Allen Klein, 77, a cunning record executive whose clients included the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and who was known as the “toughest wheeler-dealer in the pop jungle,” but whose ego and temperament also contributed to the breakup of the Fab Four, died July 4 at his home in Manhattan. He had complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
Klein was an accountant by trade and fell into musician and record company management by accident. Through his company, Abkco, Klein built his reputation on shrewd attention to financial detail. He ruthlessly negotiated rich contracts for his clients — and for his own gain. He was the target of scores of lawsuits by clients and associates while making millions of dollars for many others.
“Don’t talk to me about ethics,” Klein said in a 1971 interview with Playboy. “It’s like a war. You choose your side early and from then on you’re being shot at. The man you beat is likely to call you unethical. So what?”
After early work for Sam Cooke and Bobby Darin, Klein was hired by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham in 1965 to renegotiate the Stones’ record contract with Decca. He used his thick New Jersey accent and swaggering attitude to impress the group.
“Andrew sold him to us as a gangster figure, someone outside the establishment,” Mick Jagger said in Stephen Davis’ book “Old Gods Almost Dead: The 40-Year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones.” “We found that rather attractive.”
In the early 1970s, Klein used his accounting skills to purchase the entire 1960s back catalogue of the Rolling Stones master recordings from Oldham without the band’s knowledge. Klein also transferred more than $1 million of the Stones’ earnings into his personal account.
Around this period, Jagger chased Klein down a hallway of London’s Savoy Hotel during one particularly energetic discussion about the band’s finances. The singer, shouting expletives, demanded to know why a significant amount of his money had seemingly disappeared.
“What did he want from us? Apart from the moon, I don’t know,” Jagger said while testifying during a lawsuit against Klein in 1984. “He wanted everything. He wanted a hold on us, on our futures.”
Klein saw his greatest aspiration realized when he became manager of the Beatles in 1969. He was aware that Apple Corps, the band’s multimedia company, was months away from bankruptcy and set up a secret meeting with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. From that conference, Klein negotiated a contract to be the group’s business manager.
Lennon and Ono persuaded band members Ringo Starr and George Harrison to sign the contract as well. But Paul McCartney did not like Klein’s brash manner and refused to participate. This rift helped lead to the band’s dissolution in 1970 after McCartney filed suit against Klein and the other members.
Klein bragged that the Beatles had made 9 million pounds in 19 months under his guidance — more than the band had made in the previous six years.
“Nobody sues a failure,” Klein said around that time. “They only sue a success.”
By that measure, he was very successful. Forty lawsuits had been filed against him by 1972. In 1979 he spent two months in prison for tax evasion after selling promotional records of Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh, a relief benefit held at Madison Square Garden in 1971.
A series of suits and countersuits erupted among Klein and the Beatles. He eventually settled for $4 million.
Allen Klein was born Dec. 18, 1931, in Newark. He was an infant when his mother died, and he barely knew his father. He spent most of his childhood in an orphanage and graduated in 1956 from the old Upsala College in East Orange, N.J., with an accounting degree.
Klein earned his tough reputation in the music business early. One of his first auditing projects came when he helped Texas singer Buddy Knox collect unpaid royalties from Roulette Records. Under threat of lawsuit, Roulette paid out, and Klein found his calling.
Through friends, Klein met Darin at a wedding in the early 1960s and reportedly walked up to the entertainer with a check for $100,000. He said there was more where that came from. Darin signed on immediately.
Around the same time, Klein stormed Miami Beach’s Fontainebleau Hotel because his client Cooke, who was black, had been denied accommodation. Klein threatened to camp out in the lobby and screamed, “Don’t you know what prejudice is?” The hotel quickly found Cooke a suite.
Abkco became enormously successful by purchasing the rights to artists’ music and owns more than 2,000 songs, including works by the Stones, Cooke, Chubby Checker, the Animals, the Kinks and Herman’s Hermits.
Survivors include his estranged wife, Betty; his longtime companion, Iris Keitel; three children from his marriage; a sister; and four grandchildren.
After Klein’s 1973 countersuit against the Beatles, Lennon wrote the harsh lyrics of “Steel and Glass” with Klein in mind:
“There you stand with your L.A. tan/And your New York walk and your New York talk/ Your mother left you when you were small/ But you’re gonna wish you wasn’t born at all.”
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