Allen Klein: The Man Who Transformed Rock & Roll

by Fred Goodman

  The hearings were brief and almost comical. During oral arguments on extending the temporary order restraining the Stones from selling their illicit version of Hot Rocks, Markowitz ruled that Atlantic was enjoined from manufacturing until a final decision was made, at which point a junior associate working on the case for Atlantic asked if that meant the company could sell what it had already manufactured. The judge promptly slammed that door shut: Atlantic was not to manufacture, sell, or distribute the record.

  A few weeks later, Klein happened to run into Arrow at a Manhattan movie theater. “You know, Allen,” the Stones’ attorney said, “one good settlement is worth a thousand lawsuits.” The Hot Rocks case was quickly dispatched—ABKCO got to purchase at cost whatever Atlantic had manufactured—and discussions to settle the suit brought against ABKCO by the Stones began in February in bungalow 6 of the Beverly Hills Hotel. On one side of the table, the Rolling Stones were represented by Prince Rupert Loewenstein and Arrow; on the other, attorney Alan Kahn had just replaced Harold Seider as ABKCO’s in-house attorney, and he was assisted by Kramer, who was still in law school. Unbeknownst to the Stones’ team, Klein was actually in the bedroom of the bungalow, listening through the door. He quickly realized Loewenstein was still trying to ascertain the extent of ABKCO’s relationship with the Stones; the banker clearly feared making a settlement and finding out later that he’d been unaware of the full scope of material and rights involved.

  As discussions continued throughout the spring it also became apparent that whatever the Stones had said and would later say regarding Nanker Phelge and the notion that they’d been hoodwinked, Loewenstein was simply on a mission to get as much money out of Klein as he could, as soon as he could. The real issue was that the Stones had already earned $2 million in royalties over the $1.2 million guarantee, but Klein was entitled to hold the money back for another fifteen years, ostensibly for tax purposes but also because it gave him the chance to play with someone else’s money. The Stones had decided to move to France and take advantage of the drop-out year available under British tax law, and they were eager to collect as much income during that time as they could. By deducting money Klein had already advanced to the Stones as “loans,” both sides soon agreed that the band would receive $1.2 million as a settlement of all American record royalties earned up to that point. Jagger and Richards dropped the challenge to ABKCO’s publishing rights, and the band pledged not to rerecord any songs they’d cut for Decca for at least five years, essentially a ban on live albums, so as not to dilute the value of the Stones albums ABKCO manufactured. In May, a deal was signed at the Manhattan offices of the Stones’ lawyers and celebrated with a party filmed by Robert Frank, who was making the documentary Cocksucker Blues. Both Loewenstein and Kramer characterized the celebration as wild and orgiastic. All was settled.

  But not for long.

  George Harrison’s success produced two surprising and unwelcome results for Klein. Convinced he’d been an effective and eager advocate for Harrison—the formerly junior Beatle was now a huge artistic and commercial power in his own right—Klein was shocked to discover that Harrison wasn’t going to shower him with gratitude. As spiritually attuned as he was, the musician had a skeptical, flinty side. The echo of Harrison’s earlier warning—“Give me one hit and you’ll see what difficult is”—frequently sounded in Klein’s ears. When George was sued for plagiarism in early 1971 by publisher Bright Tunes, which claimed “My Sweet Lord” had infringed on “He’s So Fine,” a hit for the Chiffons in 1963, Klein jumped into the case, planning the musician’s defense and opening negotiations with the company. Still, he was starting to sour on Harrison, seeing him as an ingrate.

  The other surprise was Lennon, who hated the idea that George Harrison was suddenly the most popular and successful Beatle. While accompanying Yoko to Majorca to see her daughter, Kyoko, John and Allen had been walking past a country club when they heard “My Sweet Lord” being played. “Can’t I go anywhere in the world without hearing that song?” Lennon grumbled.

  Back in New York, John felt the need to mount his own Madison Square Garden benefit concert. When a series of television reports by New York journalist Geraldo Rivera exposed the horrific warehousing of the mentally handicapped in large institutions like Staten Island’s Willowbrook, a new group-home and community-based-housing movement took hold. Lennon telephoned Rivera and offered to headline a pair of fundraising shows at Madison Square Garden to benefit the charity One to One. Tickets for an afternoon and evening show both sold out, although Lennon himself bought and distributed $59,000 worth of tickets to One to One volunteers. Television and radio rights sold to ABC and the King Biscuit Flour Hour, respectively, and Lennon’s performances alone raised over $500,000 for the charity.

  That would have to satisfy Lennon, who, if he was looking to eclipse Harrison and put his former junior back in his place, didn’t come close. Backed by the New York band Elephant’s Memory, with whom he and Ono had recently recorded the album Some Time in New York City, and the drummer Jim Keltner, Lennon and the show received mixed reviews, perhaps owing to Lennon’s decision to alternate songs and vocals with Ono, and the set lists being heavily weighted toward newer material. The only Beatles song performed at either show was “Come Together.”

  While the One to One concerts were less than they might have been, the public response to Some Time in New York City threw Lennon for a loop. Peaking at number forty-eight in the U.S.—his previous album, Imagine, had gone to number one—the record was the first bona fide bomb of his career and sold far worse than McCartney’s disappointing debut album with Wings, Wildlife. Lennon was being actively harassed by the Nixon administration’s Justice Department, which had initially refused to grant him a permanent visa and was now seeking to have him deported as an undesirable, so he and Ono had embraced America’s new left, and the overtly political album featured songs about black activist Angela Davis, the imprisoning of Detroit poet, political activist, and MC5 manager John Sinclair for possession of two joints, women’s rights, and the riots at New York’s Attica prison. The title of the album’s single, “Woman Is the Nigger of the World,” was obviously meant to outrage and didn’t disappoint on that score; it created a media stir, particularly in the black community. The ultimate commentary, however, was the indifference of record buyers; it was the worst-selling single of Lennon’s solo career. Of the album as a whole, Rolling Stone reviewer Stephen Holden, likely picked by the magazine’s editors because he had a reputation for being even-tempered and open-minded, had a hard time finding anything kind to say in his review. While commending John and Yoko for their daring, he characterized the results as smug, shallow, and “artistic suicide.”

  Plans to make the Madison Square Garden shows the start of an American tour were scrapped. Lennon’s artistic misfires consumed a great deal of Klein’s attention in New York, but a bigger problem was festering in London. Since the British court’s appointment of a receiver, the Beatles’ business hung in limbo. Yes, each member could move forward with his own career, but their shared business and the fate of the Apple partnership remained as big a question mark as ever. On a practical level, that meant millions of dollars accruing to the Beatles could not be divided and disbursed to them.

  With the court behind them, the Eastmans pushed for a resolution. “There was a settlement to be made,” said Kramer, who met with Lee Eastman and found him bright, courteous, and ready to deal. The impediment was Klein; he couldn’t bring himself to admit that he had lost and that he needed to reach a settlement for the benefit of his clients. “This was always Allen’s problem,” Kramer said. “He was a victim of his own success as a negotiator. It killed him to give anything up, to think he wasn’t ultimately going to be victorious.”

  Instead of admitting defeat, Klein was lending money to the three Beatles, confident he would get it back when the receivership was terminated. Unwilling to discuss a settlement, he seemed to think that the problem of McCartney, the Eastma
ns, and the receivership would somehow disappear or resolve itself.

  His clients, however, thought differently.

  Klein’s management contract came up for renewal every year. John, George, and Ringo had happily continued with Klein in the two years after McCartney’s suit, but they had since grown impatient, realizing Klein wouldn’t make the settlement they needed. By early 1973, Klein could sense that, though they’d recently signed a short three-month management extension, he’d lost them. Heading into a meeting with Klein and Kramer one afternoon, attorney Alan Kahn tried to bring his boss up to speed, but Allen’s mind was elsewhere. “I’ve got bigger worries,” he said. “I haven’t spoken with John Lennon in two months.” Indeed, just a few weeks later, Harrison ruefully told Steckler that a Beatles settlement “will never happen with Allen.” Two days after that, Klein was informed via an attorney’s letter that the Beatles would not be renewing his contract when it expired in March. To save face, Allen was allowed to say he had declined an extension offer.

  13

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  A Sport and a Pastime

  HIS INABILITY TO REACH a settlement with McCartney and the Eastmans had proven disastrous for Klein. Ironically, ABKCO enjoyed a few financial bright spots in the period, courtesy of the Rolling Stones.

  As part of the deal with Klein, the Stones had affirmed the validity of their publishing contract with ABKCO, which ended in 1970, and agreed not to record anything that Klein controlled until 1975. But when the group released a new album in 1972, Exile on Main Street, some of the songs sounded familiar to executives at ABKCO. Klein had his assistant Paul Mozian spend a night in the studio comparing the cuts on the new album with unreleased tapes of tunes the Stones had worked on in the earlier years. Mozian came to the conclusion that the band had definitely written and worked on numerous songs on the new album when they were with ABKCO. Since the songs had never been released, the Stones were free to record them and put them out now on Rolling Stones Records. But as Klein pointed out, they’d been written when Jagger and Richards were signed to ABKCO’s publishing company, Gideon Music. Klein, not Mick and Keith’s current publisher, EMI, was therefore the legal owner of the rights. Not surprisingly, the Stones and their attorneys disagreed. In response, Klein ratcheted the argument up several notches with a claim that the Stones’ breach of settlement entitled him to put out another album of their music. He even had a title in mind; what did they think of Necrophilia? In short order, Klein and the Rolling Stones were back in court.

  When the smoke cleared, ABKCO had the publishing rights to five additional songs: “Sweet Virginia,” “Loving Cup,” “All Down the Line,” “Shine a Light,” and “Stop Breaking Down,”* which meant Klein received a portion of royalties on Exile on Main Street. Additionally, ABKCO got to release another album, although cooler heads prevailed regarding the title; the album, coproduced by Andrew Loog Oldham, was eventually sold as More Hot Rocks (Big Hits and Fazed Cookies).

  Of all Klein’s relationships with his clients, the one with Oldham was the most complex. Like Allen, Andrew could undertake a course of action with more than one aim in mind, and neither man could seem to shake an abiding affection for the other, even as he tried to outmaneuver and get the better of him. It was, ultimately, a battle of two kindred souls, each brilliant but forever hustling his way through the world. It was love; it was hate; it was commerce; it was codependency.

  For Oldham, who had been too young and crazy to grow with the Stones and hold on to his claim, the dreadful mistake he had made in underestimating the staying power of the Stones became an enduring fact of his life. He was the hip version of Esau, the man who had sold his birthright for a bowl of cocaine. If Allen Klein was proving his Jacob, Andrew wasn’t going to let him get away without periodic adjustments. After forcing an improvement on the original sale of his rights by suing Klein, Andrew and Allen settled into the unusual and sometimes antagonizing friendship that characterized the rest of their lives. Over the coming years, any time ABKCO had a project to which Oldham could lay claim—however central or tangential—a negotiation always ensued. The game would never be over, and whenever Allen needed his help, Andrew sought to make the most of it.

  For Allen, it was much the same. Andrew’s firsthand knowledge of the Stones and their recordings was valuable and worth the money and aggravation of dealing with him. And in his treatment of Oldham, Klein was often at his best and worst. He’d come away from the relationship with the assets—although, like Andrew, he hadn’t initially recognized the Rolling Stones for the cultural institution and dynasty they’d prove to be, he’d known they were damn valuable and he wasn’t about to let go—and Oldham, eternally in need of money, was never allowed to forget who had them now.

  At the same time, Klein genuinely liked Oldham and gave him solid advice and direction, and he paid the legal costs of a lawsuit against the original British publisher of “As Tears Go By” that resulted in Oldham being recognized as a co-author. When, at a particularly needy juncture, Andrew had come to Klein and offered to sell his continuing interest in the Rolling Stones’ music publishing, Allen declined to buy it. Instead, he chided Andrew for undervaluing a lifetime annuity. “If I buy your publishing, you’ll be my ward for the rest of your life,” he told him. When Klein negotiated a new recording contract for Donovan with Epic Records in the early seventies, he got Oldham a payday by making him the singer’s producer for the album Essence to Essence.

  The two men, when not fighting, were apt to be socializing. Incapable of being alone, always needing to pick up the tab or spend more money than he should in order to call the tune, Allen played the willing patsy, glad to pay for Andrew’s company so as to be able to expound to him on various topics endlessly. For as long as Klein lived, Oldham came in and out of his life as the need arose.

  The Beatles’ quiet, impersonal departure from Klein was not indicative of their relationship and would prove an aberration, the lull before an appropriately stormy divorce. To reach a final settlement of their accounts, Klein sued the Beatles and Apple in New York; they sued him in London. “We went into war mode and went to the mattresses,” said Kramer.

  To be their new representatives, Lennon and Ono selected someone already intimately familiar with their work and business, ABKCO’s former in-house attorney Harold Seider. Harrison, now having his business interests overseen by Denis James O’Brien, the former manager of Monty Python and Harrison’s partner in HandMade Films, retained Bob Dylan’s attorney David Braun. Starr began what would be a decades-long relationship with Los Angeles attorney Bruce Grakal.

  Klein, whose unwillingness to concede defeat was both his strength and his greatest vulnerability, would move through the ensuing four years of legal wrangling like a man trying to serve two masters. He knew his run was over and that it was incumbent upon him to make the most advantageous settlement possible, and for that he needed no counsel, representative, or unwavering voice whispering in his ear that this was business. Yet managing the Beatles had satisfied his personal need for validation like nothing else, and he would never voluntarily let that go. Until the day John Lennon was murdered, Klein never stopped believing they would eventually return to him.

  “If Allen was behind the eight ball, he always thought it was going to get better,” said Seider. “In his relationship afterward with John and Yoko, in the back of his mind I’m sure he always thought, I’m going to get them back. This was Allen. He lived by denial.” Added Michael Kramer: “Allen loved being the Beatles’ manager. And hindsight being twenty-twenty, they could have gotten him for whatever price they named. They had no idea how much they could have gotten him to do for how little. We’ll never know what the emotional impact of losing the Beatles was. He suppressed those kind of emotions—you never show anyone you’re worried. He could have used a few decades of therapy.”

  Instead, his chosen balm would be a few decades of litigation. Typically, Klein was impelled by a variety of motives, sometimes all at once. N
owhere was his unique and confounding ability to undertake an action for a twisting confluence of reasons more evident than in the plagiarism suit over “My Sweet Lord.”

  In February 1971 a small publisher, Bright Tunes Music, claimed the song was substantially copied from its song “He’s So Fine” and filed the suit after the Harrison record had spent five weeks at the top of the Billboard singles chart. Klein, still Harrison’s manager at the time, publicly shrugged it off, telling an interviewer that the tunes weren’t at all alike. Behind the scenes he tried to make the suit go away by telling Bright Tunes that Harrison was willing to buy the company. Seymour Barash, Bright Tunes president and majority owner, countered by suggesting Harrison give the copyright ownership of “My Sweet Lord” to Bright Tunes and split the royalties. Klein and Harrison decided to go forward with the case, hiring attorneys and an expert witness who could testify that the song was unique. The case was still waiting to go to court when Klein and the three Beatles parted company two years later.

  In the interim, Bright Tunes had been struggling with its finances and was placed in receivership. It wasn’t until five years later, in 1976, that the suit was resumed. At that point, Harrison made Bright Tunes a settlement offer in which he would retain ownership of the copyright and pay them $148,000, equivalent to 40 percent of the American songwriter and publisher royalties. But unbeknownst to Harrison, at about the time Klein was losing the Beatles he had been talking with Bright Tunes about buying the rights to “He’s So Fine”—for approximately double what Harrison was offering.

  Klein, in conversation with associates, often said he wanted to buy the copyright and settle the case for Harrison as a show of goodwill and to demonstrate that the ex-Beatle had made a mistake in leaving him. There may have been some truth to that, but he also told one friend, Leonard Leibman, an attorney who spent a great deal of time with Klein during much of the “My Sweet Lord” dispute, that the song had been a big earner around the world and that a settlement in favor of “He’s So Fine” was worth a lot of money. Whatever his reasons, Klein was clearly interested in buying the song, which reportedly convinced Barash that Klein, Harrison’s former manager, had knowledge of the true worth of “My Sweet Lord” and that it was far more than Harrison was offering. The publisher countered Harrison’s settlement offer by asking for a much bigger chunk of earnings as well as transfer of the copyright. Rejecting that—and not knowing of Klein’s inquiries—Harrison and his attorneys took the case to court. The trial was set in two parts, the first to determine whether plagiarism had taken place and, if it had, the second to determine damages. Though Harrison testified on his own behalf and denied any conscious attempt to rework the earlier song, the judge eventually found for the plaintiffs and the ruling was upheld on appeal.