Allen Klein

You know, he always made sure that Beatles got equal profits and was scrupulously, he was scrupulous about paying his artists.

But when he was gone, the Beatles got involved with this guy called Alan Klein, who was one of those gangsters.

He was a terrible, you know, corrupt mafia type guy who basically ripped off the Beatles in the same way he ripped off the Rolling Stones and everybody else.

And yeah, he created a lot of business chaos, which also led to their demise.

never known a time, have you, where you walk down the street and people are going...? Yeah, cos at

Corian, though, like, back then, I think 20 million people tuned in for my wedding to where I got jilted at the altar by Alan.

And it's

hard work, that Coronation Street, isn't it? The soaps, it's just constant, isn't it? I think it

It's Brian Epstein's autobiography.

So when we formed our band, we went, you might as well be our manager.

Managers are important, because I don't really know the whole of the Beatles story, but the manager who took over was a bit of a rogue, wasn't he? Alan Klein.

Yeah, wasn't he the reason the band

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rolling Stones songs are really, really hard to, um, to license because they're still, like the old ones are still with Allen Klein, their company, and he's like, he was notorious to deal with.

He was the guy that became their manager and then managed The Beatles for a while and really-

Or three of The Beatles.

I think that it was about, uh, ultimately that they, at some point their manager died, Brian Epstein, and they h- they had to hire a new manager.

And the other three Beatles wanted to hire this guy who worked with The Rolling Stones, Allen Klein.

Yeah.

And Paul was smart enough to go, "This guy's gonna try to steal all our money," and they out voted him.

When, when, when-

Yeah, Paul was 29 when The Beatles broke up

... yeah, so Allen Klein comes around and does the classic move of, uh, "What do you guys want? You want me to get you a million dollars? You want, everybody want a million dollars?" "Yes, please." Well, got them the million dollars, and then in the fine print, the ownership of the catalog will, I mean, it's older than time, [laughs] you know, on Paul's-

They would do that to a lot of people back then

...

it was Allen Klein.

So I said The Rolling Stones sued Richard Ac- Ashcroft, but it was Allen Klein, uh, the Stones' manager, uh, who sued him for lifting the opening-

He made his own remix album, didn't he, of various Stones songs, and that was one of them.

This-

Allen Klein did?

Yeah.

This Could Be the Last Time.

Oh, yeah.

[laughs] 'Cause it's quite obviously Alan Klein.

He's just- Of course.

Yeah.

This is a real change because, you know, over, over the history of, uh, of the record industry, any number of...

Well, Allen Klein became famous because he audited, you know, the royalties for some of his artists and found out that for years, record companies had been, you know, shortchanging these folks.

Now you have over-reporting, and the reason is it makes the company look highly profitable to investors, and they invest more.

So it's a, it's a change in, in sort of a, a paradigm.

I think they would've stayed together longer, or at very least gotten back together because of Brian Epstein, because I really think, let's look at the early '70s.

Well, first of all, the whole Allen Klein thing wouldn't have happened and all that, or maybe it would've in a different way, who knows? Maybe they would've sacked Brian and would've ended sooner.

We [laughs] we- nobody can really say, but I think knowing that Brian would've been involved and gotten them back to touring at some point and handled the logistical issues of it, it would've happened.

I think the band would've had a different direction.