by Fred Goodman
As to McCartney’s charge that financial accounts weren’t being handled in a proper or timely manner, Lennon suggested that Eastman’s continuous objections and obstructions were actually the culprit. And as far as Lennon was concerned, McCartney had accepted Klein, even if he didn’t like him; the proof was that he’d asked Allen to come to London and sort out the Northern Songs situation. Besides, there were already controls in place—as McCartney knew, Klein’s deal could be terminated annually with a month’s notice. The whole case was just more of what Lennon termed “the Eastmans-Klein power struggle.”
McCartney’s other complaints were both general and specific. He reiterated in his affidavit how his work had been abused and altered against his will with Spector’s production on “The Long and Winding Road” and how Klein and the others had tried to sabotage the release of his first solo album.* But mostly he was worried about Klein co-opting his career and his future through self-serving and shoddy management. As proof of how worried he was, he had instructed EMI Records not to pay his royalties through Apple but to hold them until a way could be found for the money not to pass through Klein’s hands. Klein, aggressively maintaining that McCartney had no right to ignore his own relationship with Apple, took a commission on the record anyhow from other EMI payments.
Being portrayed as untrustworthy and unprofessional pressed all of Klein’s buttons. He prepared a defense based on showing just the opposite, that he had done an exceptional job of sorting through a disastrous financial mess. “Mr. Epstein was not a businessman,” Morris Finer, the representative for the three Beatles, told the court. “They inherited a mass of trouble when he died, and that trouble increased over the following two years. It is plain from the evidence, and no one disputes it, that their situation in 1969 was desperate. They were insolvent. All that vast sum of money had flowed through their hands like sand. That was the position in 1969. That is not Mr. Klein’s fault, whatever one says about Mr. Klein. This is why my clients are fighting so hard to make sure that he is not thrown out. He has rescued them.” To bolster the case, Finer submitted extensive documentation meant to demonstrate that Klein had greatly improved the Beatles’ financial strength and solvency. Yet it was quickly apparent that none of that mattered. On the first morning of testimony, Hirst surprised Klein and Finer by submitting a copy of a U.S. federal court’s recent conviction of Klein—handed up by a New York jury only the previous month—on ten counts of failing to file tax forms in a timely manner.
The U.S. court case proved a huge embarrassment for Klein, and it was his own fault. It had grown out of the incident years earlier in which Klein had petulantly kept an IRS auditor waiting outside his office for hours and then refused to see him. It was nothing more than Klein being willful and intransigent; what should have been settled in a fifteen-minute meeting instead became a senseless and years-long battle of wills between the U.S. government and Klein, who’d already paid the taxes and appeared to take umbrage at the notion that the IRS could break his chops and fine him over late paperwork. It was strange behavior for an accountant but vintage Klein: challenged over virtually anything, he’d rather fight than settle, certain he’d figure out how to get his way eventually. Attorneys who worked with him frequently found that Klein was more eager to try cases than they were and that he would ignore warnings against wasting money on litigation. “Allen did a lot of things based on principle,” said attorney Donald Zakarin, who represented him in several cases. “He didn’t necessarily do things based on pure dollars and cents. Also, he liked litigation. He liked the sport of it.” That sport was about to cost Klein his reputation.
Hirst was extremely well prepared, and he knew the tics of the judge, the Right Honorable Lord Justice Stamp, including that he was a man of habit who recessed for lunch every day at precisely 1:00 p.m. Hirst introduced news of Klein’s recent conviction, along with documentation, at 12:55. The Beatles’ counsel, unaware of Klein’s American case, had no immediate rejoinder. Since Finer couldn’t explain that it resulted from a silly skirmish over paperwork and that painting Klein as a tax cheat was inaccurate, Stamp had his entire lunch hour to consider whether he could afford to ignore McCartney’s plea that the court use its equity to protect him from a toothy New York shark. If Hirst had made a mountain out of a molehill, Klein had only himself to blame for kicking up dirt in the first place.
The impact of this legal ambush was obvious to Eastman.
“Did we just win this case?” he asked Hirst over lunch.
The barrister smiled. “There’s about three weeks left,” he replied. “But you can go home now if you’d like.”
Over the course of the next two weeks, Justice Stamp would prove consistently unmoved by the mountain of documentation offered on the defendants’ behalf. It didn’t seem to matter how much Klein had improved the Beatles’ finances or that the only financial issues McCartney’s attorneys could raise had to do with preexisting tax problems. Stamp seemed particularly keen on Hirst’s testimony regarding how Klein’s commission arrangement had been revised and the attendant and unsubstantiated suggestion that Klein had been more concerned with his own fee than with the Beatles’ taxes; it was immaterial that McCartney had voluntarily declined to deal with Klein.
Tipping his hand on the final day of testimony, Stamp wondered aloud if appointing a receiver might satisfy both sides: McCartney could hire a submanager to report to the receiver while the other Beatles could continue to employ Klein in the same capacity. The subsequent ruling, although seemingly Solomonic in its suggestion of a compromise, was actually a complete victory for McCartney: all the Beatles’ business would be handled by the receiver, their finances tied up and held in his care until they came to some agreement among themselves regarding the dissolution of the partnership. Klein’s work with Lennon, Harrison, and Starr would now encompass only their post-Beatles careers. In his remarks from the bench, Justice Stamp repeatedly said he passed no judgment on Klein’s character—words that stood in stark contrast to his actions.
It was a public shellacking. The great irony was that Klein had bailed the Beatles out of a financial hole at Apple and had improved the contracts and futures of all of them, McCartney included. Call it cosmic payback; if Klein appeared guilty of anything, it was of bringing Allen Klein’s formidable, messy reputation into the Beatles—of being the advocate that John Lennon wanted and the devil that Paul McCartney wouldn’t abide.
The only positive was that Klein’s three Beatles remained steadfast in their support. If anything, they were angrier than ever at McCartney. They saw his action as vengeful and unnecessary, the court’s decision a repudiation of common sense and corporate law. They hadn’t heard anything to change their opinion about Klein and wanted to move forward with him.
Across the aisle it proved a career-making victory for John Eastman. No one in the music business, including his own father, had given him odds against Klein. “The idea of John Eastman going up against Allen—it was a baby against a tumulter,” said Seider. In the coming years Eastman would count David Bowie, Tennessee Williams, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Billy Joel among his clients. But none would prove more important than Paul McCartney, who, with the help of Eastman and Eastman, built a significant music-publishing company, MPL Communications. Along with Paul’s own post-Beatles compositions, the company bought a broad range of valuable work by Buddy Holly, Harold Arlen, Frank Loesser, Jelly Roll Morton, Hoagy Carmichael, Carl Perkins, and Louis Jordan, among others. It also administers songs from numerous Broadway shows, including Hello, Dolly!, Annie, Grease, and A Chorus Line. In the future, McCartney would emerge as the most financially successful of the former Beatles.
Whatever credit he deserved for his own intelligence and success in beating Klein, John Eastman knew he’d gotten lucky. Some years later, he ran into Allen in the first-class cabin of a flight, and John made it a point to show his one-time adversary that he bore him no lingering personal animosity. Quite the contrary. “You made my whole career,�
�� Eastman told Klein. “It was like bringing down a blimp with a twenty-two.”
McCartney would not be as happy or gracious a winner. Three years after the Chancery ruled in his favor, McCartney was asked about Klein. “Even a murderer has a great line in his own defense,” he said. “But he’s nothing more than a trained New York crook. My back was against the wall. I’m not proud of it. But it had to be done.” Nearly forty years later, he was still battling Klein, at least in his mind. Asked about Klein in a television interview with David Frost, he mimicked delivering a roundhouse punch. The winner by knockout.
12
* * *
Some Time in New York City
IN THE SPRING OF 1971 George Harrison was spending much of his time in Los Angeles, partly to work on the soundtrack to a film about his friend and mentor the legendary Bengali musician Ravi Shankar. During the sessions, Ravi told George of his concerns over what was shaping up to be a catastrophe in the newly declared country of Bangladesh, where the rebellion against Pakistan had unleashed wholesale slaughter and privations throughout an area already ravaged by a deadly cyclone and subsequent widespread migrations. When Shankar said he hoped to raise funds and awareness through a concert, Harrison volunteered not just to participate but to spearhead it and use his celebrity as a former Beatle to attract publicity and support.
Hiring Jonathan Taplin, the former road manager for Dylan and the Band, as his stage manager and relying on Klein for help with nearly everything else, Harrison organized what would come to be called the Concert for Bangladesh virtually overnight. Steve Leber, at the William Morris Agency, booked New York’s Madison Square Garden for afternoon and evening shows on July 31. With an eye to alleviating the human catastrophe, they moved quickly; the concert was held five weeks after Harrison spoke with Shankar.
Writing and recording the song “Bangladesh” in Los Angeles, Harrison assembled a backing group including Leon Russell, Jim Keltner, Klaus Voormann, Billy Preston, and Jim Horn that would later provide the nucleus for the concert, which would be given by, simply, “George Harrison and Friends.”
Whom those friends would encompass and whether they would include the other Beatles became that summer’s hot topic among fans. Though mum in public, Harrison had already invited the then-reclusive Bob Dylan, who had performed only a handful of shows in the preceding five years and none since the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969. Klein was convinced Dylan wouldn’t appear, but Harrison was confident that he would. Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, and the group Badfinger were also added to the band, but Harrison rebuffed calls from other artists looking to perform at the show, including the Rolling Stones and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Invitations were, however, extended to both McCartney and Lennon. “He wanted the Beatles and he wanted Dylan and he figured, ‘What more do you need?’” said ABKCO’s Al Steckler. While McCartney demurred, Lennon—then in New York—initially agreed and watched a rehearsal session with Klein, who had developed bursitis in his heel and was hobbling around the hall on crutches. But when Lennon realized Harrison didn’t want Yoko Ono in his show, he knew he couldn’t perform. John’s decision not to insist on including her reportedly infuriated Ono, who very much wanted to be part of the event, and led to a bitter fight between them punctuated by the sound of breaking furniture. Lennon ended the fight by leaving unexpectedly for Paris.
Klein, who appreciated that Harrison was angling to have the Beatles, not just John and Yoko, steered clear of the whole controversy: “That was also the beginning of the end for me with Yoko,” with whom he’d gotten along well until then, he said. He added with a laugh, “I just didn’t push for her.” Klein believed that Lennon expected Ono to come after him in Paris to settle their differences. Instead, she remained in New York, and he came back to her. “That’s when I realized that he needed her more than she needed him.”
With the question of a Beatles reunion answered with an emphatic no, the biggest artistic question marks became Clapton and Dylan. The impenetrable Dylan appeared to be unsure as to whether he would really go through with the show, while the English guitarist was just a mess, so strung out on heroin that he missed his flight to New York. Once Clapton actually arrived, he could barely play. Klein’s nephew Michael Kramer was dispatched to a rock ’n’ roll–friendly doctor to score enough methadone to get the guitarist through the shows.
High and tired, Kramer got back to the rehearsal at 3:00 a.m. in time to see Harrison and Dylan running through tunes, first one playing a song, then the other. Watching long-haired laborers in overalls hustling to complete the stage, the stoned Kramer had a cosmic epiphany about how much the Beatles had changed the world. He couldn’t resist sharing it.
“Look at their hair,” he said to Harrison. “Look at the clothes. Everybody dresses like this because of you, man! Doesn’t that flip you out?”
“No.”
Michael’s uncle Allen seemed to be having his own epiphany—albeit of a more grounded and lucrative variety—and this one had to do with Bob Dylan. Surprised to see him building up to a public return, Klein found himself wondering if the man couldn’t use a new manager, and he urged Phil Spector, who was supervising the recording of the concert for release as an album, to buttonhole Dylan and encourage the singer to let Klein handle his affairs. Believing that Dylan’s caustic song “Positively Fourth Street” was about his last manager, Albert Grossman, Allen pressed Dylan to include the song in his set list—seemingly in hopes of having Dylan publicly rebuke Grossman or draw his own positive comparison between the two handlers. When Dylan said he didn’t want to play the song, Klein instructed his promotion man, Pete Bennett, to suggest it again later when he drove Dylan home. But if Dylan even registered Klein’s efforts to entice him, he never rose to the bait.
The two Madison Square Garden shows were guaranteed sellouts and at ten dollars a ticket would net a gate of $243,418.50, all of which would be donated to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF within two weeks of the concerts. In keeping with the goal of fundraising, ABKCO was unusually stingy with free tickets; a hundred tickets were given to Bennett to distribute to radio stations and there was a small consignment for William Morris, but everyone else had to pay. Harrison had higher ambitions than giving a concert; he wanted to raise more money and awareness by filming the show for theatrical release and recording it for an album. Klein had to hustle to make those things happen.
Naturally, the record would go through Capitol in the United States, where Harrison, the Beatles, and Apple Records were contracted. But Klein told Capitol chairman Bhaskar Menon that since all artist royalties were going to charity, he expected the record company to bite the bullet and give them an extraordinary cut. For The Concert for Bangladesh, a multi-record set that would list for $12.98, Klein insisted Harrison and his charity had to have 50 percent of the ten-dollar wholesale price—an unheard-of royalty of five dollars an album. The Indian-born Menon may have been particularly sensitive to the pressing need for aid to Bangladesh; in any event, he agreed. Though few albums would have the charitable aims of The Concert for Bangladesh, Klein’s success in getting such a high rate sent a message that was heard loud and clear by artists and other managers: there was a lot more room to negotiate on price than record companies wanted to admit. Over the next decade, artists’ royalty rates would rise steeply.
The only seeming hitch for clearing the album was that Dylan was signed to Columbia, not Capitol, and that label wasn’t about to let him go without recompense—Beatle charity and starving Bangladeshis notwithstanding. Ultimately, Klein arranged for Columbia to manufacture the cassette-tape version of the album in return for its clearing Dylan’s participation.
The Concert for Bangladesh proved an enormous success, critically and artistically. Along with raising funds and awareness about the desperate human crisis, it became a benchmark and model for future popular-arts events of charity and conscience. The concert—coupled with the success of Harrison’s All Things Must Pass—made George the most commercially and artistic
ally successful of the solo Beatles at that point.
While the artists donated their time and performances, not everything and everybody was free. Ravi Shankar, the impetus for Harrison’s involvement, insisted on being paid for his appearance, and songwriters did not donate their royalties. “I try so hard to be the person I’m not,” an evidently torn Harrison told Steckler. “I’m keeping the publishing on ‘Bangladesh.’” Phil Spector, who produced the concert album with Harrison, was paid $50,000.
The film version, owned by Apple and distributed by Twentieth Century Fox, would prove a success—although a somewhat unlikely one. Acting as coproducer, Klein once again hired his go-to director Saul Swimmer, who had handled Let It Be and Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter. Swimmer delivered mixed results. Though failing to turn the camera on the audience—necessitating the subsequent photographing of the crowd at an unrelated Madison Square Garden concert—Swimmer did a very good job of shooting the performances themselves. The sound, however, was mismanaged. For the first show, in the afternoon, the stage was miked for filming. As a result, the sound quality for the audience and the recording suffered. For the evening, the situation was reversed, meaning the second audio recording would become the concert album and the film would subsequently need to be synced to that soundtrack, a laborious job.
When Dylan seemed unsure about granting approval for the inclusion of his performance in the movie, Klein saw it as an opportunity to impress him. He ordered a special 70-millimeter print of the film and hired the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan for a private screening. Dylan liked what he saw and signed on.