Beatles vs. Stones (31 page)

Shortly after Klein won over John and Yoko, he called for another meeting, this one between all the Beatles plus Klein (representing Lennon) and John Eastman (representing McCartney). Right away, the two businessmen in the room began sparring, and before long, McCartney and Eastman became so fed up with Klein’s pugnacious attitude that they fled the room. From a tactical point of view, it was a grievous error. After they’d left, Klein told the other three Beatles that they were getting screwed six ways to Sunday, but he knew how to put a stop to it all. He said he’d audit EMI’s books, renegotiate their record contract, and get Apple Corps going again by removing all its dead weight. And he promised he’d act in
all
of their interests, rather than defer to Paul. The other Beatles were so impressed that they told Klein they were ready to sign with him, right there on the spot. Klein said it wasn’t necessary.
“I didn’t want to appear too anxious,” he explained later.

Alarmed at what had transpired, Lee Eastman flew to London for another meeting with the four Beatles (plus Klein and a few others).
In preparation, he’d brought along a copy of Cameo-Parkway’s annual proxy statement (presumably because he found it misleading) as well as a sheaf of newspaper clippings that portrayed Klein negatively. Klein, however, had done some research of his own, and he’d made an odd discovery: Lee Eastman, a descendant of Jewish parents who emigrated to the US from Russia, was using a surname that was different from the one he’d been given at birth. Originally, he was Leopold Vail
Epstein.
Like many ambitious young men, he’d changed his last name so it sounded more Anglo. According to Peter Brown, who was present at the meeting, John and Allen both taunted Eastman by referring to him as “Epstein.” Furthermore, Klein wouldn’t let Eastman get a word in edgewise. He
“began interrupting everything [Eastman] said with a string of the most disgusting four-letter words he could tick off his tongue.”
Finally, Eastman exploded in such a furious rage that he only managed to discredit himself in front of the others.

Lennon, however, remembered differently: he claimed that Eastman was the bully.
“We hadn’t been in there more than a few minutes when Lee Eastman was having something like an epileptic fit, and screaming at Allen that he was ‘the lowest scum on earth,’ and calling him all sorts of names.” When Paul began chiming in as well, making snarky comments about Allen’s poor style of dress, he further undermined his position. Lennon was not always a polite man, but he loathed snobbery and class condescension. Now, for once, he was horrified by Paul’s poor manners.

By that point, there were probably only a couple of people on the planet who, if they had so desired,
might
have been able to keep the Beatles from fracturing. One was Yoko Ono, with whom John was spending nearly all of his waking hours (often in a junkie stupor). Now embarrassed about his earlier infatuation with the Maharishi, Lennon freely admitted that he was relying on Yoko as his personal
“advisor.” Later on, when Paul asked John to explain why he was so drawn to Klein, John shrugged and said,
“Well, he’s the only one Yoko
liked.” But she wasn’t the least bit savvy about the music business either. Nor was it at all clear that Yoko even wanted the Beatles to stay together. If the schism over Klein portended the Beatles’ demise, she might have been pleased. (Such was the nature of her and John’s bizarre codependency.)

Then there was Mick Jagger. Did he feel in any way responsible for the Beatles’ current predicament? Earlier, he had recommended Klein to the Beatles; now it was clear from his own actions that he distrusted Klein. When Jagger learned that Allen was making headway into the Beatles’ organization, he had a rare opportunity to do the Beatles a huge favor. He could easily have approached all four of them—his supposed good friends—and said, “Look, I know how convincing Allen can be—we trusted him too!—but we were wrong, man. He’s a shady actor. He’s screwed us up royally, and now we’re trying to get rid of him.”

It is sometimes claimed that Mick tried to do precisely that, but the far greater likelihood is that he did not.

First, none of the Beatles has ever publicly said that they received such a message from Jagger. Although they all wound up regretting their involvement with Klein, none of them has ever expressed remorse over their failure to heed Jagger’s advice. Not only that, but the two key players in the whole dispute, John and Paul, both suggested the opposite: Mick failed to properly warn them about Klein. In a February 1969 interview, Lennon said,
“We know [Klein] through Mick Jagger and we trust him—as much as we trust any businessman.” The following year, Lennon remarked,
“I had heard about all these dreadful rumors about [Klein], but I could never coordinate it with the fact that the Stones seemed to be going on and on with him and nobody said a word. Mick’s not the type to just clam up, so I started thinking he must be all right.”

In his authorized biography, McCartney said he invited Mick over to Apple’s headquarters and requested his unvarnished perspective.
“We, the Beatles, were all gathered in the big boardroom
there, and we asked Mick how Klein was, and he said, ‘Well, he’s all right if you like that sort of thing.’ He didn’t say ‘He’s a robber,’ even though Klein had already taken the
Hot Rocks
copyrights off them by that time.”

By some accounts, when Klein heard that Mick was scheduled to talk with the Beatles, he made a point of showing up at the meeting as well, obviously aiming to intimidate his own client. McCartney doesn’t mention Klein being there, but if he was, it would have been a clever move. Mick knew better than most just how fixated Klein was on bagging the Beatles; it was to be his greatest coup, his pièce de résistance. And so long as Klein wielded such immense control over the Rolling Stones’ interests, Mick would have reasoned that there wasn’t any point in antagonizing him.

McCartney later said in an affidavit that when John, George, and Ringo outvoted him three to one in favor of Klein, it was
“the first time in the history of the Beatles that a possible irreconcilable difference had appeared between us.” At the time, music publisher Dick James and his business partner Charles Silver owned nearly 35 percent of the Beatles’ song publishing company, Northern Songs. James’s business relations with the late Brian Epstein dated back to 1963, and the Beatles had made him a fantastically wealthy man. By the late 1960s, however, James had grown anxious about the future worth of Northern Songs. He was put off by the drug culture that the Beatles had become immersed in and by Lennon’s eccentricity. He worried whether the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership would endure. He had also grown to dislike the Beatles personally, no doubt in part because the Beatles plainly despised
him
. John and Paul regarded Dick James as the worst kind of capitalist pig. He’d never done much of anything on the Beatles’ behalf, they reasoned, and yet he’d managed to become extraordinarily rich off their accomplishments.

It was not until Klein got involved with the Beatles, however, that James finally decided to sell all of his Northern Songs stock to
Lew Grade, the media mogul who owned ATV (Associated Television).
“James knew of Klein’s propensity for lawsuits and tearing up contracts,” remembered Peter Brown. “This was clearly the time to abandon ship.”

The transaction was carried out abruptly and privately on March 28, 1969, and it left John and Paul in the lurch: James did not even offer them the chance to buy his share of the company that owned their songs. Furthermore, having just acquired 35 percent of Northern Songs, Grade went in hot pursuit of 15.1 percent more—just enough to put him in control. Meanwhile, McCartney and Lennon decided that
they
wanted to own Northern Songs. Holding the balance of power between Lennon and McCartney and their allies (on the one hand) and Lew Grade (on the other) stood a consortium of brokers and hedge fund investment managers.

In the midst of all this, Klein’s reputation in England took a seismic hit. On April 13, 1969, the
Sunday Times
printed an investigative report on Klein, “The Toughest Wheeler-Dealer in the Pop Jungle.” The paper attributed Klein’s success to
“a startling blend of bluff, sheer determination, and financial agility, together with an instinct for publicity and the ability to lie like a trooper.” It also revealed that he had been involved in no fewer than forty lawsuits, that the SEC was prying into his affairs, and that the Rolling Stones’ North American publishing royalties were paid directly into Klein’s own company, Nanker Phelge USA.

All of this made the remaining Northern Songs shareholders so skittish that Klein was forced to publicly pledge that, should the Beatles win control of the company, he would not join its board or interfere with its management in any way. Nevertheless, after about six months of complicated negotiations and maneuvering, it was Grade who won the controlling share of the Beatles’ publishing company. And if that wasn’t depressing enough to the Beatles, amidst all of this it was revealed that Paul had been secretly buying shares of Northern Songs in his own name; he owned 751,000 shares compared to Lennon’s
644,000. That was flagrantly in violation of a verbal agreement the two had made to keep their shares on equal footing. When Lennon discovered the double-cross, he grew more hostile toward Paul than ever.

Of course, it would be fallacious to say that Klein caused the Beatles’ dissolution. Other factors contributed as well. When the Beatles released the double LP known as
The White Album
(officially,
The Beatles
) in November 1968—before any of them had even met Klein—it was clear that they were moving in different artistic directions.
The White Album
was hugely successful, but people often remarked that it sounded more like a collection of solo projects than a coherent group effort. And it did.

The White Album
also indicated that George was rapidly maturing as a songwriter. Nevertheless, John and Paul continually stymied his attempts to take an enhanced role in the group. George became particularly resentful after they turned away his recent material around the very time that Paul was subjecting the group to laborious recordings of some of his corniest songs, like “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” George also felt that Paul had ceased seeking any creative input from the others. A scene in
Let It Be
captured Harrison’s mood: he and McCartney are seated across from each other, working on the arrangement for “Two of Us,” when Paul makes a suggestion that causes George to snap.
“I’ll play whatever you want me to play,” he says through clenched teeth. “Or I won’t play at all, if you don’t want me to play. Whatever it is that will
please you
, I’ll do it!”

Paul’s ill-timed jocularity likewise grated on the others. Again, the
Let It Be
documentary is revealing. McCartney is frequently shown trying to summon up a spirit of mutuality and
esprit de corps
when it was plainly obvious that nobody else was in the mood. Paul’s chirpiness was particularly annoying to Lennon. And yet John must have realized that he had little ground to stand on, since he had largely absolved himself of any responsibility for the Beatles. When he wasn’t
at home snorting heroin, he would frequently stalk around the studio in a volatile mood, shooting people dirty looks or verbally smacking down anyone who dared cross him. Or he would completely disengage from the others. The Beatles would be trying to build a consensus on something important (like “should we perform live again?”) and John would flout his disinterest by staring into space, or doodling in his notebook.

The entire time, John and Yoko subsumed themselves into each other. The Beatles had never before allowed wives or girlfriends in the recording studio, and now Yoko was present at nearly every session. The others did their best to make her feel uncomfortable and de trop, but to no avail. Yoko’s effrontery had no limits, they complained. She was always whispering conspiratorially in John’s ear or sitting imperiously on an amplifier—as if she were supervising the Beatles’ recording sessions. (McCartney:
“We were always wondering how to say, ‘Could you get off my amp?’ without interfering with their relationship.”) Worst of all, she would sometimes make comments and suggestions about their music, as if (the audacity is breathtaking) she were now a part of the group. And although Yoko made little effort to get to know the Beatles’ friends and helpmates, she was quick to order them around, as if they were her own personal errand boys.

Yoko also kindled Lennon’s smoldering interests in avant-gardism and political activism, which only further alienated him from the group (and that may have been the point). In November 1968, the couple released
Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins
, a spontaneously recorded experimental record that hardly anyone heard, but everyone talked about: its cover was made from a photograph that showed John and Yoko in the nude, full frontal and hairy (John’s uncircumcised penis and all). Neither of them looked terribly healthy. They must have thought they were making an important artistic statement, perhaps having something to do with innocence, honesty, and vulnerability. But it was scarcely the paradigm buster that John and Yoko imagined it to be. About thirty years later, George said,
“What
I thought about the sleeve then was the same as I think now. It’s just two not very nice looking bodies, two flabby bodies naked.”

It must have been exhausting, putting up with John and Yoko. Lindsay-Hogg tells an anecdote about filming
Let It Be
in January 1969—right around the time Lennon brought Allen Klein into the picture. The Beatles had just endured a long and dreary meeting, and as it was drawing to a close, John produced a sound recording that he wanted the others to hear. It was something he and Yoko had made.

He got up and put the cassette into the tape machine and stood beside it as we listened.

The soft murmuring voices did not at first signal their purpose. It was a man and a woman but hard to hear, the microphone having been at a distance. I wondered if the lack of clarity was the point. Were we even meant to understand what was going on, was it a kind of artwork where we would not be able to put the voices into a context, and was context important? I felt perhaps this was something John and Yoko were examining. But then, after a few minutes, it became clear. John and Yoko were making love, with endearments, giggles, heavy breathing, both real and satirical, and the occasional more direct sounds of pleasure reaching for climax, all recorded by the faraway microphone. But there was something innocent about it too, as though they were engaged in a sweet serious game.