Allen Klein: The Man Who Transformed Rock & Roll

by Fred Goodman

  “My first grown-up meeting in the music business was with Don Arden,” said Myers, then the accountant and business partner of the Animals’ producer Mickie Most. “Mike Jeffery, who was the manager, called Mickie and said, ‘I’m in America. Don owes the Animals money and they’re mad. Can you persuade him to pay us?’” Myers checked the accounts and found Jeffery was correct; the agent definitely owed the band money for a recent tour. He gathered the appropriate documents, and he, Grant, and Most arranged to meet Arden at his office.

  Sitting in the waiting room, Myers had his first inkling that it would not be a typical business meeting. He could hear shouting coming from Arden’s office. “Listen, you Christian schmuck! I’ve had it with you!” Ushered in a few moments later, the men found Arden sitting unperturbed at his desk. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “I was on the phone with my bank manager.”

  To Myers’s surprise, the meeting got off to a rip-roaring start, with Most and Grant—who’d known Arden for a while—immediately pounding the table and screaming. “I’m going to turn this desk over if you don’t pay us, you asshole!” Grant yelled.

  Stunned, Myers wondered what all the commotion was about.

  “Hold it,” Laurence said.

  Arden looked at him curiously. “Yes?”

  “I’m Laurence Myers. I am authorized to represent the Animals in this matter and I have my files with me. Here is a schedule. You owe the Animals six thousand twenty-seven pounds and forty-seven pence.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You agree?” Myers asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well,” Myers said, satisfied he’d settled the matter, “you’re going to have to pay.”

  Grant pounded his fist on the desk as hard as he could. “Give him the fucking money!” he screamed.

  Arden seemed not to notice Grant.

  “Do you know what I’m going to do if you don’t pay?” Myers asked.

  “No,” said Arden, finally looking interested. “What are you going to do if I don’t pay?”

  “I’m going to issue a writ.”

  “Oh,” Arden said.

  With that, Arden pulled out a paper-filled desk drawer that appeared to Myers to contain nothing but unanswered writs. Arden pulled the drawer all the way out, rose, turned, opened the window, and tossed the contents of the drawer into the street. Then he turned back to Myers.

  “If you don’t get out of my fucking office, you’re going out the window too!”

  The Animals didn’t collect.

  The stories about Animals manager Mike Jeffery were, if possible, wilder and woollier. A club owner from the Animals’ hometown of Newcastle, Jeffery had a dubious reputation from the start; Eric Burdon intimated he had torched one of his own clubs for the insurance. Later, when the band was at the height of their popularity, Jeffery cited Britain’s onerous foreign-tax laws and urged the band to let him park their money in an offshore tax haven. The money somehow disappeared. “I was frontman for a band that was screwing me from behind,” Burdon later said. “We toured non-stop for almost two years, hardly a day off . . . for zero. We lost our monies in the Bermuda triangle.” Yet when Animals bassist Chas Chandler heard the still largely unknown Jimi Hendrix in New York and wanted to move the guitarist to London and launch his career, he enlisted Jeffery as his partner. As with Sam Cooke’s passing, Hendrix’s death in 1970 would spawn a host of conspiracy theories—including, again, that his manager had murdered him. But Jeffery didn’t need what investigators classified as a drug-and-alcohol-related accident to fuel outrageous stories about him (one of which was that he led a secret double life as a government spy). Nor did the theories end with Jeffery’s own death, in 1973 in a Spanish air disaster; rumors abounded that Jeffery, who was terrified of flying, hadn’t been onboard at all but had somehow engineered the crash in order to vanish with money pilfered from Hendrix. It was the sort of elaborately paranoid and romantic legend that flourishes in the entertainment business, but dishonesty and incompetence could have explained the events just as well.

  Through Brandt, Klein learned that Jeffery managed the Animals and that producer Mickie Most made the records. Introduced to Grant at the Paramount, Allen said he could help everybody involved with the Animals make more money—a lot more money. For example, he said, the Dave Clark Five were going to be appearing in a film, Get Yourself a College Girl, with Nancy Sinatra, and he could get the Animals in the film as well. How did ten thousand dollars for one day of shooting sound?

  How did it sound? It sounded like the right end of the rainbow. Jeffery jumped at the offer.

  Rebuffed by Brian Epstein and the Beatles, Klein couldn’t afford to go home empty-handed. He might just as easily have dealt with the Beatles’ tour offer to Cooke from New York, but it had been too good an opening to let go. As would become his habit throughout his career, Klein affected the look of a cash-rich American wheeler-dealer in London, staying in a lavish suite at Mayfair’s tony Grosvenor House Hotel that was beyond his means; he’d have to find a way to scrape up the money to cover the trip. He wasn’t leaving London without convincing somebody to let Klein make him rich. Allen called Mickie Most.

  One of the most underrated rock and pop producers, Most had made a huge splash with the Animals, but at that point he was also working with Herman’s Hermits and a band managed by Don Arden, the Nashville Teens. In the coming years Most would produce enormous hits for Lulu, Donovan, the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck, and Hot Chocolate, as well as albums by artists as varied as Terry Reid, Chris Spedding, Suzi Quatro, and Kim Wilde.

  Klein quickly recognized Most’s brilliance. He had more than an ear for a hit. Looking for a particular sound on a session with Terry Reid, he made the guitarist play so far down the hallway that he was practically out of the building; he knew what he wanted to hear and he knew how to get it. He was also a whiz at picking songs for artists; though the Animals brought “House of the Rising Sun” with them, it was Most who found their follow-up hits “It’s My Life,” “Don’t Bring Me Down,” and “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” during New York shopping trips to Don Kirshner’s Broadway office. For Jeff Beck, he found “Hi Ho Silver Lining”; for Herman’s Hermits, “I’m into Something Good,” “Wonderful World,” “Dandy,” “There’s a Kind of Hush,” and “Silhouettes.” A former singer—Most was a stage name, taken when he began his career as a teenager—he’d followed his girlfriend and future wife, Christina, back to her native South Africa, where he discovered a paucity of rock ’n’ roll performers and became a national star by covering Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly hits. With a string of South African number ones, Most spent four years there and toured the entire continent. “Mickie was a bit of a tough guy,” said Myers. “Being a rock ’n’ roll singer in South Africa would toughen anybody up. You had to go out and survive in front of the crowd. Rednecks.” Frequently forced to engineer and produce his own records, Most came to prefer that over being an artist. “It was fun performing but in South Africa it was eight fights a week,” he said. “It was a bit more pleasurable to be in the studio than on stage.” Returning to England in 1962, Mickie briefly played on rock package tours, sometimes with the newly minted Rolling Stones, while trying to establish himself as a producer. Mickie heard the Animals in Newcastle and offered the band and Jeffery a production deal: his company would produce and own the records and try to license them to a label. “I don’t know how many offers you’ve had,” he told them, “but I’ll bring you down to London and I’ll pay for the recording session, and if you don’t like it, then that’s it—you’ve got nothing to lose that way.” They eventually agreed. The first record, a cover of an old blues song, “Baby Let Me Take You Home,” which Most heard on his first trip to America in ’63 and Bob Dylan recorded as “Baby Let Me Follow You Down,” cracked the top twenty. Their second single was “House of the Rising Sun.” Most and Myers had heard about Klein and the Animals’ sweet deal for Get Yourself a College Girl and they weren’t going to miss the opportun
ity to meet with him. Even after Mickie’s first visit to America, the country remained a mystery—a vast, untapped, wealthy mystery. In that regard he wasn’t alone; most English acts and their managers viewed America as huge, distant, and too big to master, while American music executives rarely came to London. Yet here was Klein, the manager for Sam Cooke and a man who seemed to know the score. Most and Myers said they’d be happy to meet Allen for dinner.

  Allen suggested that they drop by his suite at the Grosvenor instead because he’d sent his evening clothes out to the cleaners. In reality, Allen didn’t have the money for dinner. He also preferred to control the setting for meetings and negotiations, and the massive suite was a stunner. Most and Myers were impressed when the door was opened by a stylish and petite young woman who looked a bit like Elizabeth Taylor and who introduced herself as Betty Klein, Allen’s wife. Myers, whose father-in-law, Jack Bloom, was a successful dealer in English antiques, frequently entertained Jewish buyers from America, and he had formed a different image of the Kleins based on the couples he’d met. “They were all nice middle-aged Jewish businessmen who came over with their six-two gentile broads,” he said. “That’s what I assumed I was going to meet.”

  Allen was also younger than he’d expected, and a good deal more intense than the furniture dealers. He had a simple pitch for Most that was as outrageous as it was irresistible.

  “I can get you a million dollars,” Klein said.

  The proposition was straightforward: Give him a month to look over all the deals they had, recommend improvements and changes and point out other opportunities, and then let him negotiate on Mickie’s behalf. There would be no fee for his work. If they were satisfied, he would earn his piece as Mickie’s business manager in America.

  Most and Myers didn’t know it, but the pitch was a deluxe variant of the one Klein had been delivering for more than five years in America: “I can find you money at no risk.” Though Klein’s style was to come on like an outlaw and quote seemingly gigantic numbers, his read of the true business situation was conservative, basic, and—to him at least—obvious. Jerry Brandt, an excellent salesman himself and no stranger to business seductions as the head of the music department for William Morris, was blown away by Klein’s ability to woo clients. “Allen,” he asked, “what do you tell these people?” Klein shrugged. “They’re all broke. I tell them I’ll get them money.”

  The only difference this time was the amount—which sounded absurd to Most and Myers. They readily agreed to give Allen a shot, but both broke into laughter as soon as they got out of the suite and into the corridor. “We creased up,” recalled Myers. “A million dollars? Back then, a hundred thousand dollars was a fortune. The queen didn’t have a million dollars! We were very skeptical, but we figured there was nothing to be lost: if he gets us a million dollars, we’ll sign something; if he doesn’t get us a million dollars, we won’t sign anything.”

  Myers, as Most’s accountant and financial partner, became Klein’s frequent contact as he sifted through the contracts. It was clear to Laurence that Allen was both measuring and wooing him, but that was fine. “Allen came to our home in St. John’s Wood and we lied to each other,” he said. “Neither of us had any money at all, but I said, ‘One keeps one’s money in Switzerland.’ Then Allen said he kept his money in Canada. But my lies were smaller than his lies. I had a little money in Switzerland; he had lots of money in Canada!”*

  In return for the invitation to Laurence’s home, Allen called him and said he and Betty wanted to go out to dinner with Myers and his wife, Marsha. “I said to Marsha, ‘Look—he’s a big-shot American. We can’t go where we normally go for dinner—it’s too modest.’” Myers asked Klein if he and his wife would like to eat at Les Ambassadeurs, a tony and extremely expensive gambling and dinner club in Mayfair. Allen had heard of it and was eager to go. A reservation was secured through Myers’s father-in-law.

  “I know what you’re like,” Marsha Myers said to her husband on the way to the club, “don’t you pick up the bill. They came to our house for dinner and we can’t afford Les Ambassadeurs. They invited us. Don’t pay the bill!” Myers told her not to worry. “I got us in, right?”

  At that moment, in a taxi leaving the Grosvenor, an exasperated Betty Klein was thinking about the hotel suite they never should have taken and delivering a speech similar to Marsha’s. “Don’t you dare pay the bill tonight, Allen!” she said. “They’ve chosen the most expensive restaurant in London. We can’t afford it.”

  Les Ambassadeurs lived up to Allen’s expectations. The dinner proved excellent, the evening very pleasant. At last, however, the check arrived. Casting a wary eye at the bill, Myers felt a sudden burst of pain as his wife kicked him under the table and shot him a threatening look. Across the table, Allen visibly winced from a shot to his own shin. He looked at Betty, who gazed at him unwaveringly.

  “Let’s dance,” Allen said as he took Betty by the hand.

  Laurence knew he was in trouble. “I’ll bet Allen never asked Betty to dance again,” he remembered with a laugh. “Ever!”

  Myers’s own best hope was a long, leisurely trip to the men’s room. Alas, when he finally returned, the Kleins were still dancing, the untouched check gathering dust on the table.

  Hours later, Marsha Myers was still fuming at her husband. “Why in God’s name did you pay the bill?” she asked.

  Laurence gave a resigned shrug. “Look,” he said, “they could dance all night. How long could you pee?”

  Whatever the state of his own finances, Klein looked at Most’s books and concluded that while Mickie was one of rock’s best producers, he did not know as much about business as he thought he did. “Did you ever meet artists who want to be businessmen?” Klein asked. “Mickie Most is that. He was in such a mess.” The biggest problem was the record deals he’d signed; Most and his acts were having huge hits, but as with the Beatles, the royalties were substandard. Allen gave Myers and Most a crash course in record-business economics.

  For starters, Klein explained, there was an enormous gap between what a record sold for and what it cost to manufacture. In America, an LP retailed for four dollars, and the manufacturing cost, including the sleeve and packaging, was approximately sixty-five cents. For singles, which sold for just under one dollar, the manufacturing cost was less than five cents. A similar cost structure drove the British record industry. The record companies paid songwriters two cents per song. Even with other costs, like shipping and advertising, the record companies made dollars while the artists made cents. The artists were, of course, also charged for any advances or money used for recording. On top of that, the record companies had created a bevy of special accounting practices that effectively cut an artist’s payday. For instance, the companies paid the artists for only 90 percent of records (an allowance for breakage that, while perhaps reasonable when records were sold on shellac disks, should have become obsolete with the introduction of vinyl records), and artists received half royalties for any foreign territories. That latter was particularly onerous for Most and his artists, as America was their biggest market.

  But Klein wasn’t going to challenge just the economics of the deal; he wanted to upend the entire relationship. Why should the artist be subordinate to the record company? Because that’s the way it had always been? As far as Allen was concerned, the business had it backward. It wasn’t the companies that were irreplaceable; it was the people who made the records. He was going to put the fear of God—and of Allen Klein—into them.

  Myers accompanied Klein to his meetings with EMI Records managing director Ron Townsend and business affairs head Clive Kelly, and his education in the music industry was about to begin in earnest. He recalled how uneasy he felt; they’d think he was behaving like an impertinent ingrate and would surely toss him out on his ear.

  “The old-school English—there was and, to a degree, still is a sort of strain of anti-Semitism, of disdain,” he said. “And these guys were very old schoo
l. You could see it when we walked in, these two Jews. And the American Jew is even worse than the English Jew.”

  But Klein seemed not to share Myers’s nervousness. Quite the opposite. He immediately took charge of the meeting and put the record executives on the defensive.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” Kelly asked. He leaned toward Myers. “Have some tea.”

  “I don’t want any tea,” Klein snapped.

  Myers was surprised by Klein’s obvious snub; it was like refusing to shake Kelly’s hand. “Well,” Laurence said sheepishly, “I might have but I don’t want tea, then.”

  “You don’t want tea?” Kelly asked.

  “That’s what we do,” Klein said. “We don’t have tea.” He waited just a beat, then added: “Mickie’s not going to make any more records for you.”

  Kelly and Townsend couldn’t have been more stunned if Klein had urinated on the carpet.

  “But he has a contract,” Townsend said.

  Klein shrugged. “Well, you may or may not have a contract. That’s something we have to look at. But in the meantime, you are not to make any more records.”

  The color drained from the executives’ faces. “We have a contract,” Kelly repeated.

  “You’re not listening to what I’m saying. You’re not going to get any more records.”