Statue for Jewish Beatles manager
A statue in Liverpool will pay tribute to late Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who died of a drug overdose in 1967, aged 32.
THE Jewish man credited with ushering The Beatles to global fame will be memorialised with a statue in Liverpool, according to the BBC.
Brian Epstein, born on Yom Kippur to a family of Russian and Lithuanian Jewish descent, discovered The Beatles in 1961 at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. He became the band’s manager in 1962, overseeing the group’s transformation from a scruffy local band to the suit-wearing global sensation which would play on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1963.
Epstein lived his life as both a closeted gay man and a Jew. Members of The Beatles often joked with Epstein about his sexual orientation, according to a memoir written by Ivor Davis, a Jewish journalist who covered the band’s American tour in 1964.
A spokeswoman for the Brian Epstein Legacy Project, the group behind the statue, told the BBC it would be the first statue in Liverpool to commemorate an LGBTQ+ person.
“Epstein was only 32 when he died and did not live to see the changes that could have impacted on his freedom to publicly express his sexuality as laws were changed a month after his death,” the spokeswoman said.
Epstein died of a drug overdose in 1967. The Beatles attended a memorial service in Epstein’s honour at the New London Synagogue.
WITH JTA
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