Magic Alex MardasThe Greek TV repairman, set up in Apple Electronics by the Beatles, who promised to build an artificial sun, a telephone you told who to call, wallpaper loudspeakers, a house which hovered supported by an invisible beam, and even a flying saucer. Not one invention was made, and the recording studio he built proved unusable and was demolished. Allen Klein fired him, and he has since disappeared.
Charles MansonMessianic cult leader, adjudged responsible for the Helter Skelter murders - the killing of actress Sharon Tate and six others in California in 1969. Helter Skelter was a track from The White Album which Manson cruelly misinterpreted as the Beatles' assent to apocalypse. Manson, 61, still serving his life-sentence, continues to attract followers around the world, including some rock bands.
Allen KleinAccountant and manager of John, George and Ringo after Brian Epstein died. "Whaddya want? Money?" Klein would ask prospective clients. "You got it!" His speciality was hunting out the discrepancies in record companies' book-keeping and presenting the resulting cheque to his delighted clients. Paul's rejection of him in favour of his father-in-law, Lee Eastman, helped break up the Beatles, but his management of the others ended after four years, in 1973, with a flurry of lawsuits and a pay-off of $4.2 million. In 1979, he served two months in prison in America for income tax evasion on income from illegally selling $216,000 worth of promotional copies of George Harrison's album, The Concert for Bangladesh (royalties are not paid on promo copies). But he's still in business, living off the back catalogue of the Rolling Stones and Sam Cooke, and managing the producer Phil Spector, who was owed royalties Klein retrieved in traditional fashion.
Additional background material on Allen Klein & Apple: The Culture: 12 November 1995, The Real Fifth Beatle: With a little help from their roadie
|