The Love You Make (54 page)

As far as Paul was concerned, the Eastmans wouldn’t even consider letting him sign a contract with Klein under any circumstances. Paul still clung to the hope that he could get the other Beatles to see Klein’s evil ways before it was too late, but no matter what the evidence seemed to be, they stuck with Klein rather than cast their lot in with the Eastmans. As John told Paul about Klein, “Anybody that bad can’t be all that bad.”

One night in early May, on one of the rare occasions all four Beatles were in the Abbey Road studios together, there was a rumor going around that Klein was going to appear that night for a showdown. Paul dreaded having to speak to Klein. He even was having nightmares in which Klein was a dentist chasing him with a drill. Sure enough, late that evening Klein appeared with a set of management contracts under his arm.

He stuck the contracts under Paul’s nose and said, “I gotta have dis ting signed. I gotta have you guys on contract.”

“On a Friday night?” Paul asked innocently. “What’s the big hurry? Give me the contracts and on Monday—”

Everybody groaned. “Uhhh, there he goes again,” John said. “You’re stalling again, Paul.”

“But what’s the big hurry?” Paul insisted.

Klein explained that he was on his way to the airport to catch a plane for New York, where there was an ABKCO board meeting over the weekend. ABKCO was Klein’s personally owned company—the initials stood for Allen and Betty Klein Company—and according to Paul, “Klein was the ‘board,’ the tables, and the chairs.” Paul insisted he could not sign any contracts without first showing them to his London attorney, Charles Corman. But since Corman was an orthodox Jew and this was the Sabbath, it would not be possible to reach him until Sunday.

“Oh yeah? Well, we can’t wait. If you won’t sign dis, den we gotta do majority rules.” Klein was blatantly trying to turn the three other Beatles against Paul.

“Forget it,” Paul said. “You’ll never get Ringo.” Paul turned to wink at Ringo, but the drummer only gave him a sick look.

“I’m in with them,” Ringo said.

“It’s like bloody Julius Caesar!” Paul said. “I’ve been stabbed in the bloody back! So it’s come to this …”

Paul never got any sympathy from the other Beatles, particularly in light of his having bought up Northern Songs’ stock without telling anyone. Klein flew out of London that night without Paul’s signature, but it didn’t matter. While his plane was still in the air, I received a phone call in New York where I happened to be on business with Neil Aspinall. It was John. He was with George and Ringo, and they were instructing Neil and me to sign Klein’s contracts in our capacity as directors of Apple Corp. Thus on May 8, 1969, Paul was effectively caught in Klein’s web.

Much to Paul’s discredit, his onerous relationship with Klein didn’t stop him from standing behind the man when it came to the renegotiation of contracts with EMI and Capitol. Although Sir Joseph Lockwood was not happy about the idea of paying the Beatles more money, they had already fulfilled their minimum number of albums and singles, and Sir Joe didn’t think it unfair if they got a commensurate increase for additional product. One day in May, Allen Klein appeared in Sir Joe’s office with all four Beatles in tow. “I don’t mind talking about this,” Sir Joe said, “as long as there’s some benefit to both sides.”

Klein chuckled. “You don’t understand,” he said. “We get everything, and you get nothing.”

Sir Joe thought that the man was surely joking, but as the minutes passed Klein became more threatening and crass. Sir Joe called an end to the meeting and asked Klein to leave. Klein marched out the door with John, Yoko, George, and Ringo behind him. Paul hung back, making apologetic faces at Sir Joe behind the others’ backs.

“That’s all right,” Sir Joe said to his assistant. “They’ll be back.” Sure enough, half an hour later Klein called to apologize, and negotiations later resumed. The deal wasn’t finished until September, but when it was done the Beatles were mighty impressed. Under the new terms two new albums were due each year until 1976. All the new albums would net them an unprecedented 58¢ royalty until 1972 and a 72¢ royalty thereafter until 1976—an increase from a previous 39¢ royalty per LP. To boot, reissues of early recordings would garner a 50¢ royalty until 1972 and 72¢ thereafter. However, for the first time in the Beatles’ history, Klein agreed to re-release old material, a marketing ploy that Brian swore he would never agree to. Now the record stores would be flooded with “Best of” albums and cheap compilations. Still, because of this repackaging, the Beatles’ royalty incomes soared.

Paul was as impressed as the rest of them, albeit grudgingly. Paul never complained about making money. “If you’re screwing us,” he told Klein, “I can’t see how.”

But that didn’t mean the Eastmans were going to let Paul sign the new recording contracts that Klein had negotiated. They feared that if Paul signed them it could be legally interpreted that Klein represented Paul, and he would therefore be entitled to 20 percent of Paul’s increased earnings. Hypocritically, Paul attended the photo session to commemorate the contract signing. He was photographed standing around a table with Klein and the three other Beatles, as if his signature was on the contract with the rest of them. Thus, as far as the outside world knew, the Beatles were still whole.

With Klein now in power
there followed a bloodletting that no one could have anticipated. Klein’s first task was a mass firing. Paul also backed Klein in this endeavor. For months Paul had been announcing his intention to clear Apple of deadwood. He had asked several of the executives for a list of all Apple employees who weren’t essential, but the request so distressed us that we put off the task and pretended the list was forgotten or misplaced when Paul demanded to see it. Now such a list was no longer necessary. Klein was making his own decisions.

Brian Lewis in the contracts department was one of the first to go. The publishing office was closed down, and Dennis O’Dell of the film division resigned. Magic Alex, away on a trip to Paris, returned to London to find himself locked out of his Boston Place laboratory and his precious inventions sold to an electronics scrap dealer. Klein had computed that Alex had cost the company a reported £160,000, aside from the £20,000 paid for the Boston Place property. Of the 100 patents Alex had applied for through EMI’s helpful patent attorneys, every single one of them had been turned down as not being an invention but just an embellishment on an already patented idea.

Some of the dirty work was left to me. I have been criticized for serving Allen Klein in this task, but I unhappily agreed to do the job only because I hoped the news could be delivered with kindness and dignity, instead of from Klein’s mouth.

Six employees and their staffs went in one afternoon. One of the most regrettable firings of the day was Ron Kass. Since it was such a nice sunny spring day, I asked him to take a walk with me and told him the bad news on Savile Row. Kass was deeply hurt but not surprised. Klein had seemed especially resentful of Kass all along. Kass was doing an excellent job with the record company and ran the division with pride—and corresponding autonomy as far as Klein was concerned. But Kass believed that Klein’s resentment over him was due less to a power struggle in business than to the fact that Klein wanted to live in the luxurious town house Kass occupied. Apple was picking up the tab, as part of Kass’ contract, on a picturesque town house on South Street in Mayfair, and Klein was searching for a permanent place to live in London.

Klein had launched an out-and-out campaign against Kass. One day Klein had requested a meeting in my office with all four Beatles, Yoko, Neil, and Ron Kass. Klein opened a folder and produced a check that looked vaguely familiar to Kass. It was from Capitol Records in New York, and it was made out to Kass for $1,250. Kass remembered the check after seeing the date. It was made out on the first official day of his employment with Apple Records, on the day that John and Paul had arrived in New York to publicize the opening of Apple. The English currency laws allowed an English resident to take only £50 in cash out of the country, and the two Beatles needed more spending money than that. Kass had requested that Capitol Records advance them some cash, but the accounting department refused, afraid of getting involved in English tax matters. Instead, they agreed to give Kass a check made out to him, which Kass could cash at their New York bank. The S1,250 would subsequently be paid back to them by Apple in London.

“What happened to dis money?” Klein demanded, waving the check in the air.

Kass recounted the incident, ending by turning to Neil to whom he had given the S1,250 on the Chinese Junk in Manhattan Harbor. Neil shrugged. “I hardly remember being in New York let alone taking the twelve hundred dollars,” he said.

Ron was indignant. “Surely you don’t think I stole twelve hundred and fifty dollars on my first day of work?” The Beatles all said they believed him, but Kass could see from the expressions on their faces that Klein had planted a seed of doubt, and they would never fully trust him again.

When we returned to 3 Savile Row, I signed over the lease of the town house that Klein wanted so badly to Ron Kass. Klein never forgave me, and that was probably the moment he put me on his hit list, but it didn’t matter. I got supreme pleasure in seeing Kass get that town house. He lives there to this day with his wife, actress Joan Collins, and their two daughters.

Another poignant redundancy that day was Alistair Taylor, who had been at Brian’s side the first moment he laid eyes on the four boys in the Cavern Club. Alistair had not only been a loyal friend and supporter, but he was probably the most frugal of all their employees. When I broke the news to him he choked back tears. At first he refused to believe it and spent the rest of the day on the phone in his office trying to reach Paul or John to hear it from them directly, but neither of them would take his calls. Alistair never heard from or saw any of them again, except indirectly through an article in the
Daily Mail.
A reporter came to 3 Savile Row to interview Alistair as he cleaned out his desk. “It was a hell of a blow,” he said, shaking his head. When Paul was asked for comment, he said, “It isn’t possible to be nice about giving someone the sack,” and I wondered how he would know since I was the one who was doing it.

Klein’s number-one man, Peter Howard, moved into 3 Savile Row and took over financial expenditures. The waiting room was cleared of loonies and eccentrics, and the feeling of joy that had once pervaded the building descended into gloom. All the employees were now asked to sign in and out on time cards. When Klein and his staff would pull up at the front door in his limousine, the Apple Scruffs would stick their heads through the front door and yell, “Mafia’s coming!”

An associate of Kass’ named Jack Oliver was named head of Apple Records. Shortly after, Peter Asher resigned his position, taking James Taylor with him. Asher went on to become one of the music business’s premier record producers, noted in particular for his work with Linda Ronstadt.

Three Savile Row had turned into a mausoleum just waiting for a death.

chapter Eighteen

—Derek Taylor

T
hrough all this, through the in-fighting and the hectic meetings and the fiascos of Nemperor and Northern Songs, John and Yoko managed to keep involved in a myriad number of astonishing projects. These included recordings of experimental music, 16 mm films, and the continuation of their peace campaign in which acorns were solicited from fans all over the world and mailed to the heads of governments. There was also more baggism, in which the couple appeared inside large canvas bags and made noises at public events, and the purchase of an island called Dornish, intended as a retreat but quickly given away to a band of traveling hippies to use as a commune. Also during this time, on April 22, 1969, John changed his name from John Winston Lennon to John Ono Lennon in a brief ceremony on the roof of 3 Savile Row presided over by the Commissioner of Oaths. John happily told an attending reporter. “Yoko changed her name for me; I’ve changed mine for her… It gives us nine O’s between us, which is good luck… Three names is enough for anyone, four would be greedy.”

John and Yoko also formed their own company called Bag Productions and took over what had been Ron Kass’ ground-floor office. The once shining white room was slowly transformed into a messy assemblage of magazines, newspapers, memorabilia, gifts from fans, spilled coffee, and butt-filled ashtrays. The white walls were strewn with handwritten signs saying “Peace,” “Hair Peace,” and “Baggism Peace.” In this office they continued to welcome the curious press and were available to any qualified journalist providing them a platform from which to further their dogma. John’s hair grew longer and stringier, and at times he and Yoko looked like refugees from some poor hippie commune.

On May 9,1969, on the small Apple subsidiary label called Zapple, John and Yoko released
Unfinished Music No.2—Life with the Lions.
This album was presumably the next edition in the musical diary of the couples’ adventures, this installment covering the time from her first miscarriage up to the present. It had another unfortunate cover. The front was a dismal shot taken in the Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital, with John lying on the floor next to Yoko in her hospital bed. The back cover was the pitiful photo of them surrounded by police after their drug court appearance. The album inside was no less unpleasant than its package. The first side featured a twenty-six-minute live recording of John and Yoko’s performance at Mitchell Hall in Cambridge the previous March in which Yoko yodeled and shrieked in counterpoint to John’s syncopated guitar feedback. It also included the debut of what was to become Yoko’s signature piece, the astonishing “Don’t Worry, Kyoko, Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow,” written for Yoko’s daughter. Side two included Yoko singing stories from a newspaper, with John chanting in the background, and a four-minute segment of the heartbeat of the baby that Yoko miscarried. The album was scathingly reviewed and largely ignored by the public, except as a curiosity. The other Beatles, although they obviously hated it, kept silent.