Michael Gerber
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“Hey, we’re in the best position in the history of showbiz. Now watch us fuck it up.” Allen Klein, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1969.

Allen Klein has, unsurprisingly, been a frequent topic of this blog (to begin with: here, here, here). This morning I read a Great Thought claiming that Paul McCartney gets too much credit for filing his lawsuit to dissolve the partnership; far from “saving the Beatles’ legacy” as is now frequently claimed, Paul was simply looking out for his own narrow interests, the commenter said, and following the advice of his in-laws, the Eastmans, who were prominent entertainment lawyers.

Paul certainly was doing those things; but he was also concerned about the Beatles’ legacy, and keeping Allen Klein away from it.

If Paul gets praised today, let’s remember that he was certainly NOT praised for any of this in the 1970s. In fact, he was considered a villain, the prime mover behind the breakup of the group, and this opinion was encouraged by the other Beatles, and Klein too. It is to John Lennon’s detriment that he didn’t step in immediately and take the heat off his ex-bandmate. Yes, in Lennon Remembers Lennon talked at length about how he was the first to leave—in a sort of “you can’t fire me, I quit!” macho way—but he never actively shielded Paul from heartsick Beatles fans’ antipathy. I’d guess this was because 1) he desperately wanted to sell more records than his former bandmates, and keeping on good terms with Beatles’ fans was part of that; and 2) it fit his “Paul is a big-headed phony money-obsessed jerk” narrative of the period 1970-72.

As a sidenote, it’s interesting how Lennon seemed to want the fans to think of enjoying his music as “graduating” from the Beatles’ teenybopper sound to his more mature work. But aside from the therapy-0n-vinyl Plastic Ono Band, I don’t experience solo Lennon—Double Fantasy very much included—as “more mature” than solo McCartney or Harrison or Starr. We must remember that John was always spinning stuff. Far from Macca being “the world’s greatest PR man” it was Lennon and Ono who were obsessed with shaping public perception through granting access and getting friendly coverage. And that was the same in 1970 and 1980. To the very day he died, John Lennon never stopped massaging the narrative.

But back to Klein. Where I come down on this is simple: if Allen Klein had been able to convince all four Beatles to allow him to represent them, sooner or later, he would’ve ended up controlling their publishing rights, ABKCO or some Klein-controlled shell company would’ve been set up to interpose between the record company and the guys, and J/P/G/R would’ve ended up broke. I did a little light Wiki-reading on Klein this morning, and it all basically boils down to this: what he did well—negotiating, and ferreting out discrepancies in record company accounting—could have just as easily been done by others. That these services weren’t common in 1963, or 1967, or 1970, was simply a case of the buttoned-up legal/financial worlds being a bit behind the times. To his credit, Klein saw an opportunity, a hole in the market, and he took it. He could’ve simply provided those services, and would’ve made a very nice living doing so.

But Klein came out of the pre-Beatles rock’n’roll swamp, where sleazy Mob-adjacent managers regularly screwed their clients, and his behavior consistently reflects these anti-artist values. Getting a better royalty rate doesn’t count if the royalties end up in your pocket, not the band’s. Setting aside his treatment of Sam Cooke (and the mysterious death of same), his practice of creating intermediary shell companies to collect payouts owed to his artists, then paying them the proceeds over time “to avoid taxes” is sleazy in the extreme. Not only was Allen Klein surely earning a return on those sequestered funds as the years passed, the Stones’ whole “tax exile” situation of the early 1970s occurred because Allen Klein wasn’t even paying their taxes on time.

Yes, he got the Stones a big advance, and everyone was jealous, The Beatles surely most of all. But it came with strings; here’s from Wikipedia: “The Rolling Stones’ $1.25 million advance from the Decca Records label in 1965, for example, was deposited into a company that Klein had established, and the fine print of the contract did not require Klein to release it for 20 years.” Assuming only a 3.6% annual return on that money, Klein was literally giving the Stones back their own money, at no cost to himself. In addition, his “management” of The Stones resulted in him, Allen Klein, not the guy who wrote any of the songs, owning the publishing rights to their songs from 1964-71.

Any fan who has a problem with Brian Epstein’s management of the Beatles should absolutely loathe Allen Klein. Brian was in over his head when it came to merchandising; Klein was actively a crook who employed a distinct, signature, replicated method that screwed his clients.

“He may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard.”

So if Klein was a crook, and by 1969 widely known to be so, why did Lennon advocate for him so fiercely? Well, when you read John’s statements at that time, it’s all very much about Klein’s being similar to John—or who John wanted to be at that time. Lennon cleaved to Klein because he was, like John, “a working class hero.” Klein, Lennon said to George after that first meeting, “knows me better than you do!”  Klein was blunt and vulgar and a man of the people fighting the corporations—all of which was a total load of horseshit, except for the vulgar part. Klein was the son of Jewish immigrants (a lot of people in New York in 1969 fit that description) who was smart and worked hard and made good, moving out to the leafy New York suburb of Riverdale, in the Bronx. He flattered John, flattered Yoko, and after one meeting, John was hooked. (It is not recorded what Allen Klein said about heroin, but probably that “it was for artists, in very great pain because they are geniuses.”)

I have always half-suspected that Jagger didn’t warn The Beatles because he knew Klein was poison and wanted to see them split. But maybe that’s uncharitable of me.

Once Lennon was hooked on Klein, the choice was stark. The other three must sign, or have the group split up—the Beatles as they existed before Klein could not have carried on with two managers, for a million reasons speedily proven. George and Ringo chose the former, Paul chose the latter. And I believe Paul chose the latter because he thought that what was happening to the Stones would eventually happen to the Beatles’ too.

That was intolerable to McCartney, but did Lennon even care? The thing one must remember is that during the period of 1969-73—the entire time of Lennon’s relationship with Klein—he was down on The Beatles. People often spoke of Lennon’s tendency to suddenly start a new thing, and totally forget about the old. That can be laudable in an artist, but it’s terrible for anyone charged with protecting a legacy. And we must also remember that during that period, people really did believe that “the Revolution is just around the corner.” I can very easily see Lennon convincing himself that he didn’t care/it didn’t matter if Klein took that old Beatles stuff or not. Especially after he’d signed, and publicly praised Klein to the heavens.

Paul’s dislike of Klein—and his relationship with the Eastmans—gummed up the works so that Klein couldn’t do his usual strategy; and then Paul’s suit made things even more complicated. This bought enough time for the other three to realize that Klein wasn’t anyone’s bastard but his own.

There is nothing to suggest that John, Paul, George or Ringo were more savvy businessmen in 1969 than the Stones had been four years earlier, and so if Klein had not faced resistance, I see no reason to think that he wouldn’t have been highly motivated to screw The Beatles in exactly the way he’d screwed the Stones. Or maybe he would’ve come up with some all-new, bespoke way to do it. And the thing is, if you’re having to sue your manager who’s set up a holding company to collect your royalties as you earn them, you have no money to hire lawyers with. It’s a diabolical bind, and very common in the arts. I’ve been there myself.

In the end, not only did they have to give him $5 million to go away, Klein cost them millions, and perhaps billions, of dollars. How much would five more Beatles LPs have generated by now? Or even ONE more? Without Klein, there would’ve been no impediment to reuniting occasionally—or not splitting in the first place.

Peter Doggett, who has forgotten more about The Beatles finances than I’ll ever know, has written, “Nobody in the Beatles milieu has received a more damning verdict from historians than Allen Klein.” I would say that I’ve never seen, heard or read anything to suggest that Klein’s terrible reputation is anything but completely deserved. Klein was terrible manager of talent, and a crook besides, and anybody who thinks otherwise needs to grapple with something blindingly simple, and irrefutable. Brian Epstein, that “terrible businessman,” knew that the real money isn’t in an increased royalty rate, it’s keeping the world’s most popular group happy and making new music together.

But because Klein came from the pre-Beatles era of disposable pop, created by temporary acts riding temporary crazes, he couldn’t see what his job really was. Klein isn’t a villain in the Beatles story because he swore a lot or wasn’t a hippie or Paul didn’t think he was smooth enough—he’s a villain because he didn’t love The Beatles. To manage The Beatles properly, you gotta love The Beatles; Klein didn’t. A 2016 biography suggests that he loved and respected Lennon—but I would replace those verbs with the word “enabled”; Klein buttered John and Yoko up, so they would do what he wanted. Encouraging your client to leave the biggest act in showbiz history is madness, especially if that client is determined to change the world through situationist stunts. The Bed-Ins were on the news for one reason: because John Lennon was a Beatle. But John couldn’t hear that, and Klein wasn’t going to tell him. (Brian would’ve, I think.) For his own short-term gain, Klein exacerbated the tensions driving the group apart.

Klein sucks, because every big act he managed either died under his care, ended up in court against him, or both. With all due respect to his relatives and the people who loved him, nothing I’ve ever read suggests that Allen Klein was anything more than a sharp accountant who likely hated the people he “managed.” He was certainly no friend to The Beatles, or their fans.

(And I’m not even gonna get into “Bittersweet Symphony.”)

Related posts:

When the Beatles are 64, from LIFE Magazine in 1968.Will the Beatles Last? Try it, you might like it Ian Leslie: “Notes on Peter Jackson’s Get Back” Oh! Calcutta!Four In Hand by John Lennon Lennon Technicolor BrainPsychedelia in the UK: "A Technicolor Dream" Beatles 1964 collage filteredBeatles For Sale sessions Allen Klein, John Lennon, Yoko OnoAllen Klein Playboy Interview, 1971 Various musings on Lennon and Addiction Shepard Fairey George Harrison PosterShepard Fairey George Harrison Poster That was your first mistake Daily Mirror front page saying "Paul Quits The Beatles" from More on the breakup at Hey DullblogMore on the breakup… Bernstein Paul Ringo GeorgeSid Bernstein obituary