Allen Klein: The Man Who Transformed Rock & Roll

by Fred Goodman

  As important as they’d quickly become to each other’s careers, Klein and Cooke had surprisingly little in the way of a personal relationship. “I had very little to do with Sam socially,” Allen admitted. There was one tragic exception: not long after Klein and Cooke began working together, Sam’s infant son, Vincent, drowned in the pool at Sam’s Los Angeles home. When Allen arrived in Los Angeles the following week to pay his respects, he discovered that the devastated singer had buried his grief by going right back to work. Allen told Sam he’d spent his lifetime wishing he’d had a mother and that his father hadn’t shunted him aside, and he insisted they take their daughters for a day at Disneyland. “You can’t forget you’ve got two other kids,” Allen told him. “You got to be there for them.”

  Indeed, it wasn’t until Cooke’s own death the following year that Allen finally visited Sam’s home—albeit to help his widow, Barbara, get a handle on Sam’s finances. Killed in a bizarre and seemingly senseless incident—the singer, half-naked, was shot by the desk clerk at a Hollywood fleabag motel after a woman he’d met at a party ran off with his pants and money—it was an abrupt and demeaning end to what should have been a glorious life.

  Sensational, seamy, and improbable as the facts appeared, Cooke’s death started a hotbed of rumors, and Klein himself was skeptical enough to hire a private detective to check the official police version. He was quickly convinced there wasn’t more to know. Still, a conspiracy theory needs little to flourish, and fans and disbelievers had a whole host of likely culprits to choose from, ranging from the Mob to Barbara Cooke to Allen Klein.

  The stray fact fueling this last speculation was Tracey Ltd. Just a year earlier, Klein had created the company supposedly as a tax dodge to benefit Sam Cooke. Now Cooke was dead—and the person who owned the company that controlled his recordings and to which all the rights related to the master recordings would eventually revert was Allen Klein.

  Was it luck? Prescience? Connivance? Whatever Klein had told Cooke, it soon became clear that Klein hadn’t simply stumbled into an arrangement that gave him the lion’s share of Sam’s estate.

  Theatrical producer Laurence Myers, a British business manager and an accountant by training, met Klein several months before Cooke’s death and credited Allen with altering the course of his own career. “Allen taught me something without which I wouldn’t have the lifestyle I do today,” said Myers. “‘Don’t take twenty percent of an artist’s income—give them eighty percent of yours.’ The difference between Allen and I is that I actually told them that was what was going to happen. And Allen certainly didn’t. They found out sometime later.” Myers paused. “So he was no accountant.”

  It’s tempting to speculate what might have happened with Tracey Ltd. had Cooke not died. Sam was a thoughtful businessman and far more sophisticated than most artists. As happy as he was with the initial outcome of Klein’s RCA negotiations, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t have ultimately recognized the true value of the rights and revenues remaining with Tracey and short-circuited the company, perhaps forcing a renegotiation or splitting with Klein and limiting his future participation in his recordings. Instead, the opposite happened. After Cooke’s death, Klein grew Tracey, ultimately putting out more recordings with RCA and acquiring ownership of earlier Cooke hits made for the Keen label. And more immediately, he found himself with an unexpected opportunity: Soon after Sam died, Barbara Cooke told Klein she wanted to sell the rights she’d inherited to his music publishing. Klein advised her against it, he later said, but nonetheless bought them.

  The perception that Klein stood to gain from his client’s death fueled rumors that something nefarious was afoot. Silly as the stories were, they added something new and sinister to Klein’s public and professional persona. Joe McEwen, one of the most knowledgeable A&R executives in the music business, came to work with and admire Klein in his later years. But as a young executive at Columbia Records in the seventies, he was leery of returning the routine business calls that occasionally came from Klein’s office. “There were so many wild rumors about the guy,” he said. “I thought he was some kind of mobster.” The notion that Klein was violent or threatening was laughable. What wasn’t funny was his clients’ seeming ignorance of the ways in which Allen might benefit from their relationship. Allen knew the value of a proven talent better than anyone—he literally banked on it. It was no accident that he worked exclusively with established artists looking to improve their financial situations; he was not interested in developing or helping talented unknowns and never worked with them. Indeed, when Neil Diamond was a staff songwriter for Aldon, he asked Klein to take him on, but Klein declined. Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who hired Klein as his own financial manager and asked him to renegotiate the band’s recording and publishing contracts, later observed: “Allen comes in when your harvest is not as plentiful as your expectations on the sow. And part of the price is that he gets the farm.” Regardless of the increasingly apparent cost of hiring him, Allen was attractive for two reasons. First, the artists knew the record companies were out to get them as cheaply as possible, and they were desperate for an aggressive advocate. Second, and more emphatically, Klein delivered. “He just got it quicker than everybody else and was able to do things for people and ask for numbers that had never been asked for before,” said Michael Kramer, Allen’s nephew and in-house attorney. Indeed, the deals Allen negotiated with the labels were much better than anything the artists had had before; his constructs were truly farsighted and state-of-the-art, and they were lucrative enough that he could pocket something and keep the customer satisfied. But satisfaction could be fleeting. When you hired Klein, you hired a pistolero; he’d run the rustlers and varmints out of Dodge, but then you’d have to figure out how to live with a mercenary in the sheriff’s office. Said Myers: “His whole thing going in was ‘I’m Robin Hood—I rob from the rich and give to the poor.’ That’s how he liked to see himself. He actually robbed from the rich and kept it. Maybe he gave it to the poor.” Wild rumors aside, Klein’s wheeling and dealing could indeed cost a client more than money. Although nowhere near homicide, his schemes could have painfully comic results.

  Bobby Vinton returned to his Long Island home one afternoon to discover a moving van and a crew of workers emptying his house of its furnishings. Stunned, he and his wife, Dolly, were told that the singer had been successfully sued by his prior manager and that the furniture was being seized as part of the settlement. He immediately called Klein—who was just as surprised as Vinton, of course.

  “Aah . . . yeah,” Allen said. “Marty Machat was supposed to handle it. He said he had it under control.”

  Vinton was livid.

  “My friend! I said, ‘Allen, they took the bank accounts! They took all the furniture!’ They took everything!”

  Not quite everything. The moving men couldn’t bring themselves to repossess the crib in which the Vintons’ son, Robbie, was sleeping.

  4

  * * *

  The Yiddish Invasion

  LIKE MILLIONS OF OTHERS, Allen Klein had become fixated on the Beatles, though his reason was unique. Allen knew they needed him as their business manager.

  He certainly liked and admired their music, but it was more than that. The Beatles were it—the most important act in the world. Seemingly overnight, all popular recording artists could be divided into two categories, the Beatles and everyone else—and the latter group included Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. It was more than their revolutionizing the pop world and the record business, though; their influence was total in a way rarely seen before and certainly not since. Young people wanted to walk like them, talk like them, dress like them, be them. The world had suddenly changed, and the axis was now firmly planted somewhere between Liverpool and London. All of this Allen understood as quickly and surely and intuitively as anyone. That meant they needed him—and he needed them. It was that simple. And the benefits? Incalculable. But then, those would flow simply a
s a matter of course.

  Klein didn’t even have to make the first move. Murray Kaufman, a popular New York disk jockey known as Murray the K, had cultivated a relationship with the band on their first trip to New York (Murray often referred to himself on air as “the fifth Beatle”), and he told Allen that Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager, wanted Sam Cooke as an opening act for an American tour. After booking a flight to London, Allen paid a visit to Joe D’Imperio, the RCA executive with whom he’d negotiated Cooke’s recording contract, to tell him of his upcoming trip. What kind of advance, Allen asked, would RCA be willing to pay the Beatles if he could convince them to switch record companies? D’Imperio instructed Klein to offer one million dollars and a royalty of 10 percent.

  In London, Klein relayed the offer to Epstein—but not before deciding it wouldn’t be rich enough to sway him. “I can get you two million if you take the Beatles to RCA,” Klein said, immediately fearful Epstein would agree and then discover Klein couldn’t deliver. He needn’t have worried.

  “I’m sure that’s very generous,” Epstein replied coolly, “but I have loyalty. All of my acts are at EMI and I’m loyal to EMI.” That was true enough—though that loyalty didn’t particularly benefit the Beatles.

  Epstein had discovered and was promoting the most influential act in the world, but even he couldn’t imagine how singular the Beatles’ influence and success would prove. Yes, the Beatles were a phenomenon, but few things are as transient as pop stardom. Epstein’s insurance was a growing roster of lesser and developing acts with which he hoped to build his management company, NEMS Enterprises, into a talent empire. Indeed, Epstein was juggling his own career as a TV host for a regular British segment of the American music program Hullabaloo along with those of several other Liverpool acts, including Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, and secretary turned singer Cilla Black. And while they had successfully ridden the coattails of Beatlemania—in some cases, with Beatles-penned songs—to hits on EMI, Epstein’s attention and leverage was often squandered on a host of other bands that went nowhere.

  Like Klein, Epstein had carved out his own place in the music business. But that, and the fact that Epstein was Jewish, was all they had in common. The son of successful merchants who owned a string of furniture and music shops—North End Music Stores, or NEMS—Epstein had grown up comfortable in depressed and provincial Liverpool. After weighing and then rejecting an acting career, he opted to throw his lot in with the family business. Though his primary responsibility was selling furniture, Brian was drawn to the music operation and its burgeoning record department. He kept close tabs on what was selling and wrote a regular review column for a local music tabloid that NEMS carried, Mersey Beat.

  One record that caught his attention was “My Bonnie,” by singer and guitarist Tony Sheridan, backed by a group billed as the Beat Brothers. Though recorded in Germany, the single was a strong seller for NEMS, perhaps because the Beat Brothers were actually a local Liverpool group with a growing following, the Beatles. Curious, Epstein and an employee, Alistair Taylor, ventured to the Cavern Club—literally a basement pub—for what turned out to be a packed and raucous show. Though neither particularly cared for rock ’n’ roll, Epstein and Taylor were surprised by the size and passion of the scene and floored by the frenzied reaction to the rather tough-looking, leather-jacketed band. As Taylor liked to tell it, a somewhat flummoxed Epstein asked him what, if anything, he made of it all. “I thought they were awful, quite honestly,” he replied, “but absolutely incredible.” Epstein agreed. In short order, Brian introduced himself to the band as the owner of the local record chain and offered to manage them.

  However little he knew about rock ’n’ roll, Epstein recognized the Beatles were special. The crowd at the Cavern Club was wild for them. The music had drive and was wholly alive, and, equally important, the Beatles were true showmen: funny and clever with a sharp presence and personality. Epstein took just a little edge off them—he swapped their leather jackets for matching suits and encouraged the band to bow in unison—and then used NEMS’s clout as an important record account to force labels to audition the band. Turned down at Columbia, Decca, Pye, and EMI, they finally won a contract with Parlophone, a small EMI affiliate. That was more than good enough—indeed, producer George Martin ultimately proved an ideal collaborator for the young band.

  Unlike Klein, Epstein was an impresario, not a business manager. Although Epstein could launch and guide the careers of talented unknowns to fame, he had scant skill at engineering fortune. Epstein’s own management contract was unusually generous (after going into his pocket to support the group in the early days, Epstein later commanded a whopping 25 percent of their gross income), but none of the Beatles’ deals were particularly good. Some were awful. The EMI/Parlophone contract paid minimal royalties: each of the Beatles received just a farthing—one-fourth of a penny—per single sold. Music publisher Dick James kept the lion’s share of income on songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and the Beatles’ merchandising rights were virtually given away, a blunder Brian tried to hide from the band because it may have cost them as much as a hundred million dollars, an incredible amount at the time. Paul McCartney remained grateful that Epstein recognized and promoted the Beatles, but eventually he concluded that his manager was less than qualified to create or command a worldwide music empire. “He looked to his dad for business advice,” McCartney said, “and his dad knew how to run a furniture store in Liverpool.”

  Aside from a botched attempt to correct the merchandising deal, Epstein showed little interest in seizing the Beatles’ ever-growing leverage to renegotiate their record and publishing contracts. As in his discussion with Klein, he portrayed himself as a gentleman taking the high road. Just why he thought it more important to honor an egregiously below-market contract than to speak up for his clients is a mystery, although it’s worth noting that Epstein’s management deal paid him commissions for the full life of any contract he obtained, regardless of whether he was still the manager, and he was amenable to granting extensions. But the answer likely had much to do with the British record business of the time—a classic old-boy network in which the class system was firmly entrenched and outsiders were kept keenly aware that they had little standing. Any rock ’n’ roll band signed to the prestigious EMI or Decca was advised to simply thank God, keep its collective head down, and use the service entrance. And that was likely to go double for its Jewish manager.

  “If you got a record deal with EMI or Decca you were so grateful,” recalled Myers. “They were an institution! With pressing plants and vans, you know? It was like signing a contract with Prudential Insurance: Who reads it? You’re told the terms; how dare you question them? Signing a contract with EMI was an honor.”

  Epstein’s disdain of RCA’s greener pastures didn’t put a crimp in Klein’s patter, and he didn’t miss a beat. “Do you want me to look after your American publishing?” he asked. Epstein again demurred. Klein, although disappointed, was not surprised. He certainly hadn’t come to London without a backup plan.

  Though Allen had taken Sam Cooke from the William Morris Agency, he’d nonetheless managed to cultivate Sam’s former agent, Jerry Brandt. An earnest young hustler with an early appreciation for the financial potential of the emerging rock scene, Brandt smelled real money, and he was pushing William Morris hard to expand its involvement. He was in awe of the audacious Klein, particularly the way he was becoming a key player in the business while creating opportunities for himself as often as he did for his clients. Jerry regarded Allen with an unusual, and unusually visceral, mix of admiration and envy, reverence, and repulsion. “He was the smartest man in the world,” said Brandt, “and possessed greed beyond belief. He took everything to the next level. He was the pied piper and I thought he was great.”

  Dissatisfied as an agent, Brandt hungered for a real score. Before Klein came on the scene, he’d been angling for a bigger role in Cooke’s career.
Bested, he now tried to go to school on Klein—or, better still, hook up with him. Eager to curry favor, Jerry fed Allen ideas and tips, passing along whatever he heard at the agency or on the street. Klein was more than happy to encourage him. “He captured me, called me fifty times a day,” Jerry said. “His pitch was ‘We’ll be partners.’”

  One of the British bands that Jerry was booking was the Animals, whose spine-tingling single, “The House of the Rising Sun,” was an enormous hit in the summer of 1964. An electrified version of a folk tune already recorded by numerous artists, including Dave Van Ronk, Nina Simone, and Bob Dylan, the song was ubiquitous. It was impossible to go anywhere in America that August and not hear Eric Burdon’s wailing, mournful vocal and the unearthly quiver of Alan Price’s organ; the melody floated out of every open window, car radio, and transistor at the beach. At the height of Beatlemania, the Animals owned the airwaves for a long, hot month. In early September, when Brandt kicked off the Animals’ first American tour with a two-week run at the Paramount Theater in Times Square, Klein came to the show. There, Jerry introduced him to the band’s road manager, Peter Grant.

  A former wrestler, Grant was a formidable-looking man who in later years would prove even more imposing as the larger-than-life manager of the band Led Zeppelin. At this juncture, however, Grant was still serving his apprenticeship with the Animals’ handlers, agent Don Arden and manager Mike Jeffery, two characters of which many things were rumored and little really known.

  Arden, a one-time Yiddish musical theater performer, was a tough-talking and much-feared figure in the London music business as both an agent and, later, a manager and record-company owner. Arden would cement his reputation while managing the Small Faces, first by holding the successful band members to an agreement limiting their total compensation to a weekly salary of twenty pounds each, then by reputedly holding rival manager Robert Stigwood out of a window by his feet for trying to poach the band. Also the manager of the pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, Arden grew wealthy as the owner of Jet Records, whose most successful act was the Electric Light Orchestra. Moving to California and purchasing a mansion formerly owned by Howard Hughes, Arden was ultimately eclipsed by his equally enterprising protégée and daughter, Sharon Osbourne, from whom he was largely estranged. Nonetheless, some who knew him discounted much of the menace. “He was a pretend gangster,” said Laurence Myers. Arden was, however, a genuine deadbeat.