On December 31, 1970, Paul McCartney sued John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr in the High Court of Justice in London, England for the legal dissolution of the band’s partnership. At the time, McCartney’s move may have been considered the beginning of the end of The Beatles, but it ultimately salvaged the band’s control over their music catalog, ownership of Apple Corps Limited, and more through the present day.
“I was thought to be the guy who broke The Beatles up and the bastard who sued his mates,” said McCartney in 2020. “And, believe me, I bought into that. It was so prevalent that for years I almost blamed myself.”
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A Long, Winding Road with Allen Klein
Problems first arose when the band hired New York City accountant Allen Klein as their manager shortly after forming Apple Corps in 1968.
The rest of the band (Lennon, Harrison, and Starr) wanted to work with Klein, who founded ABKCO Music & Records Incorporated and had previously managed Sam Cooke in the early ’60s and was also working with British acts like Herman’s Hermits and Donovan.
Already suspicious of Klein from his previous, unsavory dealings with the Rolling Stones, McCartney was on the opposing side and preferred his father-in-law Lee Eastman to represent him and the band’s affairs instead. At the time, Klein was also managing the Rolling Stones, who had ongoing issues and litigations with the manager. Mick Jagger reportedly warned the band about working with Klein. “Don’t go near him,” wrote Jagger in a note to McCartney.
Shortly after he was hired, McCartney immediately had rifts with Klein. After producer Phil Spector was hired to finish what became the band’s 12th and final album Let It Be—initially produced by the band’s longtime producer George Martin—McCartney opposed the changes the new producer made to his ballad “The Long and Winding Road” and wanted it removed.
Klein’s presence only fueled the internal strife within the band. When McCartney wanted to release his self-titled solo debut before the release of Let It Be he received some pushback from the band and Klein, which prompted him to reveal that he was no longer working with the Beatles on April 10, 1970.
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Since McCartney couldn’t sue Klein directly, he went through the band. “There was no way I was going to save it for me because there was no way I was going to work that hard for all my life and see it all vanish in a puff of smoke,” said McCartney. “I also knew that, if I managed to save it, I would be saving it for them too. Because they were about to give it away. They loved this guy Klein. And I was saying, ‘He’s a fucking idiot.'”
The Beatles v. Allen Klein
In 1971, McCartney won the suit to end the Beatles, though the band’s finances were kept in receivership until all four members could mutually decide on acceptable terms of their dissolvement.
Following the lawsuit, Lennon, Harrison, and Starr continued working with Klein but refused to renew his management contract when it expired in March 1973. Klein responded by suing the Beatles and Apple Corps for $19 million.
“There are many reasons why we finally gave [Klein] the push, although I don’t want to go into the details of it,” said Lennon in an interview on Weekend World in 1973. “Let’s say possibly Paul’s suspicions were right, and the timing was right.”
Lennon later wrote “Steel and Glass,” from his 1974 album Walls and Bridges, a presumable jab at the band’s former management: Well, your mouthpiece squawks as he spreads your lies / But you can’t pull strings if your hands are tied / Well, your teeth are clean but your mind is capped / You leave your smell like an alley cat.
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“New” Music
“The only way for me to save The Beatles and Apple—and to release ‘Get Back’ by [director] Peter Jackson which allowed us to release ‘Anthology’ and all these great remasters of all the great Beatles records—was to sue the band,” said McCartney. “If I hadn’t done that, it would have all belonged to Allen Klein. The only way I was given to get us out of that was to do what I did.”
The band’s long-running legal disputes officially ended on December 29, 1974, the day the Beatles officially dissolved.
Today, McCartney and Starr, along with the estates of Lennon and Harrison still own the Apple Corps, which was behind the release of The Beatles: Rock Band video game, along with the remastering of the Beatles’ catalog, and the production of Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back documentary in 2021.
Photo: Les Lee/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
