An interesting obituary on Allen Klein, manager of The Stones and The Beatles, among others.
By Neil McCormick Music Last updated: July 6th, 2009
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Last week, I was talking to an acquaintance of mine, a rock critic who also writes obituaries (which is perhaps not such an unusual career combination, given the low life expectancy of most rock stars). I asked whether he prepares his obituaries in advance. “Only Allen Klein’s”, he replied. “I hate that man so much, it gives me pleasure to write his obituary.”
Well, he finally got to put his work to its proper use. Klein, a former manager of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones amongst others, passed away on the 4th of July, aged 77, from complications of Alzheimers. And while one does not wish to speak ill of the dead, I imagine there may have been the quite clinking of champagne glasses in the private quarters of surviving members of the greatest bands that ever walked the earth. I don’t suppose Klein himself would be particularly bothered by that thought. Indeed, he might have enjoyed it. He appeared to delight in his bad reputation. For many years, Klein displayed on his desk a parody of the 23rd psalm: ‘Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of evil, I have no fear, as I am the biggest bastard in the valley.”
The many obituaries will outline the salient details of his career, but in rock myth he will be remembered as the prototypical untrustworthy and self-serving manager. Or, as Pete Townsend of The Who described him, “the awesome rock-leech Godfather.”
He was a tough negotiator, who (initially at least) succeeded in garnering record advances and improved royalty rates for his artists. But somehow, amidst complex paperwork and obscure holding companies, he ended up owning the rights to many of their recordings, and almost always ended up in litigation with his former charges. Dismissed by the Rolling Stones in 1970, he was famously chased down the corridor of the Savoy Hotel by an incensed Mick Jagger screaming “Where’s my ****ing money!?!” He presided over the bitter and litigious break-up of The Beatles, after gaining management control of three quarters of the group (Lennon, Harrison and Starr) in the wake of Brian Epstein’s death. McCartney declined to put his name on the contract during the signing ceremony, turning up at the studio the next day with a new song containing the couplet: “You never give me your money / You only give me your funny paper.” McCartney eventually sued Klein and his band mates to escape the contract, one of more than 40 lawsuits occupying Klein’s time by 1972. But perhaps of more interest to music fans is the number of times Klein appears in song, none of which could be construed as flattering. Alongside The Beatles ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’, he is said to feature cryptically in George Harrison’s ‘Beware of Darkness’ and The Who’s ‘Who Are You’ and is certainly the subject of John Lennon’s poisonous 1974 song ‘Steel And Glass’ about a sinister wheeler dealer: 'Your teeth are clean, but your mind is capped / You leave your smell like an alley cat.'
In 1979, Klein was sentenced to two months in jail for tax evasion, a case that centered on his dubious behaviour around George Harrison’s Concert For Bangladesh triple album, with Klein delaying the release of funds to Unicef for years. His managerial reputation was so poisoned by conflicts and law suits that his later years he was restricted to managing his lucrative catalogue of 1960s recordings, including many of The Rolling Stones tracks that he would repeatedly release in compilation form. He was notorious in the offices of PolyGram and Universal in London as a voice on the end of a phone, barking orders. I only once had any dealings with him myself, but they demonstrated the sinister reach of his empire, and his control freak tendencies. Klein’s ABKCO company held the rights to the Rolling Stones Rock’n’Roll Circus film and album (featuring performances by The Stones, Lennon and Marianne Faithful, amongst others) and, for reasons I have never understood, he refused to release it or even allow it to be viewed until 1996. Even when its release was finally scheduled, for some reason Klein decided he did not want it to be shown to critics, which obviously made things difficult for review purposes. I was writing about it for The Telegraph, and so, defying instruction, the UK press officer arranged a private screening, just for the two of us. It was all very hush hush, or so we thought. Half way through the screening, the press officer was summoned out for a phone call. He returned somewhat shaken. It had Klein himself on the phone from New York, chewing him out and demanding to know who he was showing the film to. It was such a mean spirited and actually counter-productive intervention (after all, the film was going to be available to the general public the following week), it seemed to serve no purpose other than to demonstrate Klein’s paranoia or allow him to assert a kind of bullying omnipotence, suggesting that he still had his network of allies or underlings in the company, sneakily reporting back to him.
Klein may no longer have been a significant power in the music business, but that didn’t stop him apparently enjoying making trouble. His last headline grabbing incident was seizing 100 per cent of the royalties of The Verve’s ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, over the use of a sample from an orchestral recording of The Rolling Stones ‘The Last Time’. According to Verve bassist, Simon Jones, “We were told it was going to be a 50/50 split, and then they saw how well the record was doing. They rang up and said, ‘We want 100% or take it out of the shops.’ ” It was arguably songwriter Richard Ashcroft’s finest moment, a number one hit all over the world, but he never earned a penny from it. The publisher rubbed salt into the wound by leasing the track for use in Nike and Vauxhall commercials. Ashcroft, however, remained admirably philosophical. He said he was tempted to take the sample out, but didn’t want to ruin the record. “It was a perfect piece of pop art with the sentiment that ‘you’re a slave to money then you die’ … and they all came running.”
Discussing his reputation, Klein once remarked: "Artists fuck groupies, I fuck the artists." Perhaps that’s what should be written on his headstone
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