You Never Give Me Your Money: The Battle for the Soul of the Beatles

by Peter Doggett

  Lennon faced additional burdens: he was still being pursued by the US immigration department, and was close to exhausting his possible grounds for appealing against deportation. 'I tried to call him,' said his friend Gail Renard, 'and I got a message back from his people, which said, "I'm in a bad way and I'm not seeing anyone."' Meanwhile, his marriage was failing. It didn't help that while he was experiencing a creative drought Yoko Ono was recording a dozen feminist songs, just six months after completing her last double album. This time Lennon kept his distance from the sessions, though he was inveigled into making a cameo appearance as a henpecked husband. 'I was just having fun,' Ono explained, 'but also I was trying to show what we go through, what men tell women. How do you like it when we say it?' In an attempt to keep pace, Lennon used Ono's band to cut his own Mind Games album, exploring familiar themes in conventional ways. It did nothing to alter his status as the least commercially successful Beatle. Yet he displayed no appetite for the obvious solution to his financial problems: 'The only talk about Beatle reunions comes from people at the side of the Beatles who want to put us together and make millions and millions of dollars. And I'm not interested in that, or in playing with the old team again.'

  On the title track of his Living in the Material World album George Harrison devoted a laboured but affectionate verse to his Beatle colleagues, before pledging his allegiance to 'the spiritual sky' rather than the terrain of dollars and pounds. To reinforce his lack of interest in the objects of this earth, he diverted the proceeds to the Material World Charitable Foundation Trust, which continues to fund worthy causes to this day. Both the album and its single, 'Give Me Love', topped the US charts, repeating the success of All Things Must Pass two years earlier. But the prevailing tone of the record was moral disapproval, never an attractive quality in a popular entertainer.

  There was no underlying message on Starkey's first pop album, simply titled Ringo. Besides the collaboration with Lennon and Harrison on 'I'm the Greatest', it included one hit single co-written with Harrison ('Photograph') and another featuring McCartney ('You're Sixteen') – both also reaching No. 1 in America. As Starkey explained, he was able to force McCartney's hand: 'I said, "John and George have written me a song. You're not going to be left out, are you?" So he wrote me a song. And whoever wrote the song worked on it.' The album set a precedent for Starkey's entire career: he would rely on his friends and his charm, and if both were on tap, then the results were usually appealing. The appearance of all four Beatles on his album reinforced the hope that they might soon collaborate in a more formal setting. Even Lennon was gradually warming to the idea: 'There's always a chance. As far as I can gather from talking to them all, nobody would mind doing some work together again. But if we did do something, I'm sure it wouldn't be permanent. We'd do it just for that moment.'

  While Lennon, Harrison and Starkey continued to draw on the same reservoir of musicians, producers and studios, collaboration was always a possibility. Paul McCartney, however, remained defiantly in his own orbit. His band Wings had taken time to settle. EMI Records advised him not to release a proposed double album, Red Rose Speedway, because the material was substandard. McCartney must have been irked when Yoko Ono issued her own two-record set on Apple. The shortened version of Wings' album was little more impressive, though it did spawn one of the year's four chart-topping singles by an ex- Beatle, the sickly 'My Love'. (Lennon was the only Beatle who missed out on this achievement.) It was accompanied by an insipid TV special unrecognisable as the work of the man who had conceived MagicalMystery Tour. And Wings finally undertook a British tour, their deliberately brief performances convincing most critics that the band did have an artistic purpose.

  Those members of Wings whose surname wasn't McCartney continued to chafe at his non-democratic working methods, and viewed the mounting speculation about a Beatles reunion with resignation. 'I don't suppose we'll be forever together,' commented guitarist Henry McCullough. 'I'm sure Paul's got more of a tie to the Beatles than to Wings.' In fact, McCullough acted first, leaving the band (with Denny Seiwell) shortly before they were due to fly to Nigeria to record another album, in August 1973. This offered McCartney the perfect excuse to abandon his group and resume his solo career. Instead, he elected to continue as the leader of a trio, assuming the roles of drummer and lead guitarist himself.

  Separation was in the air during the final months of 1973. Wings' personnel crisis paled alongside the traumas confronting the other Beatles. George Harrison's marriage to Pattie Boyd had been stale for several years, and their mutual friend Eric Clapton was still encouraging Boyd to leave her husband. Boyd attempted to refresh her marriage, but felt increasingly estranged by Harrison's spirituality and cocaine use. During 1973 their house became a haven of adulterous intrigue. While Harrison holidayed with Krissie Wood, Boyd enjoyed a brief affair with Krissie's husband Ronnie. Clapton visited the house regularly, barely attempting to conceal his desperate passion for Boyd. To complete the circle of dangerous liaisons, Harrison began a relationship with Richard Starkey's wife Maureen. 'She was the last person I would have expected to stab me in the back,' Boyd recalled, 'but she did.' Boyd tried to warn Starkey, who didn't believe her until – as she wrote later – 'George, in front of everyone, proceeded to tell Ringo that he was in love with his wife. Ringo worked himself up into a terrible state and went about saying, "Nothing is real, nothing is real."' When the affair ended, the Starkeys' marriage soon collapsed. Maureen Starkey was so upset that she deliberately drove her motorcycle into a brick wall, causing such extensive facial injuries that she had to undergo plastic surgery. By February 1974 the Harrisons had also separated, and Boyd began a long and eventually traumatic relationship with Clapton.

  Only the barest details of these marital upsets reached the media. It would be many years, for example, before Harrison's affair with Starkey's wife was revealed. Neither of the Beatles hinted at a rift, and time eventually repaired the wound, as it did the friendship between Clapton and Harrison. John Lennon could not escape so easily. He had chosen to portray his relationship with Yoko Ono as one of the century's great love affairs, and when it failed he had nowhere to hide. The vast majority of the public had no idea who Harrison or Starkey had married, but the single identity of Johnandyoko was burned into the global retina. By September 1973 gossip columnists were reporting that the Lennons had separated. His childhood friend Pete Shotton recalled, 'He said it was just that Yoko and he had been getting on each other's nerves, so they'd decided to take a break for a year. I asked him where Yoko was, and he said, "Oh, just screwing around somewhere."' It was generally assumed that, as the man, Lennon was the motivating force behind the break-up; only after his death did it emerge that Ono had not only expelled him from their New York apartment, but also arranged for him to seek consolation with their young assistant May Pang. Lennon wrote optimistically to Derek Taylor, 'Yoko and me are in hell, but I'm gonna change it, probably this very day,' but this was a wildly unrealistic assessment of the situation.

  Journalist Chris Charlesworth met Lennon soon after his separation from Ono. 'I got the impression that he seemed to be very isolated,' he recalled, 'or rather he had chosen to isolate himself. It was almost as if he was homesick, though he would later deny that.' Lennon could have abandoned the immigration case and returned to Britain, and possibly even to McCartney, but that would have meant accepting that his relationship with Ono was over. Instead, he insisted that nothing serious was happening, that Pang was merely an aide, not a lover, and that (as he told Charlesworth) he and Yoko were 'just playing life by ear, and that includes our careers. We occasionally take a bath together and occasionally separately . . . I know people are calling from England suggesting we've split up. It's not so.'

  Lennon had now broken his ties with the Beatles, banished Klein (like so many father figures in the past) and was separated from Ono, on whom he had depended for five years. His new companion was charming, beautiful – and a former employee, many years young
er than him, who could not provide the psychological security that was his greatest need. For the first time since his teens he was effectively alone, forced to trust his own logic and rely on his own resources. He had no idea where to start. So he stumbled into an ill-fated project in California, recording vintage rock 'n' roll tunes under the extremely erratic guidance of Phil Spector, who facilitated Lennon's penchant for alcoholic and chemical excess, and outstripped it with his own. Outside the studio Lennon's life was now dominated by legal hearings. Even his work was being shaped by the lawyers, who had negotiated a truce in the case regarding 'Come Together' and Chuck Berry's 'You Can't Catch Me'. Rather than claiming royalties, Berry's publisher, Big Seven Music, agreed that Lennon would cut three of their songs on his oldies album.

  Lennon knew that he was walking on fire. 'He didn't used to drink with Yoko,' recalled his friend Steve Gebhardt, 'maybe just an occasional glass of wine at dinner. He said, "I have a problem if I do this. It doesn't do me any good."' But now those self-imposed boundaries were erased. 'John would drink a bottle of brandy or vodka a day,' May Pang said of these troubled sessions. 'I was so naive at that time that I did not realise that John was also on heroin.' Lennon's vocal performances were certainly raucous and chaotic, such as the take of 'Just Because' that subsided into a drunken rant about the charms of his backing singers. 'I want to suck your nipples, baby,' he leered, before admitting, 'I need some relief from my obligations. A little cocaine will set me on my feet.' And all the while Spector's gargantuan arrangements matched the incoherence pouring from Lennon's mouth. Within weeks the sessions had collapsed.

  Lennon's 'obligations' in 1973 were headed by a barrage of lawsuits from his former manager. On 16 June, ABKCO sued George Harrison for the money he had borrowed from Allen Klein. Two days later Lennon sent May Pang to ABKCO's office to collect dozens of master tapes for Apple releases that Klein had accumulated since 1969. Lennon and Klein corresponded amicably over the summer, Lennon signing one note, 'Love John, President, Apple Records Inc(apacitated!)'. Meanwhile, Klein fired lawsuits at Lennon and Apple: an action to recover loans of $226,000 from one of the company's US subsidiaries; another to regain $153,000 from Apple Films; a third to reclaim the money Lennon owed Klein; and a bumper bundle of no fewer than 42 suits, filed in a single action against all four of the Beatles, Yoko Ono, nine of their companies, a lawyer and a further ten John Does. Klein demanded the immediate settlement of his management commissions and expenses from 1969 onwards, which he alleged had been underpaid by more than $6 million, and a further $23 million that he claimed was due for services rendered. The final charge was that all the defendants had been involved in a conspiracy to deprive ABKCO of its rightful income, for which it was now claiming more than $10 million in punitive damages.

  All these cases were filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, and entailed depositions, affidavits, subpoenas and all the rigmarole associated with the legal machine. Apple's lawyers began to assemble an equally vigorous defence, claiming that the personal loans had all been repaid, that the demands for management commission were either erroneous or overblown, and that in any case several of the companies named in ABKCO's suit could not be sued in America, as they did not trade there. There were countless hearings and conferences, all of which ate away at both sides' capital without any progress being made.

  On 18 October 1973 a special meeting of Apple executives was held at the London offices in St James's Street, into which they'd moved earlier in the year, vacating their more expensive home at Savile Row. Two weeks later Apple opened a second front, hoping to isolate Klein in foreign territory and cut off his retreat. Besides suing the Beatles in New York, he would now have to defend himself in London. The primary case featured Klein and ABKCO as defendants, under fire from no fewer than 32 plaintiffs, including all the Beatles except McCartney, plus Ono and every imaginable member of the famous Beatles Group of Companies. Apple alleged that Klein had failed to tell Lennon, Harrison and Starkey that they needed to take independent legal advice before they signed their management deal with him, and failed to ensure that they understood the full implications of what they were signing. It was a curious line of defence, giving the impression that they were no more than children, incapable of acting in their own best interests without constant supervision. (Embarrassingly, Lennon and Harrison had signed an affidavit in February 1971 confirming that the deal had been fully explained to them.) Apple asked for the original management deal to be annulled, and for Klein to return much of the money he had already been paid in commissions – some of which, they said, he had calculated at a grossly excessive rate.

  To enliven the proceedings, Apple also alleged that Klein had deliberately ordered extra US copies of the Let It Be album to be manufactured and then claimed a commission on the unsold records – although this suggestion was soon withdrawn. Apple further complained about problems with the staging of the concerts for Bangladesh, particularly regarding their charitable status; said that Klein had encouraged Lennon, Harrison and Starkey to break British law by taking too much money in and out of the country; and alleged that he had told them that they had no need to worry about their finances, with the result that their spending had outstripped their income. Finally, Apple complained that Klein had been responsible for failing to nurture the careers of other artists on the label – among them, amusingly, Yoko Ono – and for neglecting to replace them when they left the company. Short of accusing him of using the last bottle of milk and leaving the fridge door open, it was difficult to imagine any possible sins that Klein hadn't apparently committed.

  Inevitably, Klein replied with another flurry of lawsuits, running to 26 counts this time, lodged by ABKCO against Apple and four subsidiary companies, plus Lennon, Harrison and Starkey. These alleged the usual underpayment of commissions and lack of reward for services rendered – ensuring that Apple and the three Beatles were now facing virtually identical charges on both sides of the Atlantic over exactly the same money.

  None of the four Beatles could now go out in public without the risk of being served with a writ. Even McCartney, who had never signed with Klein, was not immune. 'Just as I was going to do a radio show interview the other day,' he recounted in December 1973, this fellow walked up to me and said, 'Hello, Paul.' I thought, What's he want with me? Looks a bit dubious. He pushed a little bit of paper in my hand, and said, 'I don't want to embarrass you, Paul. I'm sure you know what this is all about, but I've got my job to do.' A wife and three kids, all that. So I walked on, muttering, looked at the bit of paper, and it says, 'ABKCO hereby sue you, John, George, Ringo and everything you've ever been connected with,' companies I'd never even heard of. 'Sue you all for the sum of $20 million.' That is the latest little line.

  Of Apple's own lawsuit, he said, 'Of course I loved that. My God, I hope they win that one.' And he complained about the naivety with which Lennon had welcomed Klein five years earlier: 'John said, "Anyone whose record is as bad as this can't be so bad." But that was Lennonesque crap, which John occasionally did – utter foolishness.'

  Behind the scenes accountants were doing their best to safeguard the Beatles' cash, with several million dollars alleged to have been moved out of US jurisdiction into bank accounts in the Channel Islands around May 1973 – proof, so ABKCO said, that the Beatles were expecting to be sued. Moved at the same time was some $1.6 million from George Harrison's US publishing company, which also travelled to the Channel Islands before being re-routed elsewhere. As Paul McCartney explained in 1973, this was another defensive ploy:

  Klein made his way into George's big songwriting company, which is George's big asset. The main one was 'Something' on Abbey Road. That was George's great big song, George's first big effort, and everyone covered it and it was lovely and made him lots of money that he could give away, which is his thing, you know. Well, it turns out that Klein has got himself into that company. Not only being paid 20 per cent – there's a thought now that he's claiming he owns the compa
ny!

  The proceedings in both Britain and America trundled inexorably through the courts, occasionally requiring one of the Beatles to make an appearance. In May 1974 Lennon met Klein in New York for the first time in more than a year. Had a lawyer been present, the conversation between the two men would never have gone beyond 'Good morning.' Instead, Lennon and Klein discussed the ongoing litigation, and Lennon admitted that he knew he owed his former manager money, and that he was deliberately trying to strangle ABKCO in litigation and exhaust Klein's resources. At a subsequent court appearance Lennon was overheard telling a legal aide that he believed Klein would soon have to drop his lawsuits because he was about to run out of money. Klein's lawyers eagerly exploited these lapses of judgement.

  Apple and the Beatles were now providing full-time employment for five legal firms in London and New York. Although McCartney could console himself that he was not personally involved in most of the litigation, he was still a member of the Beatles' partnership, and therefore liable for 25 per cent of the expenses that the multiple court proceedings entailed. And through it all he was being represented by his own legal team, who were negotiating with Lennon, Harrison and Starkey's lawyers, as part of his apparently endless crusade to dissolve their financial union.

  The deeper the legal minds delved into the Beatles' affairs, the more anomalies and eccentricities they discovered – money being owed to one Apple company, for example, but paid to another without anyone in the organisation worrying or even apparently noticing. ABKCO unearthed a fiendishly complex arrangement governing the way in which the Beatles' records were released in the USA, which involved the rights being shepherded through a corporate maze for nobody's apparent gain. Meanwhile, Apple's lawyers were involved in minute scrutiny of the corporation's earnings over the duration of the Klein contract, and alleged that Klein had claimed commissions that weren't due for records that were sold before he took over as manager and on items which were not covered by the original, extremely loose, contract. Apple even suggested that Klein had established a financial system whereby he would be paid his 20 per cent management commission twice on the same earnings – once when the money arrived at Apple, and again when it had been on the corporate merry-go-round. Naturally Klein denied all these claims.