Beatles vs. Stones (28 page)

The controversies and discussions generated by the Beatles and the Stones remind us, however, that there was a time when rock’s artifice was frowned upon and its commercial logic was muted. To rock fans in the ’60s, the idea that the Rolling Stones would go on to gross hundreds of millions of dollars playing on gargantuan stages, in outdoor stadiums, while under corporate sponsorship, and as senior citizens, would have seemed unfathomable. Nor could they have imagined (not even in a stoned moment) that Mick Jagger would accept a knighthood, at the Queen’s behest, at Buckingham Palace in 2003. The idea that Michael Jackson would purchase a considerable chunk of the Lennon-McCartney songbook and authorize “Revolution” to be used for a Nike commercial would never have been entertained. As music writer Fred Goodman observed,
“Just a few decades ago rock was tied to a counterculture professing to be so firmly against commercial and social conventions that the notion of a ‘rock and roll business’ seemed an oxymoron.” That sentiment was captured in a 1969 letter to the editor of Seattle’s underground newspaper,
Helix
:
“Why does it cost $50,000 to book the Rolling Stones for a concert? Why does
Abbey Road
list at $8.98?”

Why can’t rock groups who want to do free gigs just go ahead and do them . . . And why do rock entrepreneurs . . . make hundreds of thousands of dollars charging high prices for “festivals”? . . . I say FUCK ’EM! FUCK the record companies! Fuck the culture vultures and all those hypocritical assholes who “bring the music!” Fuck the rock groups who have “made it” and feel totally justified in screwing us! Don’t buy their trash! Show the [rock promoter] Bill Graham’s [sic] and the Beatles of the scene that they no longer belong.

As the rock constituency that fueled the New Left and the counterculture faded into memory, so too did the radical newspapers that once printed such clamorous rhetoric. In their place arose the “alternative press,” today’s network of weekly newspapers that are sometimes distributed for free in metropolitan vending boxes or stacked in piles in cafes and bars. Unlike the underground papers, these metropolitan weeklies—which are now on hard times—were always meant to be commercially successful. The “alternative” label they embraced was in fact a transparent bid for respectability, meant to underscore their distance from the political radicalism that sullied the underground press. In return for advertisements in these papers, record companies regularly receive flattering articles, record reviews, and concert listings promoting their artists. Meanwhile, market-savvy researchers and niche advertisers helped to shape a rock culture that is not only older, but is also increasingly heterogeneous. As a global phenomenon, and a multibillion-dollar industry, rock ’n’ roll holds considerable capitalist clout, but today no one thinks of it as a generation’s lingua franca.

Of course, youths will always turn to rock ’n’ roll as an outlet for their energies, frustrations, rebellions, desires, and as a way of making sense of their lives. But the underground press coverage of the Beatles and the Stones reminds us just how much the audience for rock music has changed. Perhaps, though, we ought not be
so
cynical. No matter how fractious the New Left may have seemed in the late 1960s, many radicals and hippies continued to regard rock ’n’ roll as their one common denominator, the single force around which they could unify and extend their communal culture. In this context, even the era’s most tepidly political rock heroes—the Beatles and the Rolling Stones—could present themselves as avatars.

CHAPTER SIX

WHEEL-DEALING IN THE POP JUNGLE

In 1967, the Beatles spent
the last weekend in August in North Wales, attending a conference on “spiritual regeneration” hosted by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Their entourage—wives, assistants, and friends, including Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull—numbered about sixty people, all of whom were housed in an otherwise empty student college dormitory. Everyone slept in tiny rooms with bunk beds and plain furniture, and everyone paid the same standard rate for lodging: £1.50 per night, including breakfast. Members of the press were forbidden from the campus, and since only one person from the Beatles’ management team had a phone number with which to reach the group—to be used only in case of an emergency—it was expected to be a quiet weekend. But on the afternoon of August 27, the pay phone in the dormitory lobby just kept ringing and ringing.

The news was devastating: Brian Epstein was dead. At that point, the cause of his demise had not yet been officially determined, but authorities noticed that his bedside table was cluttered with eight pill bottles. He was thirty-two years old.

“It was simply terrible how lost, how heartbroken, the Beatles were,” Marianne recalled. “They kind of went into close family mode from the sorrow and the pain.”

The Maharishi tried assuaging the Beatles’ grief with his boring homilies. Brian had not
really
died, he told them. Rather, he had merely departed the earthly, physical realm; now he was gliding toward some other plane of existence. As they headed out of town, John and George—both glum and visibly shaken—spoke briefly with press.
“Meditation gives you comfort enough to withstand something like this, even the short amount we’ve had,” said John. George added, “There’s no real such thing as death anyway.” Of the four Beatles, these were the two who were the most committed to Eastern teachings, but they didn’t sound terribly convincing. Later, Lennon revealed what was truly on his mind.
“I
knew
that we were in trouble then,” he said. “I didn’t really have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music. And I was
scared
you know, I thought ‘we’d fucking had it now.’ ”

•  •  •

Before he poisoned himself with sleeping pills, Brian had become highly adept at cultivating press relations. One of the Fleet Street newshounds to whom he’d become especially close was Don Short, a reporter for London’s
Daily Mirror
. Although Short was known as a tenacious journalist, he and Brian had reached an understanding: when it came to covering the Beatles, there were certain “no-go” areas—things that he might become privy to, like Brian’s homosexuality or the Beatles’ drug use—that he would not report on. If, on the rare occasion, Epstein felt the need to vent about the Beatles, or to talk about them in a way that was not entirely flattering, he could do so with Short, confident that his remarks would not show up in the press.

One evening over drinks at his Chapel Street town house, Brian asked Short to hazard a guess: Which of Beatles do you think is the hardest to manage?

Short quickly assumed it was John Lennon. He was the most volatile and sharp-tongued member of the group, the one most likely
to go off script at a press conference or get ensnared in some kind of embarrassing shenanigan.

“In fact, Brian’s answer was McCartney,” Short recalled. “Paul wanted to project himself as the nice guy, but in terms of arranging Beatles business, he was the problem.” Paul frequently pestered Brian with questions and concerns about the Beatles’ business affairs, and he wasn’t shy about reminding Brian that it was his job to keep the Beatles happy. Usually McCartney got whatever he wanted by relying on his wooing and soft-selling skills, but sometimes he could be domineering and pushy—a bit of a control freak, even—and Brian would be intimidated.
“John may have been the loudest Beatle, but Paul was the shrewdest,” claimed the group’s PR man, Tony Barrow.

In 1965, the pop music industry was abuzz about an audacious American accountant by the name of Allen Klein, who renegotiated the Rolling Stones’ record contract with Decca to the tune of $1.25 million in advance royalties. (That may not sound like much today, but it was unheard of at the time.) He did it with a bit of panache as well. Keith Richards recalls that he summoned the Stones and said,
“We’re going into Decca today and we’re going to work on these motherfuckers. We’re going to make a deal and we’re going to come out with the best record contract ever. Wear some shades and don’t say a thing. Just troop in and stand at the back of the room and look at these old doddering farts. Don’t talk. I’ll do the talking.”

When Klein barreled into Decca’s boardroom with the Stones following behind him, he dispensed with any pleasantries. “The Rolling Stones won’t be recording for Decca anymore,” he announced.

Decca’s sixty-five-year-old chairman, Sir Edward Lewis, was appalled by the scene. When he reminded Klein that the Stones were already under a contract, Klein shot back that he did not care. (
“A contract is just a piece of paper,” he was known to say.) According to Keith Richards, Sir Edward was literally drooling while Klein went through his spiel. (
“I mean not over us, he was just drooling. And then somebody would come along and pat him with a handkerchief.”)
When it was over, Richards said,
“They crumbled and we walked out with a deal bigger than the Beatles’.”

Paul was annoyed. If the Beatles were the most successful act in show business, he reasoned, why didn’t their record contract with EMI reflect that? Paul understood, of course, that when the Beatles were first getting going, Epstein’s career guidance had been invaluable. Epstein had managed the group with all-consuming devotion and uncanny prescience. But it was becoming increasingly apparent that Epstein lacked Klein’s sharklike mentality, as well as his deep knowledge of contractual law and music industry accounting practices.

Then again, so did just about every other pop group’s manager. In the mid-’60s, Klein was an acknowledged force in the fast-growing music business. He’d made his reputation by performing aggressive, small-print audits on behalf of his clients, including Bobby Darin, Lloyd Price, and Bobby Vinton, and then recovering unpaid royalties. In 1963, he renegotiated soul singer Sam Cooke’s contract with RCA, and won him $110,000 worth of back payments. Before long, record labels seemed almost fearful of Allen Klein. Others in the music industry, however, admired him. Klein’s personality was gruff (almost gangsterlike); he had a stout frame, oily hair, and one of his favorite words was “motherfucker.” But he also had a deep and abiding love for pop music, and he was unquestionably good at what he did. In some quarters, Klein’s sybaritic lifestyle—his fancy yacht and his high-rise office—enhanced his reputation.

After the Beatles quit touring, Epstein’s responsibilities on their behalf had greatly diminished. What the group most needed now, some people said, was a disciplined and hawk-eyed moneyman who could oversee their increasingly complicated finances. All eyes pointed toward Klein. Not only had he gotten the Stones a huge advance payment, he also increased the group’s royalty rate to 25 percent of the wholesale prices of each LP they sold (about 75 cents per album). When Epstein renegotiated the Beatles’ contract with EMI in late 1966, he must have tried to get a similar deal, but he fell short. The
Beatles received only 15 percent per album sold in England, and 17.5 percent for each LP they sold in the US on the Capitol label.

Klein and Epstein met in London in 1964, ostensibly to discuss the possibility that Sam Cooke might support the Beatles on an upcoming tour. Soon after the two began talking, however, Klein broached a different topic: the possibility of a business relationship. Epstein’s assistant, Peter Brown, recalled the meeting.
“Klein said that he heard the Beatles’ low royalty rates from EMI were ‘for shit’ and that he could renegotiate their contracts. Brian was royally offended at the suggestion that someone else should do his job for him, and he had Klein shown to the door.”

If Epstein had hoped to discourage Klein, or embarrass him, then he underestimated the man. Klein soon began telling people that it was only a matter of time before he would “get” the Beatles.
“[Epstein] always thought Klein was a big threat to him,” said Danny Betesh, a music industry veteran.

As if to make Brian even more insecure, Paul used Klein’s success against Epstein. One time in a crowded elevator, surrounded by the other Beatles, Paul said to him,
“Yeah, well Klein got the Stones a quarter and a million, didn’t he? What about us?”

It was a fair question, but Paul later regretted the cutting way he put it across. Epstein was always so sensitive, and he desperately craved the Beatles’ approval—but perhaps never more so than during the last months of his life. His five-year management contract with the group was set to expire in October, and among his associates, he fretted endlessly about the possibility that the Beatles might cut him loose. Few of those in Epstein’s circle thought he had much cause for worry—probably he would have just been asked to take a lower commission—but who could say for sure?

In November 1966, Epstein was forced to swat down a newspaper rumor saying that the Beatles had already begun meeting with Klein to discuss their future management. Then in early 1967, Klein ensconced himself at London’s Hilton Hotel and boasted to reporters
that he was destined to manage the Beatles. His remarks caused such a stir that Epstein denounced them with a formal press statement. Still, the Stones’ new manager never gave up.
“The whole time Allen was with the Stones he was trying to get the Beatles interested in him,” said Sheila Klein Oldham (Andrew’s ex-wife). Mickie Most, the British record producer, said much the same.
“Allen got very obsessed with signing the Beatles. The Stones were much more aggravation than he counted on.”

About seven weeks before Brian died, the Beatles released
“Baby, You’re a Rich Man,” the B-side to their number one hit “All You Need Is Love.” George Harrison dubiously claimed that the song touted an uplifting, Eastern-tinged message: the idea that anyone can be “rich” because richness comes from within. But Brian likely surmised that “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” was an unfriendly song, intended specifically for him. One can only hope (perhaps faintly) that he didn’t notice the despicable way that Lennon corrupted the song’s chorus as it faded out. Instead of singing “Baby you’re a rich man too,” he sang, “Baby you’re a rich fag Jew.”