Allen Klein (born December 18, 1931) is an American businessman and record label executive. He is best known (and somewhat notorious) for his tenacious management of rock and roll performers in the 1960s, and the subsequent hostile acquisition and control of their works. Investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission led to his trial, conviction, and prison sentence for insider trading and securities fraud.

Allen Klein was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Budapest. His father was a butcher, and his mother died before he reached the age of one. As a teenager, he worked several jobs while attending evening classes. He excelled at mental arithmetic, and graduated from Upsala College, East Orange, New Jersey, in 1956. He did bookkeeping for several show-business people, and audited record companies. In 1957 he began his own business, a partnership with his wife Betty. A couple of years later, while attending a wedding, he met singer Bobby Darin. He asked Darin "How would you like to make $100,000?" A stunned Darin asked what he had to do. "Nothing," was Klein's reply. He then pursued Darin's record company for what he regarded as monies owed to the singer. Darin let Klein audit his accounts and received the cheque, exactly as promised. This 'no win, no fee' approach became his trademark. Record industry insiders began to fear his blunt-speaking tenacity, and celebrities began to recommend him.

Following the death of his son in 1963, Sam Cooke started to take control of all aspects of his career. He demanded his own record company. Allen Klein became his business manager (a role which never previously existed), someone who would take the artist's side in negotiations with the recording industry. He secured an unprecedented agreement, with Cooke starting a new label (Tracey Records) that would own the rights to all of his future recordings (it would be distributed, at first, by RCA), site fees, gate revenues for concerts, 10% of all records sold, and back royalties. Allen Klein forever changed the relationship between record company and artist.

When Cooke died in 1964, Cooke's wife Barbara became the owner of Tracey Records. She later sold these rights to Allen Klein.

Cameo Records was formed in 1956 and Parkway, a subsidiary, was formed in 1958. They were based in Philadelphia and specialised in pop music for the teen market. They had run out of hits by1964, but struggled on until 1967, when Klein bought them, together with rights to music by The Animals, Herman's Hermits, Bobby Rydell, ? and The Mysterians, Chubby Checker and recordings produced by Mickie Most. The music of Cameo Parkway was made available to the public in 2005.

Andrew Loog Oldham was losing his battle with drugs in 1965. Allen Klein then took over from him, as business manager of The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger had studied at the London School of Economics and was initially impressed enough with Klein's business skills to recommend him to Paul McCartney. Not long after, Jagger started to doubt Klein's trustworthiness. By the late 1960s the Stones decided to fire Klein, and set up their own business structure in 1970 - however a legal settlement meant giving Klein the rights to most of their songs recorded before 1971.

Since the death of Brian Epstein, The Beatles had been without a manager per se, although NEMS, headed by Epstein's brother Clive, had been taking care of day-to-day business, with Peter Brown acting as liaison to both the Beatles and the Epsteins, and Paul McCartney steering the band artistically . Without a performing schedule, and with recording and filming dates in their own hands, the Beatles had not needed a traditional kind of manager. They had, however, gradually lost many of the people Epstein had made business deals with early in their career, such as Dick James and Dr. Walter Strach, which had secured the band financially. They were used to asking for something to be done, without thinking of the price; much of Apple Corps had been set up in this way. Epstein had been the one to put the brakes on spending, talk over practicalities, and say "no". This had been all but forgotten. Without a damper, the band had overspent, and overtrusted, and problems arose.

By 1969, Apple Corps was in a financial mess, and it was becoming obvious that a business brain was needed to sort things out. Several names were considered, including Lord Beeching. Paul McCartney favoured Lee Eastman (father of McCartney's wife, Linda) as the man for the job, a suggestion that did not sit well with the other three Beatles, as they felt that Eastman would be batting for McCartney's interests ahead of those of the rest of the group. Klein contacted John Lennon after reading Lennon's press comment that the Beatles would be "broke in six months" if things continued as they were.



After a meeting at the Dorchester Hotel in London's Hyde Park, where Klein impressed Lennon with both his in-depth knowledge of Lennon's work and his tough 'streetwise' attitude and language, Lennon convinced George Harrison and Ringo Starr that Klein should take over instead. Paul McCartney agreed to pose for photographs with Klein as a show of unity, pretending to sign a new contract, but he never put his signature on the paper. This fundamental disagreement about who should manage them, fuelled by a decade-long build up of resentments and insecurity about other matters such as power and influence within the group, was one of the key factors in the eventual break-up of The Beatles.

The Apple label was struggling, and Klein offered to work for a percentage of their increased business only. In 1969, he re-negotiated their contract with EMI, granting them the highest royalties ever paid to an artist at that time; 69 cents per $6-7 album. He oversaw the issuing of the single "Something"/"Come Together". His contacts enabled him to recruit Phil Spector for the album and film Let It Be.

On the other hand, Klein also managed to alienate many of the people who had previously been part of The Beatles' business and personal circle, with his abrasive style of management and negotiation. His cost-cutting measures at Apple Corps included what was considered by some as 'cold-blooded' firing of many of the employees that had flocked to The Beatles' experiment in commune-business, including the erratic Magic Alex and old Epstein minion and friend Alistair Taylor. He also closed the Zapple Records imprint. He spoke occasionally at Apple and Beatles press conferences; a reporter for the London Evening Standard remarked later that Klein "must have set some kind of record for unprintable language" at one such conference.

In spite of Klein's financial successes for the Beatles, McCartney continued to distrust Klein. McCartney eventually sued the other three Beatles for what he called 'a divorce', and the Beatles as a business unit came to an end. Klein made his final settlements with Lennon, Harrison and Starr in 1977. In 1978, he was parodied by John Belushi as "Ron Decline" in the TV film All You Need Is Cash.

Klein helped John Lennon and Yoko Ono with their film Imagine, and helped George Harrison to organise the Concert for Bangladesh. It was here that his reputation started to unravel. Rather than prearrange matters with UNICEF, Klein waited until after the concert to approach them, leading to questions about the proceeds, and finally a US tax investigation. While a check was cut at the time, additional proceeds meant for UNICEF were frozen in an escrow account until the 1980s. Also, Klein had sided with Harrison in believing Yoko Ono should not perform at the concert, wanting Lennon to appear without her, causing Lennon to cool on Klein. (He later took out his feelings toward Klein in "Steel And Glass", which appeared on his 1974 album Walls and Bridges.) After several suits and countersuits, Klein settled for a final payment of £3.5 million.

It turned out Klein and George Harrison were not completely finished with each other. While Klein had supported and advised Harrison during the first phase of his "My Sweet Lord" lawsuit, Klein later bought Bright Tunes, the music publishing company that sued Harrison, thus becoming his legal opponent. A judge ruled later that Klein had unfairly switched sides in the lawsuit, and it counted against Klein in court. (Harrison ultimately became the owner of "He's So Fine", the song at the heart of the case.)

Klein acquired the rights to all of The Rolling Stones' recordings from the 1960s and two from the 1970s. Klein's ABKCO label released the rarest of all Stones albums, Songs Of The Rolling Stones (1975). By the late 1990s, some of the 1960s albums were becoming hard to acquire on CD. Finally, in 2002, Allen's son Jody Klein oversaw a re-mastering of the 1960s albums, to much acclaim. Outside the US, they are licenced to Universal, now owner of their original home, Decca.

Klein bought the rights to music produced by Phil Spector, such as the Philles Records and Phil Spector International catalogues, in the 1980s.

Klein produced a triology of spaghetti westerns starring and written by Tony Anthony (actor) copying Clint Eastwood's The Man With No Name. A Stranger In Town and The Stranger Returns were released in the USA by MGM. A dispute with MGM over the last one The Silent Stranger led to it not being released for seven years after production. Klein and Anthony also collaborated on the film Blindman featuring Ringo Starr as a Mexican bandido.

John Lennon, after seeing and being impressed with Chilean cult film director Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo, persuaded Allen Klein, who was his manager at the time, to buy the rights and bankroll Jodorowsky's next film, The Holy Mountain (1973). The Jodorowsky-Klein collaboration was an artistic success but plans for a follow-up never materialized. Witnessing the commercial success of hard-core pornographic films, such as Deep Throat and The Devil In Miss Jones, which broke through to the mainstream, Klein saw similar potential in Pauline Réage's sado-erotic bestseller Story Of O, but Jodoroswky walked out on the deal. In retribution, Klein withdrew every print of El Topo and The Holy Mountain and turned down all subsequent requests by film festivals from around the world to show them. Effectively, the two films were withdrawn from circulation for more than thirty years, with sporadic, illegal (bootleg) appearances on video -- of usually bad quality. Jodorowsky publicly endorsed those pirate copies of his work, since he was unable to show it otherwise, in any case. The legal battle that resulted from Klein's decision to withdraw the films, ended in 2004, when his son, Jody Klein, telephoned Jodorowsky and effected a reconciliation. In response to the films' re-appearance, both Cannes and London film festivals currently organise gala screenings. Both films are currently out also in DVD format.

On their song "Bittersweet Symphony", the British rock group The Verve sampled an orchestration from The Rolling Stones' "The Last Time", the rights to which are owned by Allen Klein's ABKCO Industries. Before the release of the album, The Verve negotiated a licensing agreement with Klein, who administers the Stones catalogue, to use the sample (at least the composition rights to the sample). In 1997, The Verve's album Urban Hymns peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard charts. A bitter legal battle ensued, resulting in The Verve turning over 100% of the royalties to ABKCO. Klein argued that The Verve had violated the previous licensing agreement by using too much of the sample in their song. The Verve argued that Klein got greedy when the song became successful. Capitalizing off the success of the song, Klein licensed The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" to Nike, who proceeded to run a multi-million dollar television campaign using The Verve's song over shots of its sneakers. Klein also allowed the song to be used in advertisements for Vauxhall automobiles. (Additionally, though the song was authored by The Rolling Stones, the Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra performed the sampled recording, and also filed suit upon the success of the song. When "Bittersweet Symphony" was nominated for a Grammy Award, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones were named as the nominees, and not The Verve).