Brian was always involved, but now and again didn’t like the way they were doing things, such as the complicated — legally, economically and artistically — cover for Sergeant Pepper.
During the spring of 1967, when he was visiting New York, Nat Weiss says that Brian got a premonition he was going to die. At Kennedy Airport, he became convinced his plane was going to crash over the Atlantic. Just before take-off, he wrote a note on a scrap of paper, which he asked Nat Weiss to give the Beatles as his last wish. The note, which Nat Weiss still has, read: ‘Brown Paper bags for Sergeant Pepper.’
As he didn’t crash, the Beatles never found out how much he worried about the complications of the Sergeant Pepper cover, just as they never found out so many things about his last year.
On 8 September 1967, a Westminster coroner’s court pronounced that Brian Epstein’s death was accidental. He had died from the cumulative effect of bromide in a drug he had been taking for some time. The drug was Carbitral. The level of bromide in him was only a ‘low fatal level’, but he had taken repeated ‘incautious self overdoses’ which had had a cumulative effect, enough to kill him.
His body showed there had been no one immense dose, but a series of large ones. The court was told he took drugs, in the form of sleeping tablets, as he suffered from perpetual insomnia.
In his body were found an antidepressant drug and barbiturate, as well as bromide. The police reported that in his house they had found 17 bottles of tablets of some sort, seven by his bedside, eight in the bathroom and two in a briefcase.
Medical experts said that the amount of bromide he had been taking would have made him drowsy and could also have made him careless and injudicious. He had died from an accidental overdose.
There is not the slightest reason to doubt it. The medical evidence showed conclusively he had been dosing himself up for three days. With suicide, the practice is to take one large dose.
It’s highly unlikely he would have deliberately committed suicide, not at that time, with his mother already recently bereaved. One or two small facts are still not clear, but there were no rows or specific reasons for depression, as far as is known. It was just an escalating depression as he thought his longed-for weekend would turn out boring.
The memorial service for Brian Epstein was held at the New London Synagogue, Abbey Road, St John’s Wood on 17 October 1967.
It was an apt setting, just a few yards away from EMI’s studios, where all the Beatles records up until Brian’s death had been recorded, and just round the corner from Paul’s house in Cavendish Avenue.
It was also not far away from St John’s Wood underground station, which contains the nearest public telephones to Paul’s house. Brian used these phones twice in his life. The first time was in 1962 when he rushed out of the EMI studios to cable the Beatles in Hamburg with some good news about their first record. The other time was five years later, just before his death. He’d been round to Paul’s house but couldn’t get in. Paul had been bothered by fans all day and had stopped answering the door. Brian had been forced to find a phone box and ring up Paul and tell him who it was before he was allowed in. Brian always thought this story was very symbolic.
George, when he heard of Brian’s death, says it struck him like an old-fashioned film. ‘You know, where they turn over the last page of one section to show you they’ve come to the end of it, before going on to the next. That was what Brian’s death was like. The end of a chapter.’
Beatles Monthly: the British fan club magazine was launched in August 1963, and ran for 77 editions, until December 1969.
The cover of the sheet music edition of ‘Please Please Me’, released in January 1963, which became the Beatles’ first number one record.
Official handout photo, 1963.
The Beatles, 1965.
The Beatles, 1967.
The Beatles, 1968.
Brian Epstein. He became the Beatles’ manager in December 1961.
Celebration dinner at the George V in Paris in January 1963 for the news that ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ had become Number One in the USA. Left to right: Judy Martin, Ringo, George, Paul, John and George Martin. Brian Epstein is wearing a chamber pot.
Handwritten instructions by Brian Epstein on how to get to his country home, on the back of which George wrote his recently discovered lyric (see page 9).
John Lennon at home, 1971.
Ringo at the premiere of Born to Boogie.
Ringo Starr, August 1969.
John in 1969. About to fly to Geneva.
George Harrison escorts Hayley Mills to the cinema, 1964.
Ringo and his bride, Maureen Cox, on their honeymoon in 1965.
27 the beatles, from drugs to maharishi
When the touring was over, they had no idea what was going to be in the next chapter. They’d had ten years, from 1956 to 1966, of not just living a communal life but communally living the same life. They were still each other’s greatest friends and they were still going to record together, but as individuals they felt it was time to look for a separate identity.
George was off first. The month after they stopped touring, in September 1966, he went to India with his wife. For the first time, he had found a serious interest not shared by the others.
John accepted a film part, in How I Won The War. He’d always liked Dick Lester, though he hadn’t particularly enjoyed doing their two Beatle films. He said it felt like being an extra. But he still thought that perhaps acting was the new thing he was looking for. He also liked the idea of an anti-war film, a subject he’s always felt strongly about.
Ringo, the most home- and family-minded of them all, started to expand his family and his home. Paul was the only one who felt out of it. He envied George. He wished he had something like Indian music to occupy himself. He did a bit of painting and decorated pieces of furniture, but without much interest. He tried hard to think about God, but nothing came. So he decided to do the music for a film, The Family Way, to see if he enjoyed writing film music, but he didn’t. After that, he went off on a long trip across Africa.
George’s passion grew, but John soon found that he didn’t like acting and he didn’t like most actors. He and Paul were both searching again. They had no intention of retiring from life, as 25-year-old millionaires, but they’d avoided so much formal discipline and knowledge, the sort a university might have given them, that they didn’t know where to begin. Not that they wanted anyone to teach them anything. Materially and emotionally they were 100 years old. Which is where drugs came in. Through drugs they found out about themselves, by themselves.
They’d taken pep pills, of varying strengths, ever since their Hamburg days. They’d had occasional marijuana cigarettes as other people have a drink. None of them drinks, apart from wine with a meal now and then.