The Beatles are reborn every time a new generation discovers their music, and time has allowed us to understand and even forgive some of the most painful episodes in the band’s history. The British auction house Dawsons sold this Thursday at its headquarters in Maidenhead, for almost 11,000 euros (9,000 pounds), more than 300 legal and accounting documents, from law firms and courts that for years had to address the complicated legal framework of the separation of the group.
The starting price was around 6,000 euros, so the final bid has exceeded expectations.
The legendary producer Brian Epstein, without whom it is impossible to understand the history of the Fab Fourthe fabulous four teenagers from Liverpool, had died in 1967. Also John Lennon, murdered at the doors of the Dakota building in New York. Both Lennon’s widow and heir to his rights, Yoko Ono, as well as George Harrison and Ringo Starr, had left their legal representation in the hands of Allen Klein, who did not know the history of the band nor had financial experience.
Paul McCartney decided to sue his colleagues and the record company Apple Corps Limited, the label under which all the Beatles’ albums were published. The band ended their brief history in the early 1970s, but it was not until late 1974 that the British courts officially sanctioned the split.
McCartney has spent decades trying to straighten out a sour, sometimes unfair story in which he has to play the role of evil. “I had to fight the only way I could, and that was by suing the other members of the group, to prevent them from ending up in Klein’s hands,” he explained to the BBC in 2021, during an interview. Months passed in which the band no longer existed, that was an incontestable fact, but it was still legally alive, because Kein asked for more time to put the financial matters in order. McCartney suspected that the manager was rather trying to appropriate the group’s music.
Chaos Documents
The documents auctioned contain the band’s partnership deed, with its corresponding copies; the demand notices that arrived at the respective addresses of Lennon or Harrison, in New York and London; and above all, the detailed minutes of the lawyers’ meetings, in which the multiple details and doubts arising from a story with very convoluted legal aspects were discussed.
“It would be impossible to exaggerate the complexity of the different legal agreements made between Messrs. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starkey (Richard Starkey was Ringo Starr’s real name) (…) Even if the four Beatles never performed as a group anymore, It is not inaccurate to say that the purpose of their association has already completely disappeared. The question that needs to be asked is where the money has gone,” says one of the notes compiled in the minutes.
During legal discussions, various doubts arise. For example, about the lack of a written agreement that made it clear that the group’s original drummer, Pete Best, was replaced by Ringo Starr. Or the discrepancies of the latter about the way in which the legendary was finally produced, edited and published The White Album.
But, above all, the bulk of the discussions revolved around the inability of Klein and his companies, ABKCO Music and Records Inc, to produce and deliver all the group’s accounting and tax information since 1966, which represented a serious conflict. with the British Treasury.
“It occurred to me when I was reading the documents,” said Denise Kelly, spokesperson for the auction house Dawsons, “that, if I were a screenwriter, all this material would be enough for me to tell the real story behind the breakup. from one of the most successful bands in history.”