Allen Klein 1931-2009 R.I.P.

Referred to by some as "music's biggest bastard".

By Fred Mills

Allen Klein, the tough-talking, cigar-chomping, no-nonsense former manager for both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, died Saturday (July 4) in New York. He'd been suffering from Alzheimer's and was 77.

Klein's career in the music business was as controversial as it was long. As far back as the late ‘50s he was known for extracting, via a mixture of legal wrangling and outright bullying and intimidating, royalties and other moneys owed by record labels to his clients, who included in addition to the Beatles and the pop crooner Bobby Darin, soulman Sam Cooke and British Invasion stars Herman's Hermits and the Dave Clark Five. (A good summary of Klein's travels through the industry can be found at his Wikipedia entry.) His tenure handling the Stones ran from the mid ‘60s through 1970, at which time the band fired him, setting up a lawsuit on Klein's part that resulted in his taking ownership to the rights of the bulk of their pre-1971 back catalog (hence the ABKCO label, which continues to reissue all the early, classic Stones albums and reap enormous annual profits year after year).

The Klein-Beatles years make for a tangled tale marked on the one hand by John Lennon's initial insistence that Klein would be the right man to take over their chaotic financial affairs (e.g. Apple Corps, Apple Records, etc.), and on the other by Paul McCartney's continual mistrust of Klein, thereby setting up - or at least help fuel - the events leading to the Beatles' demise. Over the years Klein has been known to many as the man who broke up the Beatles, which is probably a stretch but not necessarily a badge of dishonor to Klein, either, who in interviews over the years seemed to relish his badguy role. The fact that he worked with both George Harrison and John Lennon & Yoko Ono in various capacities post-breakup would suggest that like him or not, people came to him to get the job done.

According to the BBC, Klein was once quoted as saying, referring to his reputation, "Don't talk to me about ethics. Every man makes his own. It's like a war."

The New York Times once described Klein as "the toughest wheeler-dealer in the pop jungle."

Klein subsequently dabbled in concert promotion and film production while continuing to poke his head into the affairs of the music industry - he bought the rights to Phil Spector's songwriting catalogue in the 1980s, for example. And he refused to go quietly later in life, either. His reputation as a shark-like litigator preceding him, he came down hard on the Verve in the late ‘90s when their song "Bittersweet Symphony" became a worldwide hit; as it also contained a prominent, but unauthorized, sample from the Rolling Stones' "The Last Time," a song owned by ABKCO, Klein successfully sued the Verve to gain 100% of its royalties - then he turned the song into licensing gold via its use in ads by Nike and a British automaker.

Although Klein continues to be reviled in certain quarters even in death (one obituary headline this weekend read "Death Of Music's Biggest Bastard," although a credible case could be made, alternatively, for Suge Knight), arguably the music would have been just a bit less colorful without his maverick presence. Didja know that John Belushi's badass "Ron Decline" character in the Rutles film All You Need is Cash was based on Klein?

It's only rock ‘n' roll, but, hey...