A paragraph summary: Brian Epstein was a gay Jewish man born in a family established in Liverpool. He faced a lot of anti-Semitic prejudice as a child and an adult which affected his sense of self profoundly and riddled him with self doubt. He was very intelligent and astute businessman who was close to his mother, father, and younger brother Clive. He was one of those aimless people who wandered through life, mastering skills and solving problems quickly and then becoming bored once there was nothing left to do. He attended RADA, served briefly in the British army (there was still a draft at the time), and then went home to manage the family business as his father got older. He built up the Epsteins' furniture business and then moved on to the family record shop in Liverpool proper. Brian was good at keeping his ear to the ground regarding trends and realized teen clients with pocket money were his new target audience. He caught wind of The Beatles through them (the bugs had recorded a record in Germany with another musician and tried promoting it during their gigs at The Cavern, leading their fans to NEMS, Brian's record shop.) He observed them at The Cavern and eventually approached them to be their manager.

The rest as they say is history. The Beatles as a group, a sound, and an image were built and promoted by Brian Epstein. He was the one who believed in them from the start and he is the reason why we know and love them today.

When it comes to John and Paul and their specific mess: it is reasonable to assume that they clocked Brian pretty quickly and decided to go with him anyway. I can speculate that Brian paid people off if suspicion arose and that he shielded them in other ways like the written room assignments. (John and Paul did not actually room together that often on paper though the reality was probably very different.) I don't know if Brian had to go so far as to arrange "beards" or anything, Cynthia and Jane functioned well in that role and then John and Paul both have sincere sexual interest in women. It's reasonable to think Brian realized what John and Paul were to each other early on but the specifics are completely up to interpretation and speculation. It's a big opaque wall that we can project whatever we want onto.

Brian is still very opaque in many ways. Lots of rumors about him abound, some good and some bad. It's impossible to know what is true and what is not aside from Brian's brushes with law enforcement and what has been reported about him by The Beatles themselves. I think he loved his boys very much and that he did his utmost to protect them in every way he could.

That is ultimately why The Beatles (John, Paul, George, sort of Pete at the time) decided to go with him. It's hard to say if Brian being gay was a minus or a plus for them but ultimately what drew them to him was that he respected them as performers instead of treating them as money factories. That's what Allen Williams did when he dumped them in Hamburg. Allen did love them but he wouldn't respect them and they kicked him as fast as they could. What separated Brian from their other managers was that he respected their act as a unit and tried to improve their presentation instead of changing their sound or telling them to repress their personalities. He was more interested in refining and polishing and they responded to that.

I guess my take is that the homosexuality thing didn't actually loom that large for them. The boys had enough show biz experience to realize how many gay men were involved in performance arts and that Brian's assets (a good eye for costumery, adaptability, his respect for their hard work and talent) simply outweighed the gay thing. Everything else is unknown and open to projection/interpretation/fanfiction/whatever.

Wrt George and Ringo, I think they had bisexual experiences with John and Paul, yeah. I'm a subscriber to the idea that all four of them had sexual tension with one another. It's another blank space that we can project whatever we want onto it.

Considering John and George did a lot of LSD together I wouldn't be surprised if they had sex while stoned (which would add another layer of Paul's icy refusal to take the LSD until John tricked him with the rooftop thing.)

Ringo is a little bit of an enigma, all the industry gossip online says that he's really just that heterosexual but considering how beautiful Paul is and how close they all are, it's hard to think he didn't at least try out gay sex to see if he liked it or not. George is the most likely candidate for sex with Ringo, not just because "pair the spares" but because George is the only Beatle that Ringo could try out gay sex with and he wouldn't make it weird. Can you imagine John or Paul's flutters in the aftermath of having gay sex with Ringo instead of each other lmao. George is very low maintenance in comparison so I can imagine him and Ringo trying it out just to see and then coming to an amicable agreement after regardless of the outcome. And I've often wondered if Ringo and Paul started hooking up after John died.

I don't know if George or Paul could have made it work in any capacity, casual or serious. I think they were attracted to each other (Paul certainly comes off as wanting to fuck George and Ringo on the DL in the Eye of the Storm photobook) but whether or not either of them could have actually coped with that is a big question mark. I'm not sure they could without a lot of growing up from either of them.

I also think that John's "Greek island" fantasy also included orgies but that's because John is such a horny and jealous guy, putting his three best mates in a single stretch of land where they can't avoid him? You bet he wanted group sex lmao. I'm sure that included Brian to some extent.

Excellent question anon. It really depends on the day.

As the great man said, nobody can deny that there's something there. But what?

I don't like to commit to any one interpretation, but I also shy away from the extremes. It seems impossible to me that two lads from 50s Liverpool had a monogamous-marriage-like relationship. But neither do I buy the idea that they were totally straight and ✨just good friends✨.

I have days where I think they were star-crossed lovers, with a deep mystical connection for the ages, kept apart by a cruel world. (Those are usually the days leading up to my period I gotta be honest).

There are days when I don't believe in mystical connections and I think they were just two fucked-up guys doing fucked-up things that hurt each other and longed for each other all their lives.

Sometimes I think all four Beatles were in a polycule (minus the healthy communication and boundaries).

So in short: who knows, Yoko? But whatever it was has kept me reading about them and watching them for [checks watch] 2 years now.