Allen Klein - The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones

In 1965, Klein became the co-manager of The Rolling Stones. In 1966 Klein bought Andrew Loog Oldham's share of the Rolling Stones' management, though Oldham continued in his role as the band's producer until late 1967. Mick Jagger had studied at the London School of Economics and was sufficiently impressed with Klein's business acumen to recommend him to Paul McCartney. Not long afterwards though, Jagger started to doubt Klein's trustworthiness. The Stones decided to fire Klein, and set up their own business structure in 1970. However, Klein had already successfully secured himself ownership of the copyright of all of the Rolling Stones' produce while under contract with Decca. He did this by setting up a company in the USA called Nanker Phelge USA and encouraging the band to sign over all of their material to it. The band-members willingly obliged since each member had a share in a UK company named Nanker Phelge Music and had assumed that Nanker Phelge USA was the same company but with an American name. In fact, Klein had full ownership of Nanker Phelge USA. A seventeen-year legal battle ensued and the eventual settlement meant giving Klein the rights to most of their songs recorded before 1971;Keith Richards later described the settlement as "the price of an education." Klein's ABKCO label released the rarest of all Stones albums, Metamorphosis. By the late 1990s, some of the 1960s albums were becoming hard to acquire on CD. Finally, in 2002, Klein's son Jody oversaw a remastering of the 1960s albums, to much acclaim.