  |
|
Re: John , Paul and Klein
Posted by **backbeat** on Jun 7, 2013 at 11:06:29 AM:
In Reply to: Re: John , Paul and Klein posted by **backbeat** on Jun 7, 2013 at 10:42:45 AM:
**
**
**
** You reckon John ever admitted to Paul that Paul was right about Allen Klein?
*
*John Lennon about Allen Klein
*
*Klein did well for The Beatles at first, and even McCartney must have been impressed when the American manager manoeuvred EMI into granting them the biggest royalty rate any artists had ever been paid at that time.
*
*But, even for Lennon, the love affair with Klein did not last. Although it was Klein who put him together with Phil Spector for the Imagine album, a few years later all of the Beatles were united in a legal battle to sever their connection with him.
*
*Lennon couldn't resist the chance to put his feelings about him into a song: Steel And Glass. 'Your teeth are clean, but your mind is capped, You leave your smell like an alley cat,' he sang.
*
*Exactly how much of Klein's reputation was earned and how much was exaggerated only the artists he represented and their accountants will know.
*
*---------------------------
*
*JOHN: "Well, when I'm not talking about it, I think about it occasionally. I mean, it's on my list of lawsuits. I was just talking about it with Yoko last night-- there seems to be an awful lot of lawsuits involved with rock and roll."
*
*Q: "There's Allen Klein, right?"
*
*JOHN: Yes, that's about twenty-- He's suing me, and Yoko, and all the ex-Beatles, and everybody that ever knew them! And he's suing me individually, me collectively, any version of me you can get hold of is being sued. But immigration is the important one-- the others are all just money, somehow a deal will be made. Immigration, that's the one. I mean, if they can take Helen Reddy, they can take me..."
*
*Q: "Would you want to become a US citizen?"
*
*JOHN: "I'm too involved with this to think about citizenship. I'd prefer to do a P. G. Wodehouse. I found out before he was knighted that he was living here (America), and I thought well, that's cool. Nobody thinks P. G. Wodehouse is not English. He was English until his last breath and he lived on Long Island. And that suits me fine. I'm English but I want to live here. And the funny thing about America is that there's almost no such thing as American. You go on the streets and everybody's Italian or Irish or Israeli or English or Jamaican or Nigerians... and if you go out into the sticks you've got the German group or the Dutch group and the names tell you which race dominates. It's just a pack of Europeans living here with Africans, Indians, and Asians thrown in. Thousands of Chinese, Japanese... It's like the old gag about the melting pot."
*
*"I always liked Liverpool and London-- places like that had alot of different races living in them. You could go to Soho and see all kinds of races on earth and I like that, but there's even more of a mixture here. My ideal is to be able to travel, that's the thing I really miss most. I miss England, Scotland, Wales, all that sentimental stuff... but I also miss France, Holland... Germany I haven't been to for years. I'd like to go to South America. I've never been. I'd like to be based here, and just travel."
*
*Q: "Do you ever think you'll be so overcome with all the legal hassles that you'll get like Lenny Bruce and become obsessed with learning the law?"
*
*JOHN: "No. I got obsessed with the politics for awhile... but law is, well... I could never take it that seriously. At a certain point I would just see the funny side of it and say fuck it. The worst that happens with most of these lawsuits is that they'll take more money off of me, and the worst that would happen with immigration is that I'd have to move."
*
*Q: "Where would you move? I've heard rumors of Canada."
*
*JOHN: "No. They always say that because whenever I go to Canada the Canadians as me if I like Canada, So I say yes, I like Canada-- I like Montreal and Toronto. I don't know the rest of it-- and the next minute they say I'm going to live there. And they always ask, 'Have you ever thought of living here?' Well, every country I've ever been to I've thought, 'Could I live here...'"
*
i thought this was interesting:
As an aside, the demo version of Beware Of Darkness, from All Things Must Pass, is said to contain lines written about Klein:
Watch out now,
Take care
beware of soft shoe shufflers,
Dancing down the sidewalks.
Pushing you in puddles
in the dead of night,
Beware of ABKCO.
Klein offered to take a commission only on The Beatles' increased business, a change in his normal method of operating. If Apple continued losing money, he said, he would take nothing.
With Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr united, Paul McCartney agreed to pose for photographs with Klein as a sign of unity. However, although he pretended to sign a new contract, he never put his signature to it. The subsequent fall-out over the management of the group was one of the key factors in their break-up.
Allen Klein swiftly renegotiated their EMI contract, obtaining them the highest royalties ever paid to an artist at the time. EMI, in return, were allowed to release Beatles compilations, which Brian Epstein had always resisted.
The single Something/Come Together was released on 31 October 1969. Until then, The Beatles had never lifted a single from one of their albums; they had either been stand-alone, or released on the same day as their parent album. The release illustrated the band's shifting attitudes towards money-making and artistry.
Klein's action gave The Beatles a hit and some much-needed income. He also helped resurrect the abandoned Get Back project, which became Let It Be. Klein brought Phil Spector to England to work on it, a move which led to years of resentment from Paul McCartney.
Apple Corps was overhauled, and Klein drastically cut expenditure, cancelled charge accounts for many staff and friends of the band. Although in many ways necessary, Klein's business ethos was in stark contrast to the anything-goes attitude with which Apple was set up. He alienated many of those who had previously been part of the band's circle, and fired Epstein's long-standing assistant Alistair Taylor.
He also closed the loss-making experimental and spoken word imprint Zapple, which only released two albums: Lennon and Yoko Ono's Unfinished Music No 2: Life With The Lions; and Harrison's Electronic Sound, which carried the liner note, "There are a lot of people around, making a lot of noise; here's some more."
Although McCartney deeply distrusted Klein, he admitted to him, "If you are screwing us, I don't see how." McCartney went on to sue the other Beatles in order to dissolve The Beatles' business partnership.Followup Messages:
- no followups have been posted yet...
Home | Web Chat | Web Boards | Discography | Library | Quiz | Art & Poetry | Links | Store
Produced by Sam Choukri
Frequently Asked Questions
Last updated on Jun 7, 2013