Allen Klein (1931-2009)
In the late '60s, he managed first Rolling Stones, then The Beatles, after their original manager, Brian Epstein, died. Both bands eventually parted company with him, although he subsequently worked with John Lennon and George Harrison after the breakup of The Beatles. Klein was widely blamed at the time for being a major cause of the band's demise, Paul McCartney having been opposed to hiring him in the first place.
Subsequent lawsuits, scathing comments, and a couple of months in jail for tax evasion had little effect on Klein. He never apologized for his cutthroat style, and, in fact, was quite proud of a plaque in his office that quoted his own parody of the 23rd Psalm in which he bragged that he would "fear no evil" because he was "the biggest bastard in the valley."
Klein died yesterday (7/4) of Alzheimer's disease, at the age of 77. Funeral service will be held Tuesday (7/7) in New York City.
Those of us who knew Allen personally don’t view him as a money making machine or a shark. He was a man who loved his family first and foremost. The rest was just gravy. May he rest in peace.
I first knew Allen Klein in 1987 when I worked for RCA in the UK. We were going to reissue a Sam Cooke single “Wonderful World”. It ended up making it to #2. I worked extensively with both him and Iris Keitel. As far as Sam Cooke is concerned, the only thing that Allen cared about was that Sam’s artistic legacy was preserved. If you got that, you got Allen Klein. That’s why we stayed in touch and even when I was working as a consultant for BMG in the early 2000s he was always very gracious, even though at that point we were on opposite “sides”, so to speak. I remember hassling him and his son Jody to release some old Christine Cooper tracks. One day, I was at ABKCO and they said “We have a surprise for you”. They had pulled here original tapes from the vault and played them for me in their own studio. Such as nice touch. He also treated his employees very well — at one point not that long ago, the average length of service at ABKCO was 18 years! My condolences to Iris, Jody and the rest of the family.