Gerry and the Pacemakers totally
dominated the UK and through the Beatles the US popular music scene. In one
month in l963 his groups sold 2.5 million records Receiving 25% of all their
earnings (and there were other interests and groups including the Moody Blues
and Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers) he was one of history's most successful
show business entrepreneurs.
Throughout l948 Brian Epstein was at Clayesmore. The school records state that he joined in the Lent term of l948 and the Valete in the l949 'Clayesmorian' puts him down as leaving in December l948. Quaintly the records also put down his religion as being 'Hebrew'. While I was at the school during the early l960s when the Beatles started their meteoric rise housemaster John Appleby proudly displayed one of Epstein's pictures.
But Epstein was by no means a success at Clayesmore or at any other school. He was very close to his mother 'Queenie' and although his father Harry a pillar of Anglo-Jewry in Liverpool wanted to turn him into an English gentleman through the public school system, his eldest son had stronger ideas. He was expelled from Liverpool College, did badly at his Common Entrance at the Jewish prep school Beaconsfield near Tonbridge, spent three terms at Clayesmore before going onto Wrekin College, nearby to his home, Shropshire.
He hated every single place and left at the first opportunity aged 15. He complained of anti Semitism and bullying at all his schools. He also admitted to making few friends and being actively disliked. He was a typical of many eventual entrepreneurs in refusing to take any school system which told him what do and think seriously, but once in the freer adult world thriving and succeeding almost immediately.
Briefly he went into his father's furniture shop and quickly tuned into the record department which he eventually turned into a thriving chain which dominated the retail record scene on Merseyside. He was one of nature's born salesmen. He had brief periods in the National Service where because he was deemed to be "emotionally and mentally unfit" he lasted only a year and at RADA where his stay was for a similar time. By his late teens he had admitted being a homosexual.
In l961 someone came into one of his stores and asked for a record by the local group the Beatles. The successful young entrepreneur who always prided himself on his immaculate turn out went to have a look. The Beatles were looking for a manager and he was looking in his restless way for something more than record shops. The rest as they say was history. In l965 when the Beatles receive their MBEs one quips 'It stands for Mr Brian Epstein.' In l966 he died of an overdose. He has been taking all kinds of drugs for some time and suffered from depression, the evidence did not conclusively point to suicide. He was 32.
Of his time at Clayesmore he writes in his (ghosted) autobiography "A Cellarful of Noise"(Souvenir Press l964).My parents solved the problem of failing to get into a major public school "by sending me to one of those benevolent academies where failures are welcomed although not accepted as such, and are protected almost to manhood. This one was in Dorset. Games were considered rather special and I played rugby under coercion and not very well, but I suffered it with calm and in the evenings I pursued my interest in design and colour. (At one point his ambition was to be a dress designer.) Art was not then considered a worthy occupation for the red blooded son of an Englishman, but it was the only thing for which I cared. Also it was the only thing at which I was any good."
If you look at his success as a businessman, his low boredom threshold, his talent at art and acting and his profound belief in his own ability, his essential element of being an outsider you begin to realise why he was one of the world's greatest show business managers and fatally doomed. In Ray Coleman's biography 'Brian Epstein-The Man who made the Beatles' (Viking l989) Clayesmore is dismissed very sloppily 'Temporarily they (his parents) settled on Clayesmore near Taunton (sic). Within one term Brian was writing home groaning. "He positively loathed it" says Queenie.' Which is why she made such efforts to get him to a public school far closer to their close knit home. But even at Wrekin "he trod a lonely path and was marked out by others as an iconoclast."
While Clayesmore contemporary James Seddon remembers "We were good friends both coming form Lancashire starting the same term and in the same dormitory, I remember him being good at art and getting on well with Appebly and Scadding. I thought he was very happy I got quite a shock when he suddenly left." However another contemporary has a very different view. "Epstein had a terribly high opinion of himself and really thought that no one was bright enough to follow his arguments. As far as his art was concerned he was a real con merchant, pretending to be something of Picasso and just laughing at everyone. He enjoyed annoying people and getting into ridiculous arguments. I couldn't stand the way he made no effort at sports, he just went out his way to show everyone that he was making absolutely no effort. I think Appleby and Scadding in their good natured way just tolerated him". But Peter Mycroft who was in 'O' dormitory with Brian Epstein says, "He may not have been happy at school but he was warm and pleasant chap and very popular among his immediate circle. I remember once when someone from another dormitory wrote Jew Boy on his pillow. We all went after that other dorm, we all stood up for him because we liked him and knew he was a bit of a pacifist. He was easy to get on with, he was under a lot of pressure from his father to be good at sports. I don't remember the art as much as him listening to Bach all the time." This rather confusing picture of Epstein at school is reinforced by a quote from his mother in the Coleman biography. "We did not know what to believe because it was part and parcel of Brian's make up to moan about school." Basically he found it difficult to tolerate any regime where he was neither the centre of attention nor calling the shots. In later life he was famous for his charm.
Ironically Clayesmore in the late l940s and l950s had one of its golden periods. More Oxbridge entrants, music, artistic and sporting honours than in any other period. But it was a Spartan school, with something of a physical attitude as it was right up until the l970s with beating, fagging, bullying, lousy food and very cold dormitories being the norm. A rather spoilt individual and creative Jewish boy who really only wanted to be at home with its considerable comforts, with his mum and help in the shop would not have found Clayesmore to his taste. Also looking at pictures of Epstein before and after Clayesmore one is struck by how adult he looks. On the whole schools succeed with those who want to learn or can be formed. Epstein wanted neither of these things as the nine schools he went to can all testify.
If he lived he would be 67.
Hugh Thompson(60-64)