Maybe the world's ending next year, and the Beatles' organization knows, and the rest of us don't. Nothing else - apart from blatant exploitation of the various Lennon anniversaries - can explain the quite phenomenal (and indeed ridiculous) profusion of Beatles product that's been aimed in our direction over the past month, and the month yet to come.
I don't expect any sympathy for a second, but for more than 20 years, I was in the very fortunate position of being a journalist who was sent almost all Beatles-related product for free. I tried very hard back then to think myself into the position of being an Ordinary Person who had to pay for their music, but it's difficult until it happens to you.
Which it did, to me, a few years back, and now I get nothing for free, and I only get to hear new Beatles releases if I pay for them. So like everyone else, I'm having to be very choosy about what I buy, and what I don't buy. I've already given you my pre-release reaction to the new Lennon packages in a previous post. Here's how I'm feeling about the rest . . .
LENNON BOX OF VISION: I missed this last time, and I'm missing the point of it now. It's more than £100, and it's like a conceptual box, to put things in, and it has a book with pictures of the albums that I bought in the 70s, and still have on the shelves. No, still don't get it.
BAND ON THE RUN: Four different versions of this on 1st November: the single-album digipak (pointless); the 2-CD/1-DVD edition (only £1 more than the basic version on Amazon); the 2-LP vinyl edition; and the 3-CD/1-DVD super deluxe edition. The 2-CD/1-DVD set has the original album, a shortish CD of 'rarities' (singles plus tracks from the One Hand Clapping film), and a DVD with promo footage and, so it seems, One Hand Clapping in full. That's £15.99 from UK Amazon; whereas for £71.99 (NOT a misprint), you can buy the same set in enlarged packaging with an extra CD carrying an audio documentary about the making of the album. Er - didn't you offer us that last time you reissued this album, Paul? And what's with the price differential? Madness. I might treat myself to the £15.99 edition, though.
1962-1966/1967-1970: Remastered, but what's really striking is the price. These double-sets sell for £8.95 each on Amazon, but they used to cost about £22 each for the unremastered editions. And that tells you everything you need to know about the current state of the music business. If you're really rich, you can buy the two compilations as a box set - which actually costs several pounds MORE than buying the two sets individually. Very strange.
APPLE REISSUES: I already have almost all of the 1991 CDs, so do I really want to buy the new editions for a handful of bonus tracks? Probably not, though I'm enough of a James Taylor fan to want the four extra songs, so I might splash out on that one. I'm much more interested in the Best Of Apple 2-CD set, though I'm devastated by the fact that it doesn't include one of the greatest singles ever issued by anybody, ever - 'Road To Nowhere' by Trash. It's like reissuing Sgt. Pepper and leaving 'A Day In The Life' off. I see that we will shortly be able to buy all of these reissues in (what else?) a box set, though I haven't yet managed to discover whether we'll get anything extra if we do (apart from a box, that is).
RAVI SHANKAR's COLLABORATIONS: Collaborations with George Harrison, that is, including the two albums the sitar genius made for Dark Horse Records, the lovely Chants Of India set from the late 90s, and a DVD of the 1974 concert by the Ravi Shankar Music Festival. I have to admit that this appeals to me. But . . . it's almost £50, and realistically, how often would I play it? Twice? Once? Or would I actually look at the packaging, think 'That's lovely' and not actually play it at all?
Without duplicating different versions of the same releases, fans could end up paying £125+ for the Lennon Signature Box, £100+ for the Box Of Vision, £21 for the Beatles compilation box, £50 for the Harrison/Shankar, £150-odd for the Apple box - and don't forget that bargain offer from Paul, the £71.99 edition of Band On The Run. Pause for some mental arithmetic . . . I make that more than £500 in total. In return, you'd get the bonus CD of Lennon rarities, two discs of McCartney bonuses, the Shankar DVD, and some bonus tracks by non-Beatles - plus lots of music that you've already bought on at least one occasion, maybe many times over. And in the middle of a recession?
There's simply no way that the market can stand this much new Beatles product condensed into such a short space of time, so I predict that sales for most of these items are going to fall way below corporate expectations. As someone who wants to hear new music rather than fill my shelves with duplicates, I'll buy the Stripped Down version of Double Fantasy, the most reasonable of the McCartney sets, and probably the Best Of Apple. The rest? It's Christmas, it's marketing, and as a great man once said, it's all too much for me to take. I want to be a fan and buy new Beatles albums, honest, but sometimes they just make it too hard.
Showing posts with label Apple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apple. Show all posts
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
Monday, 7 June 2010
Heroes & Villains No. 2: Allen Klein
"Mr Klein does not give interviews", I was told politely and repeatedly when I attempted to contact the person who was - alongside Yoko Ono - the most controversial figure in the entire Beatles story. I'd assumed that he simply didn't wish to revisit a period of his life that had been financially lucrative, but had (indirectly) led him to a US prison cell, and to public denigration by virtually every commentator. No doubt that was true, but when Klein died last summer, another more pressing reason for his silence became apparent. For years, he had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
What made Klein so controversial? The simple fact that his appointment as manager of "the Apple group of companies" - and therefore, by extension, the Beatles - marked the parting of the financial ways between (on the one hand) Paul McCartney, and (on the other) the rest of the Beatles. The full story is in my book; suffice to say here that McCartney wished to be managed by his father-in-law, Lee Eastman, while Lennon, Harrison and Starkey all feared that Eastman would inevitably be biased towards Paul and against them. Lennon met Klein in January 1969, and within the week he'd been put in charge (initially alongside Eastman) of the Beatles' tangled financial affairs. Several months later, the three-man Beatle alliance signed a management contract with Klein, but McCartney refused to add his signature, and from that moment on, there was no hope that the Beatles could survive as a viable business entity.
All this is common knowledge. And it's equally accepted that Klein was a villain, a charlatan, a con-merchant - you can add your own insults. Two things puzzled me, however. If Klein was such a bad egg, how come Lennon, Harrison and Starkey didn't sack him as their manager until 1973? They not only led his appointment stand at the end of each year of his initial three-year contract, but actually retained his services in 1972, when it would have been just as easy to let him go. Also, if Klein was really as unpleasant a character as all previous Beatles biographers have claimed, how did they fall for his charms in the first place?
The deeper I delved into his reign at Apple, the more admiration I had for his business brain, and for his sheer panache. Klein threw himself at the Beatles' affairs with the same reckless enthusiasm and unfailing eye for a dollar that he had already displayed as a financial adviser to Bobby Darin, Sam Cooke, Donovan, the Rolling Stones and many more. He uncovered plenty of money that was owed to the Beatles, but would never have found its way into their coffers if he hadn't known which rocks to turn over. He won them the most lucrative recording deal ever agreed up to that point - though it was slightly unfortunate that by the time the deal was on the table, the Beatles could no longer stand to be in the same room as each other. And he turned the money-burning hippie utopia of Apple into a fully functioning, profit-making record company, even if he had to sacrifice all of its original ideals along the way.
Against all this, you have to balance the fact that he also blinded the Beatles with financial wizardry so slick that they, and their other advisers, completely failed to notice that he was claiming much more commission on their earnings than he was entitled to. "So what?", Klein would probably have said. "They're still much richer than they would have been if I hadn't helped them out." And he'd have been right. He skirted along the edges of the law, though, and his cavalier method of selling off copies of Apple albums that had been written off as promotional items (and therefore didn't generate any royalties for artists or songwriters) eventually led him to a New York courtroom on charges of tax evasion, and a two-month jail sentence in 1980.
Ultimately, Klein was hardly the first pop manager to cream a little extra for himself off the top of his clients' pot; and hardly the worst offender, either (hello Colonel Parker). But he was (a) an American, (b) not a gentleman in the Brian Epstein tradition, (c) not from Liverpool, (d) intimidating, (e) brash and (f) a show-off. Several of those qualities endeared him to John Lennon, but they all counted against him as far as Paul McCartney was concerned. Not that McCartney absolutely rejected everything that Klein did, as my book reveals . . .
When the UK edition was published last year, somebody asked me why I was so biased towards Klein in my narrative. I didn't, and don't, think I was, so the question surprised me. Then I realised that I was just about the first person to write about the Beatles who didn't start from the premise that Klein was 100% evil. Other Beatles biographers have been very unkind to him; I hope I've tilted the balance back a little in his favour, without seeking to disguise any of the mistakes he made.
One thing is certain. Allen Klein's cardinal sin was that he wasn't the right person to keep the Beatles together in 1969. Only one man could have done that - Brian Epstein. And sadly he had died two years earlier.
What made Klein so controversial? The simple fact that his appointment as manager of "the Apple group of companies" - and therefore, by extension, the Beatles - marked the parting of the financial ways between (on the one hand) Paul McCartney, and (on the other) the rest of the Beatles. The full story is in my book; suffice to say here that McCartney wished to be managed by his father-in-law, Lee Eastman, while Lennon, Harrison and Starkey all feared that Eastman would inevitably be biased towards Paul and against them. Lennon met Klein in January 1969, and within the week he'd been put in charge (initially alongside Eastman) of the Beatles' tangled financial affairs. Several months later, the three-man Beatle alliance signed a management contract with Klein, but McCartney refused to add his signature, and from that moment on, there was no hope that the Beatles could survive as a viable business entity.
All this is common knowledge. And it's equally accepted that Klein was a villain, a charlatan, a con-merchant - you can add your own insults. Two things puzzled me, however. If Klein was such a bad egg, how come Lennon, Harrison and Starkey didn't sack him as their manager until 1973? They not only led his appointment stand at the end of each year of his initial three-year contract, but actually retained his services in 1972, when it would have been just as easy to let him go. Also, if Klein was really as unpleasant a character as all previous Beatles biographers have claimed, how did they fall for his charms in the first place?
The deeper I delved into his reign at Apple, the more admiration I had for his business brain, and for his sheer panache. Klein threw himself at the Beatles' affairs with the same reckless enthusiasm and unfailing eye for a dollar that he had already displayed as a financial adviser to Bobby Darin, Sam Cooke, Donovan, the Rolling Stones and many more. He uncovered plenty of money that was owed to the Beatles, but would never have found its way into their coffers if he hadn't known which rocks to turn over. He won them the most lucrative recording deal ever agreed up to that point - though it was slightly unfortunate that by the time the deal was on the table, the Beatles could no longer stand to be in the same room as each other. And he turned the money-burning hippie utopia of Apple into a fully functioning, profit-making record company, even if he had to sacrifice all of its original ideals along the way.
Against all this, you have to balance the fact that he also blinded the Beatles with financial wizardry so slick that they, and their other advisers, completely failed to notice that he was claiming much more commission on their earnings than he was entitled to. "So what?", Klein would probably have said. "They're still much richer than they would have been if I hadn't helped them out." And he'd have been right. He skirted along the edges of the law, though, and his cavalier method of selling off copies of Apple albums that had been written off as promotional items (and therefore didn't generate any royalties for artists or songwriters) eventually led him to a New York courtroom on charges of tax evasion, and a two-month jail sentence in 1980.
Ultimately, Klein was hardly the first pop manager to cream a little extra for himself off the top of his clients' pot; and hardly the worst offender, either (hello Colonel Parker). But he was (a) an American, (b) not a gentleman in the Brian Epstein tradition, (c) not from Liverpool, (d) intimidating, (e) brash and (f) a show-off. Several of those qualities endeared him to John Lennon, but they all counted against him as far as Paul McCartney was concerned. Not that McCartney absolutely rejected everything that Klein did, as my book reveals . . .
When the UK edition was published last year, somebody asked me why I was so biased towards Klein in my narrative. I didn't, and don't, think I was, so the question surprised me. Then I realised that I was just about the first person to write about the Beatles who didn't start from the premise that Klein was 100% evil. Other Beatles biographers have been very unkind to him; I hope I've tilted the balance back a little in his favour, without seeking to disguise any of the mistakes he made.
One thing is certain. Allen Klein's cardinal sin was that he wasn't the right person to keep the Beatles together in 1969. Only one man could have done that - Brian Epstein. And sadly he had died two years earlier.
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