Rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest criminal is dead
Allen B. Klein died of Alzheimers in New York, the Times says. The description of him in the headline—”managed music legends”—is a joke. He ripped off music legends. He was the biggest crook pop music has ever seen.
Among other things he pulled off the crime of the century—stealing the Rolling Stones’ music from the band.
You don’t hear about this much; it’s just one of the ways the music press sucks.
Basically, Klein went to the Stones in 1966. The band was frustrated; it was selling millions of records, but not getting any money. The band members were essentially broke. Klein told them he could pry money out of Decca, and, after an impressively profane and confrontational meeting with the company’s lawyers, succeeding in vastly improving the band’s deals with the label.
Sounds great, right? That was just the setup. The band’s company was called Nanker Phelge Music. Klein created a new company, Nanker Phelge Music USA. In the band’s new contracts, the band’s money and control of its creative output was vested in Klein’s company.
Now, it must be said, one assumes this set-up was all there in black and white in the contracts the band signed. On one level it’s their fault. But from the record that remains (I’m basing all of this on the accounts in the numerous histories of the band and what coverage Rolling Stone provided, back in the day, of the group’s subsequent lawsuits with Klein), it seems as if the band would have had to have the presence of mind and suspicions to initiate a pretty sophisticated financial and legal review of the documents that their own manager was putting before them. (For example, even if they noticed the slight change in the name of the operative company, they would have had to figure out that Klein had incorporated it.)
It’s unlikely that Klein was in any way operating at the band’s direction (”Hey Allen, we want to give you control of all our master recordings. We won’t take no for an answer. We want you to have control of our masters and make all the money off of them. Not just temporarily. Forever”) or with its financial interests in mind.
According to my namesake’s meticulous history of these years, Stone Alone, once the band tried to untangle itself from Klein it found their options extremely limited. Wyman says the band’s lawyers thought they were owed $17 million; in the event, they settled for $2 million, half of which went to Jagger and Richards for their songwriting. To this day Klein owns the band’s pre-1970 masters outright, and administers the Jagger-Richards publishing as well.
(That’s why you see Klein’s company name, ABKco, on the classic 1960s-era Stones CDs. There’s even some evidence he has his fingers in some post-1970 work by the band as well. A sense of his control over the band’s output is that his company released the Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus CD and DVD in recent years. I can’t confirm it right now and I’m open to being corrected, but my understanding is that for some reason he also controls the rights to the band’s unnervingly powerful 1972 concert film, Ladies and Gentlemen the Rolling Stones, which has never been released on VHS or DVD.)
That’s just part of his grimy history*, of course, and again, he did operate as a singular force in rectifying some of the unfair label-band contracts of the era. All that said, he stole one of the most valuable artistic treasure troves of the second half of the 20th century. He was a crook and should have died in jail.
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* His interactions with the Beatles were similarly rococo. One amusing footnote to rock history I found in a 1969 Rolling Stone: Klein’s extended explanation of why Lennon and McCartney didn’t need to buy back control of their publishing operation, Northern Songs, from the larger company that controlled it. The name of that bigger company? ATV Music. Had that happened at least one extravagant musical career would have been much different.
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Wow. I never heard this story. Wow.
Yeah, Klein was something. I was kinda surprised his passing, well, passed so unremarked. I guess it was a tough news week.
Allen Klein dead at last.
Andrew Loog Oldham was unavailable for comment
I’ve often wondered why “Ladies and Gentlemen” seemed to have disappeared. I think that Klein had his sticky fingers on the Stones’ first album on Atlantic. Brown Sugar and Wild Horses usually turn up on ABKCO compilations.
Really interesting stuff. But the entertainment business is chock full of guys like this - he just took it large-scale.
For instance, Ahmet Ertegun - a revered music-industry figure. Check this paragraph out from an interview that Uncut Magazine did with the first manager of the Buffalo Springfield, Frazier Mohawk:
Neil once said I should have stayed with the Buffalo Springfield longer. And I thought that too, but I gave them up at gunpoint so I didn’t have a choice. I was in New York putting on a little Eastern tour with the Springfield, and we were out there with The Byrds. I’d be talking to promoters as we were going about. One day [Atlantic producer/manager] Charlie Greene showed up and asked me out to dinner. So he picked me up in his limo, which I was pretty sure belonged to Ahmet [Ertegun, Atlantic boss] because it wasn’t a rental and he was the only guy I knew in New York with a limo. We drove around and around and Charlie would be talking, saying how he thought he could do a better job with the band. He had a silver revolver that he’d taken out of his waistband and had put in his pocket. The whole time he was talking, he had his hand on it. Eventually I said: “Hey Charlie, how about dinner now?” And he pulled over to a hotdog stand, reached through the window and bought me a hotdog. Then he said “Look, I’ll give you $1,000 for the band”, to which I said no. I think I said I’d think about it, but all I wanted to do was get out of there. So through a series of things, Charlie had written out an ‘agreement’ on a paper napkin. And I hadn’t signed it. As I was finally getting out of the car, and that was the only way I could get out, he stuck $1,000 in my pocket. I said “No no, I really don’t want this.” Charlie said “No, you keep it.” And that was the last I saw of The Buffalo Springfield. Charlie more or less said that if I came back around, I’d be dealt with. It was scary as hell. I never told the band what happened. And to this day, Neil and the others don’t know it happened. It was that whole Sonny Bono group of people at Atlantic. Ahmet was a very aggressive and forceful businessman and he got what he wanted. Yes, he had great ears and did wonderful things with music, but I certainly wasn’t happy.
Link: http://www.uncut.co.uk/music/neil_young/special_features/12882
I was hoping someone would write more about this side of this man’s sucking the life out of musicians and good music with his duplicious ways. The general press seemed to celebrate him. Thank you, Bill!
Allen Klein. Rest in Pieces
Yer sendoff to Allen Klein, “the world’s biggest crook,” was certainly passionate but limited in The Big Picture.
You’re obviously connected to the Beatles and the Stones in a big way. Coming down on Klein for buying the Stones catalog and publishing from Andrew Loog Oldham is fantastically short-sighted; what about Oldham SELLING it to them? He was entrusted with their work then one day said “It’s all yours” in a sale that brokered no other bidders. And as for diddling with the Beatles, that didn’t last long and MIGHT have cost them less than if they’d continued with their previous management, which was no one.
So maybe he’s a lesser crook than General Tom Parker (it’s a made up title, call him what you wish).
The Big Picture of which I speak is the record companies, set up like banks and insurance companies so the rules are always in their favor. The record companies’ unfair practices yielded a million times more injustice than Klein’s, forgive me, sticky fingers.
And in fact, Klein’s entry into the music business paints him as a Robin Hood, robbing the rich through exposing theft. Klein the accountant was sent in to audit the books of MGM Records for Connie Francis *. While there he assayed other artists’ figures and found that they, too, had been robbed by criminal (i.e. standard) record company lies and omissions and contacted their managers saying “I’ve got the goods, give me 20% of what you receive.”
An entrepreneur on the right side of things! Unless you spoke to a record industry spokesman like I did and was told, in beautiful Mafia parlance, “He is not a standup guy.”
You want crooks? Michael Jackson bought the Beatles catalog fair and square, but also, according to Macca, told Paul McCartney “I’ve got it and now I’m going to use your music in commercials.”
Beatles: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jacko: Nyah, nyah, nyah.
It was a business built on deceit and fraud. Many untalented and unworthy people got rich alongside the artists.
Not like today, when nobody makes nuthin’ on the Internet.
* The client I remember with faint confidence. Maybe it was someotherbody.
Please check out my monthly rant, Another Fein Mess, at sofein.com
I really don’t understand how maggots like Klein and Van Zantz can do it. I mean, guys like that should and do get whacked for much less than that.
Yet, they manage to avoid the big sleep with the fishes and live another day to steal some more.
There’s just no justice…
“You don’t hear about this much; it’s just one of the ways the music press sucks.”
Indeed. As I was watching Cadillac Records a few weeks ago, I thought it is way past time for the music press to quit overlooking and excusing the practices of the “giants” and “pioneers” of the music industry, past and present. They were unscrupulous and ruthless and largely heartless men (and a few women) who took every advantage of the young musicians, who often trusted them to look out for their interest. Nothing they otherwise accomplished excuses their behavior.
Thanks for speaking some truth about one of them.