Alan Klein

Allen Klein (December 18, 1931 – July 4, 2009) was an American businessman whose aggressive negotiation tactics affected industry standards for compensating recording artists.

He founded ABKCO Music & Records Incorporated.

Klein increased profits for his musician clients by negotiating new record company contracts.

He first scored monetary and contractual gains for Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen, one-hit rockabillies of the late 1950s, then parlayed his early successes into a position managing Sam Cooke, and eventually managed the Beatles and the Rolling Stones simultaneously, along with many other artists, becoming one of the most powerful individuals in the music industry during his era.

Rather than offering financial advice and maximizing his clients' income, as a business manager normally would, Klein set up what he called "buy/sell agreements" where a company that Klein owned became an intermediary between his client and the record label, owning the rights to the music, manufacturing the records, selling them to the record label, and paying royalties and cash advances to the client.

Although Klein greatly increased his clients' incomes, he also enriched himself, sometimes without his clients' knowledge.

An indifferent student, he graduated from Weequahic High School in 1950; fellow graduate Philip Roth was the only classmate to sign his yearbook.

In early work experience with a magazine and newspaper distribution company he showed skill with numbers, and learned about how profits were often concealed from those who had been crucial in generating them.

Eventually he would realize that much the same situation existed in popular music, where labels routinely took much profit from the transitory careers of the artists who created the profit-generating music, paying them less than what Klein thought they should.

Klein enlisted in the US Army in 1951, where he served as a clerk typist on Governors Island, New York.

After military service, and with the assistance of the G.I. Bill, Klein majored in accounting at Upsala College, graduating in June 1957, and was hired by a Manhattan accounting firm, Joseph Fenton and Company.

He was assigned to assist Joe Fenton in an audit of a music publishers' organization, the Harry Fox Agency, and several record companies, including Dot Records, Liberty Records, and Monarch Records.

In an early setback to Klein's career, he was fired by Joseph Fenton and Company after four months because of chronic lateness.

The company wrote to the State of New Jersey urging officials not to approve him as a Certified Public Accountant, and Klein chose not to take the examination.

He briefly attended law school but soon dropped out.

Aided by his friendship with music publisher Don Kirshner, a fellow alumnus of Upsala College, Klein worked as an accountant for the next several years, assisted by Henry Newfeld, a CPA who was a friend from school and the Army, and Marty Weinberg, another CPA, under the name Allen Klein and Company.

Klein's clients included Ersel Hickey, Dimitri Tiomkin, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gormé, Sam Cooke, Buddy Knox, Jimmy Bowen, Lloyd Price, Neil Sedaka, Bobby Darin, Bobby Vinton, Scepter Records, and the estate of Mike Todd.

A key early contact was attorney Marty Machat, who frequently performed legal work for Klein over the years.

Cooke had scored four top ten hits between 1957 and 1963, including his number one hit, "You Send Me," among 33 records in the top 100 in that period.

Although Cooke was clearly making his label, RCA Records, a great deal of money, label executives nonetheless repeatedly refused to honor his many requests for a review of his accounts.

Klein forced the reluctant label to open its books for a thorough audit.

Shortly afterward, RCA agreed to re-negotiate Cooke's contract.

Klein secured for his client a genuinely groundbreaking deal.

Cooke created a holding company, Tracey Ltd., which was named after Cooke's middle daughter.

In June 1958, Klein married Betty Rosenblum, a Hunter College student seven years his junior.

The couple had three children.

Klein acquired a reputation as a tough negotiator who could bring money to his clients.

Two of them, rockabilly singers Knox and Bowen, were owed royalties by Roulette Records.

Morris Levy, co-owner of Roulette, was feared because of his organized crime connections.

He was known to pay artists as little as possible.

Klein persuaded him to pay Knox and Bowen the royalties they were owed over a four-year period.

Klein's success with the Knox and Bowen negotiation brought him new clients, and he and Levy became lifelong friends.

In 1963, Klein began a business partnership with Jocko Henderson, an urbane black disc jockey who had daily radio shows in both Philadelphia and New York.

Henderson hosted lavish, profitable live rhythm and blues shows at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and formed a partnership with Klein to begin doing the same in Philadelphia.

As Henderson's partner, Klein was introduced to Sam Cooke, a pre-eminent talent who was equally adept at writing, producing, and performing his numerous hit records.

The Rolling Stones' $1.25 million advance from the Decca Records label in 1965, for example, was deposited into a company that Klein had established, and the fine print of the contract did not require Klein to release it for 20 years.

Klein's involvement with both the Beatles and Rolling Stones would lead to years of litigation and, specifically for the Rolling Stones, accusations from the group that Klein had withheld royalty payments, stolen the publishing rights to their songs, and neglected to pay their taxes for five years; thus had necessitated their French "exile" in 1971.

After years of pursuit by the IRS, Klein was convicted of the misdemeanor charge of making a false statement on his 1972 tax return, for which, in 1980, he was jailed for two months.

Klein was born in Newark, New Jersey, the fourth child and only son of Jewish immigrants.

His mother died of cancer soon afterward, and Klein lived for a time with his grandparents, then subsequently in a Jewish orphanage, until his father remarried shortly before Klein's 10th birthday.