John meets Allen Klein - January 28, 1969
From BeatlesWiki
| Event | |
| Date | January 28, 1969 |
| Short description | John Lennon meets Allen Klein. |
| Location | |
John meets Allen Klein. At the time of meeting with Klein, Eastman & Eastman, the company owned by Linda McCartney's father, Lee Eastman, that was managing The Beatles, brought up the fact that NEMS, Brian Epstein's company, was still getting twenty-five per cent of The Beatles' profits, despite that they did not own The Beatles anymore. Eastman & Eastman suggested that they buy out NEMS for a million quid. EMI said they'd loan the money, but John and Yoko were still skeptical about the idea. Derek Taylor suggested reviewing the deal with Allen Klein. Klein had managed The Rolling Stones, Donovan, and Sam Cooke, and was notorious for getting good deals for the musicians by finding hidden clauses in contracts. (he was dubbed 'The Robin Hood of Pop,' because of this). A problem with him, though, was his habit of also taking for himself. The Rolling Stones had sued him for 1.25 million quid after they had found out some of their advance had ended up in his bank account. He had also been audited by the Securities and Exchange Commission for selling two million shares of stock in Cameo Parkway Records after only a quarter of a million went on sale. Ray Davies of The Kinks recalled, "I never signed a piece of paper with Klein, but I’m sure he can pull one out of a drawer." John ignored Klein's shady business dealings because Apple was in need of help. John said, "I got various messages through various people that, ‘Allen Klein would like to talk to you.’ I knew who he was, but I didn’t want to talk to him, because I had heard about him over the years. The first time I heard about him was when he said, ‘We would like to have The Beatles’ – and this was when Brian was still with us. He had offered Brian this good deal, which, in retrospect, was something that Brian should have accepted, but I had also heard all these dreadful rumours about him, but I could never co-ordinate it with the fact that The Stones seemed to be going on and on with him, and nobody ever said a word. And Mick’s not the type to just clam up, so I started thinking that he must be all right…" But when the meeting was arranged, John was nervous, later saying, "We were both nervous. He was nervous as shit and Yoko was nervous. We went up to his room and we just went in, you know. He was all alone; he didn’t even have any of his helpers around, because he didn’t want anything like that. He was nervous, you could see it in his eyes. When I saw that, I felt better. We talked to him for a few hours, and we thought, ‘He is it!’ He knew the lyrics to every fuckin’ song you could ever imagine from the Twenties on! He not only knew my work, and the lyrics I had written, but he also understood them, and from way back when. He also told me what was happening with Paul, George and Ringo. He knew every damn thing about us… He’s a fuckin’ sharp man and anybody that knew me that well, without even having met me, had to be a guy I could let look after me." Klein looked over NEMS' books. Because they had so much debt that it would take two years to pay it off, he told John not to accept any deals until he had looked over their contracts further. Impressed, John immediately hired Klein. He then sent a telegram to EMI saying, "Dear Sir Joe: From now on Allen Klein handles all my stuff."
