Chapter 2

Our main business is entertainment – communication. Apple is mainly concerned with fun. . . We want to devote all our energies to records, films, and our electronics adventures. We had to zoom in on what we really enjoy, and we enjoy being alive, and we enjoy being Beatles.

Paul McCartney, July 1968

I can't talk. . . I daren't put my foot anywhere.

Paul McCartney, January 1969

The summer of 1968 was a time of political ideals and wounded dreams. In Czechoslovakia the rigid communist regime had been replaced by a more liberal Marxist government which for the first time was prepared to allow its citizens to sample the exotic tastes of freedom beyond the Iron Curtain. In Chicago the American anti-war movement centred its scattered energies on the Democratic Party's national convention, as if protesting to the president would end the conflict in Vietnam. Then, in late August, Russian tanks swept aside Czechoslovakia's 'communism with a human face', and Chicago police clubbed demonstrators to the ground outside the convention hall. Like the French union of strikers and students that had briefly threatened to seize power in Paris that spring, the crusades of East and West had ended in betrayal and despair.

The Beatles' Apple organisation grew out of that same flowering of hope and fantasy. 'If any of our dreams could come true, ' Derek Taylor recalled, 'we would protect them as best we could. '

'There is no profit motive, ' Paul McCartney's spokesman Barry Miles insisted that summer, 'as the Beatles' profits go first to the combined staff and then are given away to the needy. ' Apple might be a corporation, he said, affiliated to the multinational EMI conglomerate, but it could still 'represent the workers seizing control of the means of production'. The Beatles' decision in July to close the Apple Boutique and give away its contents seemed to confirm the purity of their intentions. Yet the closure was a business move, not a political gesture, and suggested that the group were struggling to adapt to commercial reality. 'Everyone had their own autonomy, ' Taylor said, 'and all of it cost money. '

Such qualms were overshadowed by the stunning debut of Apple Records. 'Hey Jude' and 'Those Were the Days' ensured that the company enjoyed instant success, but Apple's plans went far beyond mainstream pop. They were planning to launch a pioneering series of 'disposable records' – the aural equivalent of paperback books, which would offer readings or speeches by iconic figures of the age at a bargain price. There would even be albums of the Beatles in conversation, the company announced. McCartney and Harrison were prepared to spend half the year in California, to establish Apple as a truly transatlantic enterprise. As proof of the company's global reach, Apple even licensed a subsidiary operation in apartheid South Africa, where Mary Hopkin's hit was translated into Afrikaans by a local performer. Sensibly, this move wasn't publicised at home as Apple's political reputation would have been tarnished.

Far more damaging was the public reaction to Lennon's adultery with Ono. When the couple launched dozens of balloons into the sky as a gesture of peace, each carrying a postcard asking its finder to respond, they were shocked by the racist abuse that they received. But there was still enormous public goodwill towards the institution of the Beatles. Their cartoon animation Yellow Submarine may have been widely criticised, with one British newspaper referring disdainfully to a 'film flop' from this 'over-exposed quartet'. But the release of 'Hey Jude' suggested that the group had never been more committed to their music, and to each other. With its rousing chorus, McCartney's song encapsulated the widespread feeling among Western youth that political setbacks could never shake their solidarity.

Beyond their record sales, the Beatles' earning potential appeared to be limitless. 'Magic' Alexis Mardas had invented a telephone that would respond automatically to spoken commands. The American corporation AT& T tabled an offer of one million dollars for exclusive rights – which the Beatles rejected, instinctively feeling that Mardas's gadget was worth more. No further bids were forthcoming, and the telephone was never manufactured. There were even higher hopes for another Mardas scheme. In a strange precursor of the 'Home taping is killing music' campaign of the 1980s and the 21st century concern about illegal downloads, Lennon and McCartney feared that record sales would suffer if the newly devised cassette tape recorder went into mass circulation. Mardas developed an electronic signal that could be added to recorded sound to prevent it being copied. 'It seemed quite possible, ' noted commentator Tony Palmer in 1969, 'that within a few years, every single record sold anywhere in the world would carry this device, and thus pay to the Beatles a royalty. ' This invention would have generated more income than the group's music, but it was delayed while Mardas concentrated on the more immediate task of building the Beatles a recording studio. 'Nobody at Apple had any management skill, ' Derek Taylor explained. 'We were all amateurs. ' And not just amateurs, but under exotic influences. 'I remember going into Derek Taylor's office, ' said publisher Sean O'Mahony, 'and the entire room was a haze of cannabis. It was ridiculous – you could hardly breathe. I asked Derek for some new photos of the Beatles, and he wandered around the room in a daze, and eventually gave me some – which turned out to be the same ones I'd given them. But that was what Apple was like. '

McCartney was the only member of the Beatles who took an active interest in Apple that summer. Aware that he was the part-owner of an organisation that wasn't organised, he felt compelled to intervene but was wary of assuming too much personal responsibility: 'I wanted Apple to run; I didn't want to run Apple. '

There was another problem: after his partial estrangement from Lennon, he had lost the self-confidence that had been his mainstay. He felt, he admitted later,

like I was in an Alice in Wonderland scenario. I would say, 'Now, what's to be done here? Ah, I know, cut spending. ' That would start in my brain as a reasonable assumption but by the time it reached my mouth, it was like the devil was speaking. It was like a traitorous utterance. So I started to think my logic was suspect and that to try and make money was a suspect act. I really couldn't say anything without feeling I was being devious. And yet I knew I wasn't.

He decided, in one of the few sober assessments of that tumultuous summer, to seek help. The Beatles had rejected the idea of appointing a successor to Brian Epstein, but now McCartney discreetly approached senior business figures, none of whom had any sympathy for the counterculture. After consulting EMI boss Sir Joseph Lockwood and former Conservative Party chairman Lord Poole, he met Lord Beeching, infamous in Britain as the man charged with slashing the rail network into economic shape. Beeching offered to impose similar sanctions at Apple but advised McCartney to search for a full-time manager.

Little assistance was offered by McCartney's colleagues. 'I was getting fed up with the Beatles by that time, ' Harrison remembered, 'let alone anything else around it. ' Starkey had never wanted to be a businessman in the first place. Lennon, meanwhile, was pursuing his own agenda: art exhibitions, experimental films, all of them alongside Yoko Ono, not McCartney. The most notorious of his projects was the Two Virgins album. Its whimsical musical content was irrelevant; all attention focused on the cover artwork, which featured nude portraits of Lennon and Ono.

Every member of the Beatles' entourage remembered seeing these photos for the first time, and reacting with shock or hysterical laughter. Neil Aspinall snapped, 'I don't like it, and Paul doesn't like it, and none of the others are going to like it, and I don't care what the fuck [John] says, I don't want it coming out. ' Derek Taylor was more tolerant: 'I was very broad-minded, and my attitude was, if that's what John and Yoko want, that's fine, this is a far-out building. But I knew that it would cause problems with certain sections of the press, and it did. ' Not only the press; EMI refused to distribute the album, and its chairman advised Lennon to put someone prettier on

the cover. He suggested McCartney, who according to Lennon 'gave me long lectures about [the cover], and said, " Is there really any need for this? " It took me five months to persuade them. ' McCartney finally contributed an enigmatic sleeve note snipped at random from the pages of the Daily Express. 'All of us thought, why did he do it? ' he remarked to Starkey the following year. 'It ended up that the answer was, why not? ' For George Harrison, Two Virgins merely confirmed Lennon and Ono's arrogance. 'They got involved with each other and were obviously into each other to such a degree that they thought everything they said or did was of world importance, and so they made it into records and films. '

Two Virgins tipped the balance of public opinion so firmly against Lennon and Ono that they became easy targets. ^*4 After attending a 24-hour session for the Beatles' new album in October, the couple returned to Starkey's flat in Montague Square and were woken by the Metropolitan Police drugs squad. The officers and dogs found a small quantity of cannabis resin, which Lennon swore had been planted. The couple were arrested, and he pleaded guilty to possessing illegal drugs to save Ono – who was now pregnant – from deportation. Nobody at Apple realised that his conviction would threaten his ability to enter the United States. Soon after the bust, Ono was hospitalised, and on 21 November, 1968, she suffered a miscarriage. ^†2 In keeping with their open-ended philosophy of art, Lennon had taped the unborn baby's heartbeat. It was included on the couple's second album, Lifewith the Lions, which – as if to support Harrison's view – also featured photographs of their court appearance and Ono's hospital bed.

As the euphoria of their early months together evaporated, Lennon and Ono felt less like Edenic virgins than survivors of a medieval siege. Apple staff muttered racist comments about Ono just out of earshot; the press and public despised her; Lennon's fellow Beatles, with the exception of Starkey, barely attempted to engage with her. Lennon penned a satirical poem in which he complained about 'some of there beast friends' and wrote songs that reflected his depression: 'A Case of the Blues' and 'Everyone Had a Hard Year'. The pair even composed an epitaph for their lost baby: 'You had a very strong heartbeat, but that's gone now. Probably we'll forget about you. '

Within days of Ono's miscarriage, she and Lennon were using heroin. 'George says it was me who put John on heroin, ' Ono said later, 'but that wasn't true – John wouldn't take anything he didn't want to take. ' McCartney claimed that he had never seen Lennon on heroin, but that simply meant he didn't want to see. 'Unfortunately, he was drifting away from us at that point, ' he conceded, 'so none of us actually knew. He never told us; we heard rumours, and we were very sad. ' Even in the more innocent climate of 1968 heroin was considered decidedly more perilous than any substance the Beatles had sampled in the past. Lennon was entranced by the romantic image of the junkie/artist, and was in sufficient pain not to care how it was relieved. He would be battling against addiction for the next five years.

With Lennon distracted and Harrison uninterested, McCartney was left to maintain control. He had split from Francie Schwartz, who flew home with McCartney's parting words in her ears: 'Don't cry, I'm a cunt. I'm going out for a while, will you make dinner? ' After completing work on the Beatles' double album, he contacted photographer Linda Eastman in New York and spent the final weeks of the year there. He left behind plans for the Beatles to make their first public appearance for more than two years. Even the reluctant Harrison was briefly enthusiastic: 'I'd like to be resident in a club, with the amps there all the time so you could just walk on stage and plug in. ' Initially planned as a showcase for their new album, the concert was soon reshaped as the climax of a documentary film, to be made in January 1969, which would portray the Beatles creating and performing an entirely fresh set of material. With Lennon's approval, McCartney arranged for Twickenham Film Studios in London to be booked for the entire month, with sessions scheduled to begin every morning at ten o'clock. Just four weeks after the 30-track White Album was released, the Beatles – Lennon and McCartney, effectively – were now under pressure to compose another dozen songs.

The Beatles prepared in vastly different ways. Lennon snorted heroin, shot films and participated in a Rolling Stones TV special. Harrison experienced a more democratic form of music-making in the bucolic company of Bob Dylan's former backing musicians The Band, before staying with Dylan and his family in Woodstock. He was touched that Dylan, one of the few Western musicians he admired, did him the honour of helping him write a song – something that Lennon or McCartney had never been prepared to do.

Meanwhile, McCartney was living anonymously with Linda Eastman and her almost-six-year-old daughter Heather in Manhattan. He grew his first luxuriant beard and prowled through the city without attracting hysterical attention. He enjoyed acting like a father to Heather, having already astounded Lennon with his carefree ability to entertain his son Julian. Almost casually McCartney asked Eastman to marry him, but she refused, still wary after a short but unhappy marriage in the early 1960s.

What intrigued him was her ability to move in different worlds: she had been raised as the daughter of a successful lawyer and the heiress to a supermarket fortune, and had attended the same prestigious New York college as Yoko Ono; but despite her wealthy background she eased effortlessly through the rock scene, where a combination of looks and unscrubbed talent had gained her acceptance as a photographer. Like McCartney, she had experienced an active love life; but being a woman rather than a Beatle, she was maligned as a groupie, who pursued stars for sex rather than professional reasons. ^*5 Eastman knew who and what she was, and unlike McCartney she wasn't ashamed about it. What excited him most was her cool resistance to his stardom: it became obvious that she was more attracted by his rapport with her daughter than his membership of the Beatles.

Late in the year McCartney met Eastman's family: her father Lee, stepmother Monique, and brothers, the eldest of whom, John, worked alongside his father in the law firm of Eastman & Eastman. Lee's music business clients had included bandleader Tommy Dorsey and songwriter Harold Arlen. When Linda was three years old her father's friend Jack Lawrence had penned a song in her honour ('Linda', later recorded by Frank Sinatra), which was a chart-topping hit for singer Buddy Clark in 1947. Beyond his dexterity with entertainment law, Eastman prided himself on being able to squeeze 'missing' royalties out of publishing and recording companies. For example, he had championed R & B composers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1964, winning them a royalty payment of $18, 000 (but in the process severing their ties to the company with whom they'd enjoyed most success). His relationship with his daughter had been strained since the late 1950s, when it became apparent that she didn't intend to marry for status and wealth. Her friend Robin Richmond recalled, 'She adored her father so much; she was in awe of his intelligence, his success, his confidence. But it was very hard for Linda, because he was cold to her, and disapproved of what she was doing, very obviously. '

Lee Eastman was both impressed and repelled by the idea of his daughter dating a pop superstar. Under the circumstances, it was only natural that McCartney would discuss the Beatles' affairs with his girlfriend's father and brother, who was just a year older than Lennon; and equally natural that they would suggest how they might stabilise Apple's assets. By the time McCartney returned to London – with Linda and Heather in tow – he had agreed that he would invite the Eastmans to disentangle the Beatles' jumbled affairs.

On New Year's Day 1969 George Harrison made his first appearance at Apple for several weeks. He was exuberant: his time with Dylan had fired his creativity, and he was enjoying the frisson of sharing his home with two beautiful women – his wife Pattie and the French model Charlotte Martin, who had just ended her relationship with his friend Eric Clapton. 'She was always flirtatious with George, ' Pattie Boyd recalled, 'and he, of course, loved it. ' At Apple he spent time with Derek Taylor, who suggested that the two of them should write a musical about life at the company. 'Often this office is like Alice inWonderland, ' Taylor commented a week later. 'Since Apple is constantly surrounded and involved in music, it seemed a natural subject to base a musical around. George has already written an outline and some of the music. I'm in charge of ideas and lyrics. '

A day later Harrison and the other Beatles were woken around eight o'clock and chauffeured to Twickenham Film Studios. The set was cavernous, frosty and lacking in atmosphere. 'I don't dig underestimating what's here, ' McCartney told his colleagues, suggesting that the scaffolding was more interesting than conventional scenery. But the other Beatles stared balefully around the hangar-like space and adopted an attitude of sullen resentment, which quickly enveloped the project.

For the next week the four Beatles acted out a drama with no movement or character development. McCartney played the boss, haplessly patronising towards his colleagues, desperately trying to prolong the agony in the hope that it might miraculously ease. Wary with Lennon, he focused his awkward encouragement on Harrison, who responded with the undisguised resentment of a persecuted child. Lennon sat virtually speechless and usually stoned, never more than a few feet from the equally uncommunicative Ono. Starkey stared ahead in an appearance of utter gloom, wondering why he was still trying to provide a rhythmic backbone for this divided body. McCartney chivvied the others through fragments of new songs. Lennon diverted them onto the safer ground of the rock 'n' roll standards that had comprised their repertoire a decade earlier. Harrison unveiled an array of freshly composed material, only to be met with polite boredom from McCartney and open derision from Lennon. Fragments of their conversations capture the full horror:

McCartney: I'm only trying to help you, and I always hear myself trying to annoy you.

Harrison: (sarcastically) You're not annoying me. You don't annoy me any more.

McCartney: We've only got twelve more days so we've got to do this methodically. I just hear myself saying it. I never get any support.

(silence)

McCartney: What do you think?

Lennon: About what?

Harrison: Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil.

Starkey: I'm not interested.

McCartney: I don't see why any of you, if you're not interested, get yourselves into this. What's it for? It can't be for the money. Why are you here? I'm here because I want to do a show, but I really don't feel an awful lot of support.

(silence)

McCartney: I feel terrible. (to Lennon) Imagine if you were the only one interested. ( silence) You don't say anything.

Lennon: I've said what I've been thinking.

McCartney: There's only two choices. We're gonna do it, or we're not gonna do it. And I want a decision. Because I'm not interested in spending my fucking days farting about here, while everyone makes up their mind whether they want to do it or not. I'll do it. If everyone else wants to do it, great. But I don't have to be here.

(silence)

McCartney: We should just have it out. If this one turns out to be like [the previous album], it should definitely be the last – for all of us. There's no point hanging on.

Harrison: The Beatles have been in the doldrums for at least a year.

Harrison: Maybe we should get a divorce.

McCartney: Well, I said that at the last meeting. It's getting near it.

Relations had soured to the point that when McCartney sang 'Get Back' Lennon was convinced that he was aiming the chorus at Yoko Ono. After the Beatles attempted Lennon's song 'Across the Universe' McCartney complained, 'There's an oriental influence that shouldn't really be there' and pretended that he was talking about music.

For Harrison, there was no relief from the tension, as his wife had become convinced that he was having an affair with Charlotte Martin. Harrison denied it, but Pattie left to stay with friends. A couple of days later, on Friday 10 January 1969, after another morning of rejection from Lennon and bickering with McCartney, he cracked. He argued violently with Lennon over lunch – the two men supposedly came to blows – and then told him, 'I'm leaving the group. ' 'When? ' Lennon asked. 'Now, ' Harrison replied. 'You can replace me. Put an ad in the New Musical Express and get a few people in. ' He drove home to Henley, where Charlotte Martin was ejected and Pattie reinstated. But the bond between husband and wife had been broken. 'George would start to say something, then stop, ' Pattie recalled. 'He appeared unable or unwilling to share his thoughts with me. He kept his hurt, frustration, anger, or whatever it was, to himself. At times I couldn't reach him. ' He would often sit hunched over his prayer beads, muttering to himself, resolutely ignoring anything that was said to him.

Harrison's departure came as a shock to McCartney and Starkey, who debated whether they could continue without him. That afternoon they 'started jamming violently', Starkey remembered. 'And Yoko jumped in, of course, she was there. ' While Ono unleashed a series of screams, McCartney rubbed his bass guitar suggestively along his amp, Lennon corralled feedback from his amplifier, and Starkey 'was playing some weird drumming that I hadn't done before'. Later, when a guitar solo was needed, Lennon called out, 'Take it, George, ' to Harrison's empty chair. While the Beatles closed ranks to avoid reality, Apple boss Neil Aspinall talked to the film crew about 'the box George is in. A few months of that would be enough for me. But eight years. . . ' Lennon wandered into the conversation. 'I think that if George doesn't come back by Monday or Tuesday, we'll have to get Eric Clapton to play with us, ' he said. 'The point is: if George leaves, do we want to carry on the Beatles? I do. We should just get other members and carry on. ' The suggestion was relayed to Starkey, whose friendship with Harrison was steadfast. But he wasn't prepared to argue. 'Do it, ' he said dismissively.

'It was unbearable to me that they should break up, ' Derek Taylor recalled. But that was the agenda when all four Beatles gathered at Starkey's home that Sunday. 'George said, " What we need is just the four of us, " ' Neil Aspinall reported after the meeting, 'and I think John knew what he was talking about. ' But Lennon professed ignorance, telling Harrison, 'I don't understand you. ' 'I don't believe you, ' Harrison retorted and left. 'George in the presence of all of us said that another reason for walking out was that he could not get on with Yoko, ' McCartney explained in 1971. 'Yoko was doing all the talking, ' Linda Eastman recalled. 'I'd just tell her to shut up, ' Aspinall insisted, though he hadn't when the opportunity arose.

By the time Harrison left, the quartet had already agreed that they should split up but not when it should happen. Starkey and McCartney reported for work the following morning, and in Lennon's absence McCartney felt able to criticise the hold that Ono had established over him. Posterity would find it ironic, he noted, if the Beatles split up because Lennon insisted on bringing his girlfriend to the studio. Lennon and Ono arrived later, but a phone call to Henley established that Harrison had driven to see his parents in Liverpool. So Lennon and McCartney agreed that if unity had not been restored by Friday, then the Beatles were finished. 'It's a festering wound, ' Lennon admitted. 'It's only this year that [George] has realised who he is. And all the fucking shit we've done to him. '

The charade continued on Tuesday, though the tedium was broken by a visit from actor Peter Sellers. Lennon boasted to his comic hero about his heroin use. 'Showbiz people need a form of relaxation, ' he said. 'It's that or exercise, and drugs win hands down. ' 'Shooting [heroin] is exercise, ' Ono added proudly. Then Lennon sat down with a Canadian TV crew and promptly vomited on the floor. 'John had escalated to heroin and all the accompanying paranoias, ' McCartney recalled, 'and he was putting himself out on a limb. I think that as much as it excited and amused him, at the same time it secretly terrified him. '

Harrison was persuaded by Derek Taylor to meet the other Beatles at Apple on Wednesday. 'Brian Epstein, I knew, would have fought and fought to keep them together, ' he explained, 'and so I was bolder than I had ever been or ever would be again, and demanded passionately and at length that George not let Paul carry the weight of keeping the film and the Beatles going. I felt that George's sense of decency could be touched, and it was. ' Taylor's reward was a postcard in McCartney's handwriting, with the stamp carefully torn in half and the simple Northern injunction, 'Up yer. '

The Beatles agreed to abandon Twickenham and their live concert, and resume filming the following week at Apple. It was time for Alexis Mardas to unveil his recording studio, which, Harrison recalled, 'was the biggest disaster of all time. He was walking around with a white coat on like some sort of chemist, but didn't have a clue about what he was doing. It was a 16-track system and he had 16 little tiny speakers all around the walls. The whole thing was a disaster and had to be ripped out. ' Every account of this episode – with one exception – is in agreement:

Mardas installed the studio; George Martin's team of EMI engineers declared it unworkable. The dissenting voice belongs to Mardas. His memory was that he was in Greece during January 1969, and that someone from Apple or EMI broke into his Apple Electronics workshop and transported his work-in-progress to the Savile Row basement. It was never intended as a working studio, he insisted, but merely as a demonstration of how a multitrack studio might operate. And he claimed, moreover, that the EMI staff had a vested interest in belittling his work, as they were afraid of losing the opportunity to work with the Beatles in the future. Whatever the truth, portable recording equipment had to be ordered and installed.

By then another crisis had emerged. During a heroin-fuelled monologue Lennon had told journalist Ray Coleman that Apple was in deep financial trouble. 'We haven't got half the money people think we have, ' he declared. 'We have enough to live on, but we can't let Apple go on like it is. ' He admitted that he and McCartney had been foolish to promise artistic liberation before the company was running effectively, and he concluded, 'If it carries on like this, all of us will be broke in the next few months. ' He was clearly not in PR mode. He also told Coleman about his obsession with pornography, and his desire to raise chickens on a macrobiotic farm. But his comments forced Neil Aspinall to issue a hasty rejoinder, to the effect that the Beatles were far from broke and were considering a face-saving merger with the Epsteins' NEMS company.

On January 22 the Beatles walked into the basement of their company HQ, gazed suspiciously at the film crew and prepared to rejoin the battle they'd interrupted twelve days earlier. But Harrison, who had least to gain from the reunion, had stacked his own hand in advance. He had invited the American keyboardist Billy Preston, whom the Beatles had befriended in 1962, to visit Apple that afternoon. It was only polite for Preston to be asked to play. 'I think Billy saved the Let It Be album and film, ' Derek Taylor commented, 'because he put all the Beatles on their best behaviour. To be difficult with each other after that would have been to abuse their guest. That Liverpool slagging-off would not have been OK in front of Billy. His enjoyment at being there filtered through into the Beatles. I remember thinking, Thank Christ that someone has done something, because the atmosphere at the time was so bad. ' Within a few days Lennon was proposing that Preston become a permanent member of the band. 'It's bad enough with four [Beatles], ' McCartney joked. 'But with five, it's creating havoc. ' Still, Preston remained an honorary Beatle until the end of the month.

He was there on 30 January 1969, when the group solved the riddle of how to end their documentary film by performing on top of the Apple headquarters. 'You had a sense of a rare and odd occasion, ' recalled film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg. 'You were at a Beatles concert with nobody up there except yourself. And probably because they didn't have the burden of an audience, they really did play for each other. ' With Ono sidelined, sheltering by a chimney rather than interposed between Lennon and McCartney, the pair's instinctive rapport was restored, if only for 40 minutes. Then the police intervened to stop the noise, as everyone had secretly been hoping. 'The Beatles, ' Lindsay-Hogg reckoned, 'kind of wanted to go to jail. You know, " Police bust the Beatles", that sort of thing. They were very contentious. ' A day later the group returned to the Apple basement to tape finished versions of several McCartney songs. 'The next day there wasn't much talk about [the live show], ' Lindsay-Hogg recalled, 'other than it had been fun, there was newspaper coverage, and it was better down in the studio because it wasn't as cold as it was on the roof. ' The Beatles were no longer impressed by their own mythology. As Derek Taylor noted, 'It was not insignificant that they chose a rooftop, their own private rooftop, out of reach and for the most part out of view, to do their last show together. '

There was little jubilation when the documentary project ended; merely relief that the cameras were going to leave the Beatles in peace. Engineer Glyn Johns was commissioned to sift through the countless hours of tapes, most of them desultory and discordant, and translate them into an album. But all his attempts were rejected, and while editors slowly reviewed the accompanying film footage the Beatles did their best to forget that January 1969 had ever happened. Certainly George Harrison backed down from his commitment to leave the group, perhaps because Preston remained on call for the next few weeks. With no clear intention in mind, the Beatles found themselves back in the studio within days, as if drawn by some Pavlovian reflex. And if they were making music, no matter how lacklustre, they could avoid dealing with the latest incursion into their increasingly dented sanctum. The Beatles had barely survived the arrival of Yoko Ono; now, like shop workers arriving one morning to find an unfamiliar logo over the door, they seemed to be under new management.

Klein is essential in the pantomime as the Demon King. Just as you think everything is going to be all right, here he is.

Derek Taylor

There were countless assistants and collaborators in the Beatles' story, and the affection that surrounded the group encompassed almost all of them. Each has his or her role in the saga: Brian Epstein, their naive but loyal guide; Neil Aspinall, their eternally faithful servant; George Martin, their kindly musical chaperon; Derek Taylor, purveyor of dry wit and wisdom; wives, girlfriends, roadies, photographers, sidemen, school friends; each loved by those who loved the Beatles, for enabling them to flourish and their story to become the fairy tale of the age, endlessly repeatable and open to infinite interpretation.

And then there were the intruders: more controversial figures whose names can still provoke a sharp intake of breath from true adherents of the Beatles cult. Suspected for their motives, hated for their disruptive power, they all arrived from America and were all regarded as suspects for the crime of breaking up the Beatles, on the assumption that without them the group would have continued happily in each other's company until their dying days. The first of these intruders was Yoko Ono; the second was Linda Eastman; and the third was Allen Klein. ^*6

With the possible exception of Alexis Mardas, who occupied a less central role, nobody in the Beatles' milieu has received a more damning verdict from historians than Allen Klein. He was, one said, 'a tough little scorpion'; for another, 'fast-talking, dirty-mouthed. . . sloppily dressed and grossly overweight'; again, 'short and fat, beady-eyed and greasily pompadoured'. Beatles aide Alistair Taylor said, 'He had all the charm of a broken lavatory seat. ' Yet he inspired awe. In Eric Idle's satirical recasting of the myth he became (as impersonated by John Belushi) Ron Decline, so terrifying that his employees would hurl themselves out of skyscraper windows to avoid meeting him. So con sistent was the vilification that when biographer Philip Norman merely described Klein as 'a little tubby man', it sounded like a compliment.

Ono's sin was to be Japanese and to marry a Beatle; then, as it became apparent that she had dared to infiltrate the recording studio, she was maligned for interfering in their music and destroying their rapport. There was much sympathy in the late 1960s for the idea that she had turned Lennon 'weird'. Later, she was hated for her music, and for forcing that music upon Lennon's audience. Only after his death was she allowed to assume a milder role, as the grieving widow. Likewise, those who were appalled by McCartney's decision to marry Linda Eastman and then shocked to see wife on stage with husband, were mollified when Linda McCartney proved a caring mother, champion of animal rights and best-selling author of cookery books.

No such rehabilitation was available for Allen Klein, who entered the Beatles' story as a villain from central casting, and never escaped that role. Yet we are asked to believe that three of the four Beatles found this 'beady-eyed' 'grossly overweight' 'scorpion' such an attractive figure that they were prepared to trust him with their futures. Clearly the Demon King didn't always exude the stench of sulphur.

'Allen Klein could be the most charming and interesting person you'd ever met, ' said Allan Steckler, who worked for him throughout this period. 'He knew more about music than most – he loved music. And he would have been the most brilliant psychologist of all time, because in ten or fifteen minutes he could get you to do anything he wanted. But he could be crude, rude and very uncaring. That's a strange mixture of qualities, but it was what made him a brilliant businessman. '

'I brought him to Apple, ' Derek Taylor admitted, 'but I did give the Beatles certain solemn warnings. I told them to ask around, and said that he had various reputations, that he might get them a good financial deal, but might not be someone you would want to take home to your mother. ' Klein's 'reputations' included an undeniable ability to squeeze cash out of record companies; like Lee Eastman, he excelled at locating royalty underpayments and other 'accidental' errors. It was a skill he had honed in the late 1950s, when he had persuaded Morris Levy, an entrepreneur with Mob connections, to pay singers Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen some belated royalties. His secret was meticulous examination of company accounts and an accountant's eye for loopholes. But his ability to conjure sizeable cheques out of entertainment corporations enabled him to appear as magical as Alexis Mardas to his famous clients (Bobby Darin and Sam Cooke among them), and with more justification.

Belying his subsequent image, Klein became a financial mentor to Cooke, treating him more like a brother than a client. Not that he overlooked opportunity: in March 1964 he agreed to represent the New York office of RCA Records in an audacious bid to steal the Beatles' recording contract from EMI. He offered Brian Epstein $2 million as a signing fee, plus a 10 per cent royalty, which would then have been the most lucrative deal in history. But for Epstein loyalty counted more than money. Klein approached Epstein again in 1966, when he heard that the EMI contract was being renewed, but this time he was refused a meeting. A year later Epstein was dead. 'I was driving a bridge out of New York and I heard on the radio that Epstein had died, ' Klein admitted later, 'and I said to myself, " I got 'em! " '

Other elements of the British pop scene were more malleable. Between 1964 and 1967 Klein collected a financial interest in many of the era's most successful acts, among them the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Animals, Herman's Hermits, the Dave Clark Five and Donovan. He let their managers – the likes of Rolling Stones mentor Andrew Oldham – have the fame, and raked in his percentage as business manager. He was so diligent that he ended up owning many of the catalogues he represented. Among those who lost out was Oldham, who nonetheless retained fond memories of his ex-partner: 'He was in his early thirties, casually dressed in sports shirt and slacks, and I liked him. He was not greasy; he did not have three chins. He did not swear like a trooper or a gangster. He spoke calmly, invitingly and warmly and had eyes that pierced through you. ' According to Klein, it was Oldham who embellished his image: 'Andrew liked having me portrayed as this shadowy American who could take care of anything. That was Andrew; he just created it, that I was like a gangster. He said they'd love it in England. '

The fact remains that, in Oldham's words, 'He started out representing us and ended up owning us. ' Klein founded a US company with the same name as the Rolling Stones' UK publishing firm. Oldham and the Stones innocently assumed that when the US firm took over the rights to the Stones' catalogue in America, the band would end up in control. Instead, Nanker Phelge's US operation rested solely in the hands of Klein. When Oldham and the Stones fell out in 1967, Oldham had to sign over the UK Stones catalogue to Klein in order to finance his court battle. As Apple staffer Ken Mansfield recalled, 'Klein was virtually unbeatable in negotiations. His business dictionary had only one word in it: win! A picture of Klein's smiling face followed as the definition. '

Klein was still operating as the Rolling Stones' business manager in January 1969, when he read Lennon's admission that Apple was collapsing. He tried in vain to reach Lennon from New York, and then asked Tony Calder, Oldham's business partner in London, to intervene. Calder persuaded Derek Taylor to speak to Lennon. On 27 January, after another inconclusive day in the studio, Lennon and Ono met the American in the Harlequin Suite of the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane. The following day Lennon wrote to EMI boss Sir Joseph Lockwood: 'I've asked Allen Klein to look after my things. Please give him any information he wants and full co-operation. ' Five years after his first attempt to carve himself a slice of the Beatles, Klein had secured a quarter of the group in a single evening.

'Everyone knew that Klein wasn't a pleasant guy, ' contended Apple aide Tony Bramwell. 'Don't get me wrong. I liked Klein, and I still do. But John had this attitude of dumb blindness as far as Klein was concerned. ' Ignorant about business, and not interested in adding to his knowledge, Lennon relied solely on instinct. Klein, he decided, was a charming bruiser, a tough but vulnerable bear who had lost his mother young, like Lennon, and been raised in an orphanage.

Lennon instantly warmed to Klein's earthy humour, his obvious passion for music, his gratifying awareness of Lennon's own work, all qualities that marked him out from other businessmen. Ono too was flattered that Klein appeared to treat her seriously as an artist, and not just as an inconvenient adjunct to a Beatle. Klein told Lennon stories about the music business and Hollywood (he'd produced three Westerns, and a musical starring Herman's Hermits), and gossip about the Stones. Wary of meeting an accountant, Lennon was won over by Klein's humanity. Reputation counted for nothing: Lennon felt that Klein understood him, and that was enough. In any case, as Klein recalled, 'Yoko said that when she and John came to me, they were looking for a real shark – someone to keep the other sharks away. '

Lennon arrived at Apple the following day and told his colleagues that they had to meet this guy – he was great; he could solve all their problems. But there was an immediate complication. Clive Epstein had recently told the group that he wanted to sell his brother's company NEMS, in which the Beatles held a 10 per cent stake. McCartney had asked the Eastmans for advice, and they recommended that the Beatles buy NEMS outright, thereby ending the company's claim to commission on their record sales. To finance the deal, the Beatles should borrow the money from EMI. The Eastmans believed that they were acting on behalf of all four Beatles, but now they had to secure Klein's approval as well.

On the night of 28 January, Klein came to Apple, where he held a lengthy meeting with the entire group – so lengthy, in fact, that McCartney cried off shortly before midnight, complaining that there was more to life than business. The others remained, and by 2 a. m. both Harrison and Starkey had agreed to let Klein represent them too. He advised them not to proceed with the NEMS purchase, pointing out that to repay EMI's £ 1 million loan, they would have to earn many times that figure for the company. McCartney had already insisted that he was not prepared to discuss the problem unless John Eastman was present, and so a further meeting was scheduled after the Beatles' filming was completed.

'We met with Allen Klein, ' Starkey recalled, 'and were convinced by him. Well, I was convinced by him, and John too. My impression of him when I first met him was brash – " I'll get it done, lads. " Lots of enthusiasm. A good guy, with a pleasant attitude about himself in a really gross New York way. ' Harrison concurred. 'I thought, Well, if that's the choice, I think I'll go with Klein, because John's with him, and he seemed to talk pretty straight. ' And, like Lennon, Harrison could be swayed by social status: 'Because we were all from Liverpool we favoured people who were street people. Lee Eastman was more like a class-conscious type of person. ' By 'class-conscious', Harrison meant precisely the social niceties that had always impressed McCartney (but never Lennon). 'Eastman wasn't a polo-neck and chinos kind of guy, like Allen, ' said Tony Bramwell. 'The Eastmans were always in suits. '

Unlike Harrison and Starkey, McCartney was no longer prepared to follow Lennon's leadership without challenge. Mick Jagger, he decided, would tell them the truth, but when the Rolling Stones vocalist came to Apple, he was uninformative, saying only, 'He's all right if you like that kind of thing'. ^*7 Klein's presence at the meeting presumably encouraged Jagger to guard his tongue. Lee Eastman, who could glimpse his potential stake in the Beatles ebbing away, was

more forthright. Klein, he said, could not be trusted. The financial regulators of Wall Street had been investigating the operation of Cameo-Parkway, the company that Klein now ran. Eastman was convinced that Klein had been guilty of insider trading, though he had been cleared of any wrongdoing. Within a matter of days, Klein renamed Cameo-Parkway ABKCO – ABK denoting Allen and Betty Klein. Moreover, Eastman informed McCartney that Klein was being investigated on charges of failing to file tax returns; the implication was that Klein had been caught evading tax. ^†3 John Eastman agreed to fly immediately from New York to present the facts to the other Beatles.

'Apart from the fact that John Eastman [became] my brother-in-law, I trusted him, ' McCartney recounted. 'I distrusted Klein. ' It was against this background that the Beatles played their rooftop concert. 'This was the first time in the history of the Beatles that a possible irreconcilable difference had appeared between us, ' McCartney said in legal testimony two years later. 'I was most anxious not to stand out against the wishes of the other three except on proper grounds. I therefore thought it right to take part in discussions concerning the possible appointment of Klein, though I did not in the least want him as my manager. '

The day after the Beatles had recorded McCartney's conciliatory ballad 'Let It Be', the group returned to Apple to discuss their future with Allen Klein and John Eastman. Lennon immediately took offence because Lee Eastman had sent his son rather than attending the meeting himself; of course, if the senior Eastman had appeared, Lennon would have accused him of being old and out of touch. Lennon noted later, 'John Eastman gave me the impression of being an inexperienced and somewhat excitable and easily confused young man. ' Klein had spent the intervening days on his favourite turf, scouring the small print of the Beatles' accounts. The ostensible agenda for the 1 February meeting was the possible purchase of NEMS, but that was merely the ground on which Lennon and McCartney had chosen to exhibit their show ponies. Eastman opened the contest by setting out the case for the Beatles owning NEMS, as they would thereby regain a crucial stake in Lennon/McCartney's publishing firm Northern Songs. Aside from the 2 per cent of shares that Lennon had given to his son and first wife, he and McCartney held equal quantities of Northern Songs shares – or so he thought. In fact, the Eastmans had been encouraging McCartney to buy shares held by outside parties, to boost his negotiating power.

Klein responded by advising caution: he had been asked by three of the group to look into the Beatles' financial affairs, he said, and his work was not yet complete. 'It was agreed by all four Beatles that I should be the person to look into the financial position of those com panies, ' he recalled. But Eastman wasn't about to leave his supremacy unchallenged. In Klein's words, he 'launched an attack on my personal integrity' and 'alleged I had a bad reputation in general'. It was a grave tactical error. Eastman hoped he might loosen Klein's grip on Lennon by showing him cuttings about the unusual trading in Cameo-Parkway shares, but his assault merely solidified Lennon's sympathy for his victimised champion. Eastman may have expected Klein to launch a volley of New York street rhetoric, but Klein calmly defused the row, and the meeting was adjourned for two days. When it resumed, both sides had a trophy to display: Apple announced that it had asked Allen Klein – 'a New York business expert' in the words of The Times – to 'look into all their affairs, and he has agreed to do so'. Klein promised to produce a full statement of the Beatles' financial situation. That night he persuaded Clive Epstein to delay the sale of NEMS for three weeks, and then booked a flight to New York, so he could investigate the group's US income. Meanwhile, the Eastmans were appointed Apple's legal advisers. Music business analysts took their appointment as proof of 'a stepped-up campaign to maximise the act's business potential on a world level. Eastman's office will act as a clearing-house for all deals involving the Beatles and their activities in recording, writing, filming and other matters. '

To an outside eye it appeared as if the Beatles had solved their financial crisis. The Eastmans promised to bring security to the group's affairs, with a conservative integrity reminiscent of the Epstein era. The more mercurial Klein, meanwhile, would terrify the Beatles' commercial partners, especially EMI and its US arm Capitol Records, into producing any unaccountably delayed royalties. Meanwhile, the Beatles could continue their 'recording, writing, filming and other matters', convinced that they would no longer be exposing themselves to ruin.

This settlement depended on several assumptions, however: that Klein and the Eastmans could work in harmony; that neither had any aspirations towards assuming total control of the Beatles' management; and, most important, that the Beatles could still function as a creative unit. All three were soon in doubt.

The arrangement between Klein and the Eastmans depended on mutual communication and cooperation, and both principles swiftly collapsed. 'We co-operated with Klein for about two weeks, ' John Eastman said. 'It was agreed that both of us would see all the Beatles' documents, but Klein took out all the important stuff and sent along a huge bundle of documents containing nothing of importance. ' Klein was unapologetic: 'I ripped off those documents, damn right! But Eastman and McCartney had already gone behind our backs buying Northern Songs shares. '

A more immediate problem was NEMS. On 14 February, Lee Eastman wrote to Clive Epstein to suggest a meeting at which they could discuss not only the state of Beatles affairs, but also 'the propriety of the negotiations' that Brian Epstein had conducted with EMI on the group's behalf in 1966. 'Propriety'? As far as Clive Epstein was concerned, the language was incendiary: this American was calling his late brother a crook. He demanded an explanation and then authorised the sale of his mother's stake in NEMS – 70 per cent of the company's shares – to a merchant banker, Leonard Richenberg of Triumph Investment Trust. A quarter of the Beatles' earnings from EMI would now effectively be controlled by financiers with no personal interest in the group. Hastily recalled from New York by a panicked phone call from Neil Aspinall, Klein was quietly elated: in his eyes Eastman had just damaged his credibility. There was a conference at the Dorchester Hotel, and the group signed a memo to EMI demanding that all their future royalties – including the 25 per cent intended for NEMS – now be sent to the Beatles' own merchant bankers. Confused about exactly where the money should go, EMI decided to retain it and wait for a clinching legal opinion. The new alliance of Eastman and Klein was already in disarray.

Klein returned to New York on 12 March 1969. As his flight left Heathrow, crowds of crying teenagers gathered at Marylebone Register Office in central London, where Linda Eastman had finally agreed to become Paul McCartney's wife. Now it was McCartney's turn to worry: was it still possible to separate his personal life from his business problems? The Eastmans had been eager to see the wedding proceed, but was that because it suited their professional purposes? On the eve of the marriage the couple quarrelled, and the event was nearly cancelled. Beatles aide Mal Evans recalled, 'He was saying to me, " Look, I'm scared stiff of getting married. Do you think I should? " ' But the McCartney marriage proved to be a remarkable success story.

One of Evans's colleagues had misgivings about the match. To Alistair Taylor, Linda was 'a hard-faced star-chaser from the United States' who had 'set out to get Paul' and who was determined to divide her husband from 'anyone who had been close to Paul, especially during his relationship with Jane'. But despite the catcalls of disappointed fans that greeted the newly married couple, Linda's position was hardly enviable. She was acutely aware that her husband's future and her family's business reputation were now mutually dependent. 'You can't know how hard it was, ' she told her friend Danny Fields. 'I was suddenly in the middle of a situation where the Beatles were breaking up; Paul was really upset; there was a whole business and legal thing happening which took everyone's energy; and I hated it. I thought it was going to be all peace and love and music, and it was wartime. Plus, everyone hated me, those horrible groupies always in front of the house, calling me names, spitting at me. '

None of the other Beatles attended the ceremony: Lennon and Ono were at Abbey Road Studios, Starkey was filming with Peter Sellers and Harrison remained at Apple, where his wife phoned to report that they were being raided by the drugs squad. 'Tell them where it is, ' Harrison said, and a minimal amount of marijuana was shown to the police. Two of the Beatles had now been targeted by the same officers; could further visits be ruled out? The landlords of Starkey's London flat, where Lennon had been staying, took the hint, instituting proceedings to have Lennon and Ono banned from entering the premises.

Within days of McCartney's wedding, Lennon and Ono flew out of the country in search of a venue for their own marriage. They couldn't wed in Britain without negotiating with immigration officials about Ono's status, and as usual Lennon wanted to act immediately. France was their first choice, and the couple spent 'four days shopping, eating and doing things. Just being in love, in the spring in Paris, it was beautiful. ' But legal barriers remained until Apple executive Peter Brown discovered that the British colony of Gibraltar would permit them to marry without any legal delays. In those unlikely surroundings, on 20 March 1969, Lennon and Ono became man and wife. 'I broke down, and John nearly did too, ' Ono said. 'Marriage is so old-fashioned, it's like dressing up in old clothes. ' In fact, both bride and groom were dressed in virginal white, though her minidress and his unkempt beard and plimsolls weren't orthodox. Neither was the couple's vision of the ceremony as an art event. 'We are going to stage many happenings and events together, ' Ono declared, 'and this marriage was one of them. ' Lennon added, 'Everything we do we shall be doing together. I don't mean I shall break up the Beatles or anything, but we want to share everything. ' The full implications soon became clear, when the couple devoted their honeymoon to a 'bed-in' for peace in front of the world's press. For the remainder of the year, global peace dominated the Lennons' lives. With almost obsessive fervour, they gave literally hundreds of interviews, each devoted to the same well-intentioned but simplistic message.

The Lennons' crusade distracted attention from the Beatles' future and cemented the public perception of the couple as two people with one identity. Yet even in bed the past tugged remorselessly at their pyjama sleeves. One reporter wondered what Lennon made of Starkey's recent comments that he had no intention of performing in public with the Beatles again. 'I don't miss being a Beatle any more, ' the drummer admitted. 'You can't get those days back. It's no good living in the past. ' From Lennon or McCartney, his statement would have been front-page news. Instead, it was trumped by Lennon's conviction that the group 'will give several public shows this year'. As Derek Taylor told the press, 'It would be indelicate for us to comment whilst John and Ringo are so obviously in disagreement. ' But promoter Sid Bernstein, who had staged the first US shows by the group in 1964, felt this an appropriate moment to offer them $4 million for four North American shows. George Harrison offered a typically convoluted verdict on the Beatles' current status: 'We've got to a point where we can see each other quite clearly. And by allowing each other to be each other, we can become the Beatles again. '

Four was no longer their magic number, however. In 1968 the problem had been creative: how to function as four Beatles plus one avant-garde artist. Now their financial crisis dominated all thoughts of art, and the Beatles had to balance the two factions vying to control them.

Meanwhile, a new legal front had opened. While Klein and Eastman were distracted by the situation with NEMS, chaos was advancing from another direction. On 28 March, Dick James, managing director of Lennon/McCartney's publishing firm Northern Songs, agreed to sell his shareholding and that of his fellow director Emmanuel Silver to ATV, the entertainment conglomerate run by Sir Lew Grade. Sir Lew, a character in the great British storybook noted for the length of his cigars and the brevity of his wit, was one of three brothers who dominated show business in the 1960s. The Beatles had no time for them: they were the old-school impresarios who had first scorned Brian Epstein, and then embraced him as soon as the group became successful. For both symbolic and financial reasons, they were adamant that Grade should not win control of their songwriting catalogue. But with James's portion Grade now held around 35 per cent of the shares; the Beatles and their associates could only muster 30 per cent. The race was on to achieve a majority shareholding, and control of the company.

'They are my shares and my songs and I want to keep a bit of the end product, ' Lennon declared from his Amsterdam bedroom. 'I don't have to ring Paul. I know damn well he feels the same as I do. ' Both Lennon and McCartney phoned Klein at the Puerto Rican hotel where he was enjoying a brief holiday, and asked him to come to London and save their publishing copyrights.

For the next few months these two legal battles dominated the Beatles' landscape. Even with a completely united team – musicians and businessmen alike – it was unlikely that they could outbid Triumph Investments and gain control of NEMS, while the balance of power in the Northern Songs dispute was delicately weighted. But rather than cementing their relationships, these legal complexities drove the Beatles and their defenders further apart.

Underlying both issues was a stark reality: the four musicians were running short of cash. 'I had many meetings with the Beatles, ' Klein testified in 1971, 'and I made it clear to them that their financial position was perilous. I took the view that my first task was to help them generate enough income to alleviate this situation. ' He decided that their recording deal was still the most stable, and potentially most lucrative, aspect of their empire. 'I wanted to negotiate a new recording arrangement with EMI, ' he declared, aware that the group had already fulfilled their part of the 1967 deal. 'Discussions were held with the Beatles and John Eastman as to how EMI should be approached and who should go to a meeting with them. ' Though Eastman insisted that legal matters were his affair, all four Beatles agreed to let Klein represent them – thereby causing McCartney some embarrassment with his in-laws.

The focus then shifted to the battle for Northern Songs. Lennon and McCartney confronted Dick James at McCartney's house on 2 April, as the publisher tried to explain why he had broken his word and sold his shares without warning them first. 'He wrapped it up in silver paper, ' Lennon said afterwards. 'But it doesn't matter how you wrap it up, it's still a bomb. ' To counter Grade's bid for control, the Beatles attempted to raise nearly £ 2 million to buy the 14 per cent of the company held by an independent group known as the Consortium; if this was added to the Beatles' existing shares, victory would be almost certain. These negotiations endured for months, and at various times both the Beatles and Grade claimed victory, only for an embarrassing retraction to be issued the following day. Two key questions remained. Could the Beatles muster the business acumen to run Northern Songs successfully, given the confused state of Apple's finances? And could Allen Klein be trusted?

Consortium members who saw the Sunday Times on 13 April 1969 might have felt that they knew the answers. The paper's celebrated 'Insight' team of investigative reporters had prepared a damning portrait of 'The Toughest Wheeler Dealer in the Pop Jungle'. As Derek Taylor recalled, the article said Klein 'was a liar, a self-publicist, said he was involved in tax-evasion charges, said he went to see Mr Morley Richenberg [of Triumph Investments] wearing a dirty polo-necked sweater'. Klein objected. 'He is funny that way, ' Taylor noted ironically. The inevitable consequence was a libel suit.

With the scene switching from bed-in to boardroom, honeymoon to High Court, the Beatles' musical career – the supposed focus of this scattered, frantic activity – seemed strangely irrelevant. Their January 1969 film project was stagnant, although a single ('Get Back') had been extracted to give the impression of business as usual. No sooner had it reached the shops than Lennon wanted to cut another single for immediate release. Entitled 'The Ballad of John and Yoko', it chronicled the Lennons' wedding and honeymoon. As neither Harrison nor Starkey was available, just two Beatles entered Abbey Road studio on 14 April, McCartney playing drums and Lennon lead guitar. 'I didn't mind not being on the record, ' Harrison recalled, 'because it was none of my business. If it had been " The Ballad of John, George and Yoko", then I would have been on it. ' A film clip was prepared to promote the song, mixing newsreels of the Lennons with footage from the January 1969 sessions. A drum skin showing the familiar Beatles logo was shown upside down for a few seconds, as if to reflect Ono's impact on the group. In America the single was packaged in a sleeve that pictured all five Beatles: Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Starkey and Ono. 'Yoko used to sit in on the photos, and we didn't really know how to tell her to get out, ' McCartney complained later, 'because she was John's bird. You couldn't really say, " Excuse me, John, can you get her out? " George wasn't too happy about it, but then none of us were. '

Engineers at that recording session reported that Lennon and McCartney had rarely seemed happier. But any hint of rapprochement was quickly dispelled. Lennon veered between fascination at the machinations of the business world ('Businessmen play the game the way we play music, and it's something to see') and contempt ('I'm not going to be fucked around by men in suits sitting on their fat arses in the City'). McCartney simply felt out of his depth. 'This was like playing Monopoly on a very large scale with lawyers, ' he recalled. 'I never used to be very good at the game, anyway; I used to get real tense. And when it was real houses and real money and real Park Lanes and real Savile Rows, it got very fraught. '

Then something happened that polarised the two Beatles so dramatically, the rift was impossible to repair: Lee Eastman came to town, to lend his weight to his son's struggle against Allen Klein. At 59, he was twice as old as Lennon, and 21 years the senior of Klein. He represented Park Avenue privilege, old-school values, tailored conservatism and, as Harrison had already noted, 'class-consciousness'. When Klein and John Eastman insulted each other – as they had, after the 'propriety' letter to Clive Epstein in February – the invective was raw but somehow equal, Klein's 'piece of crap' and 'shithead' being matched scatologically by Eastman's 'perfect asshole'. The confluence of imagery seemed to suggest some form of grudging mutual respect.

There was no rapport, however, between Klein and the senior (and more voluble) Eastman. As Lee remarked later, 'I won't do business with him; he's a swine. When you go to bed with a louse, you get lousy. ' At two successive meetings, Klein reported, Eastman 'launched into an emotional tirade against me' and 'created another unpleasant scene'. He claimed, 'I thought it best not to retaliate. ' Klein was a shrewd judge of human frailty. He reckoned that Eastman senior was operating on a short fuse, and that sarcasm would provide the spark. Klein chipped away at Eastman's dignity, and Eastman duly exploded. Lennon had just learned that Eastman had been born Lee Epstein, but had changed his name to aid his assimilation into smart New York circles, so he pointedly called him 'Mr Epstein' throughout. When Eastman bit back, Ono asked him, 'Will you please stop insulting my husband? Don't call my husband stupid. ' Eastman yelled at Klein, 'You are a rodent, the lowest scum on earth. ' It was effectively an admission of defeat. Lennon goaded Eastman, telling him that he was the 'fucking animal', not Klein. Through it all, McCartney watched in horrified silence, feeling a grim sense of responsibility for both his colleague and his father-in-law. Lennon showed no such sensitivity: to him, McCartney was now merely another member of the Eastman family.

On 18 April, four short days after the apparent rebirth of the Lennon/McCartney partnership, the two men came close to blows at Apple. The Eastmans advised McCartney not to add his block of Northern Songs shares to Lennon's as collateral for the loan the Beatles needed for their takeover bid. Allen Klein offered to make up the shortfall with his £ 750, 000 worth of shares in the film company MGM, but the symbolism was inescapable: the Eastmans wanted McCartney to treat himself as a separate entity from the other Beatles. Then Klein informed Lennon that McCartney had secretly been increasing his stake in Northern Songs. 'John flew into a rage, ' recalled Apple executive Peter Brown. 'At one point I thought he was really going to hit Paul, but he managed to calm himself down. ' One unconfirmed report of this meeting had Lennon leaping towards Linda McCartney, his fists raised in her face.

After the meeting Lennon, Harrison and Starkey signed a letter officially banishing Lee Eastman: 'Dear Mr Eastman, This is to inform you of the fact that you are not authorized to act or hold yourself out as the attorney or legal representative of " The Beatles" or of any of the companies which The Beatles own or control. ' McCartney could only interpret this as a personal rejection.

Incredibly, the Beatles continued to collaborate during this traumatic week, laying down the initial track for a new George Harrison song, 'Something'. Its opening line – 'Something in the way she moves' – was lifted from a song on a James Taylor album Apple had issued the previous year. 'I was pleased to think that I'd had an impact on the Beatles, ' Taylor remembered. 'Anyway, the end of my song was just like " I Feel Fine". So I didn't think of what George had done as plagiarism, because I had already stolen from them. ' Harrison seemed to have been unaware of the borrowed lyric; maybe he simply regarded the theft as an employer's prerogative. In either case, Lennon found an excuse to leave the studio, as he often did when Harrison's material was recorded in 1968 and 1969.

Lennon was a master of compartmentalisation during this period: he retained the ability to scream at McCartney in meetings, insult his wife and her family, and then expect to work with him as if nothing had happened. So it was that on 30 April Lennon and McCartney completed work on a playful song left unfinished in 1967: 'You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)'. It was no more than a collage of musical pastiches, but McCartney remembered this as his favourite Beatles session – perhaps because it only involved him and Lennon, or because it represented the final occasion on which the two men worked as an authentic partnership.

In public the pair still presented a united front. Lennon later presented himself as a vigorous opponent of the legendary 'medley' that dominated Side 2 of their Abbey Road album, but he was the first member of the group to boast about the idea. In the same interview he revealed that he and McCartney were enjoying a ferocious creative spurt, and claimed that 'the outcome of this whole financial business doesn't matter. We'll still be making records, and somebody will be copping some money and we'll be copping some money, and that'll be that. ' The more practical McCartney channelled his frustration into a melodious song entitled 'You Never Give Me Your Money'. Looking back in 1996, he explained that the song wasn't directed 'to the other members of the band. I didn't really feel like they were to blame. We were kind of all in it together, and it wasn't really until Allen Klein came in that we got really divisive and started getting our own lawyers and stuff. Cos he divided us. It was basically him that divided us. ' The role played by the Eastmans, and McCartney's preference for them over Klein, was conveniently forgotten.

Certainly McCartney lacked Lennon's knack for separating his personal and professional lives. Lennon was proclaiming that he had finally rediscovered himself: 'I got lost in the Beatles, and now it's John Lennon again. I'm always John and Yoko, that never stops, we're a 24-hour couple. So whatever I'm doing as Beatles, Yoko's sitting on my shoulder like a parrot. ' But McCartney believed in himself as a Beatle, first and foremost, and an equal partner with Lennon, and he understandably felt each assault from his colleague as a thrust to the heart. Gill Pritchard, one of the so-called Scruffs, the fans who stood patiently outside Abbey Road Studios and Apple's HQ waiting for the Beatles to appear, remembered the night when 'Paul came racing out of the front door of the studio in tears, went home and didn't come back. The next day he didn't turn up at all even though the studio was booked. ' Another fan, Wendy Sutcliffe, continued the story:

John was really angry because they were all waiting, and he came storming out of the studio and made off towards Paul's house. We followed and when he got there he stood outside and just banged on the door again and again, calling for Paul to open up. Paul didn't answer so John climbed the gate and hammered on his door. Then they had a screaming match. He was shouting that George and Ringo had both come in from the country and Paul didn't even bother to let anyone know he couldn't make the session.

While the Beatles' erratic progress towards a new album continued, Allen Klein sought to consolidate his position. He believed he was about to achieve the ambition that he had first revealed in 1964: becoming the Beatles' manager. He had already established dominion over their Apple headquarters in March, with permission from all four of the group to impose the redundancies that McCartney had wanted the previous year.

'On a bad day, ' Derek Taylor conceded, 'Apple could look as if it was being trespassed upon. We might run into one of our paymasters on the stairs, holding what John described as a steak sandwich. Then they would say, " Who are these cunts? We're paying for them all. " But a certain amount of extravagance was necessary, because we had invited the great and near-great to come to Apple. ' Among the acts who approached the company that spring were two of the best-selling groups of the next decade, Fleetwood Mac and Crosby, Stills and Nash, although eventually neither was signed. Taylor understood, however, that 'if you are one of the Beatles, paying for it all, it doesn't matter that this is an institution that you have created, you can still be bad-tempered about it. And all of them finally said, " I didn't mean it to be like this. " No one was in charge. Everyone had their own autonomy, and all of it cost money. But people did turn up to work every day, and work. The work never stopped. '

Apple had become notorious for its 'generosity': you could walk in, and if someone liked your looks you could leave with a set of Apple albums, and without any money changing hands. Besides the drinks and dope that constituted legitimate business expenses, private cars and holidays were now being charged to the company in the well-founded expectation that nobody would notice. From mid-March, when Klein established an office at Apple's Savile Row base, the climate changed. Alexis Mardas arrived at his workshop one morning to find a chain and padlock around the door handle. He remained on salary until August, and was close enough to the Lennons to share a cruise around the Greek islands that autumn, but the days when Apple Electronics could function without a clear commercial end in sight were over.

So too was the air of suave hippie majesty that emanated from Derek Taylor's impeccably stocked press office. 'When I think of going through it all again, ' Taylor said twenty years later, 'well, I could just about stand parts of it, but I couldn't stand living through the arrival of Klein. That was miserable. I've never been so unhappy. But there was no alternative that could deal with this writhing thing that was Apple, that could put it in a container and hold the lid down. ' Besides Taylor's budget, more savage sacrifices were made. Ron Kass had masterminded the early commercial success of Apple Records, which in Klein's eyes made him dangerous, so he had to go. Paul's old friend Peter Asher, employed effectively as a talent scout, jumped ship, taking with him the young singer-songwriter James Taylor. The Beatles verbally tore up James Taylor's deal, which didn't prevent Klein from attempting vainly to sue him for breach of contract in 1970, when his first album for Warners became a best-seller. 'Klein was a terrible idea, ' the singer recalled, 'but nobody at Apple had any business sense at all. Somebody needed to come in, and it was ripe for someone like Klein to take over. '

Among the casualties was Alistair Taylor, who had faithfully served the Beatles as a general factotum since 1962, and was, so a colleague recalled, 'a cheerful cove who knew what the boys needed'. When the axe fell, Taylor tried to speak to his employers. 'Not one of them took my call. I got excuses from embarrassed wives and secretaries. I heard nervous Beatle voices in the background. But not one of my four famous friends came to the phone. And that hurt a hell of a lot more than getting the sack. '

The group only intervened when Klein attempted to oust their two closest aides, Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans. But what really mattered to Klein was official recognition that he now controlled the Beatles and their empire. At the end of April 1969 he drew up the rough draft of a formal agreement. One of the Beatles' legal advisers said it would be crazy for any artist to sign such a deal. But he had not reckoned on Lennon's willingness to commit himself to Klein.

The contract appointed ABKCO (Klein's company rather than the man himself ) 'exclusive business manager' to Apple Corps Ltd 'on behalf of The Beatles and The Beatles Group of Companies' – a phrase that soon provoked much legal debate. Under its terms, ABKCO would receive 20 per cent of all Apple's income, before tax, and the percentage would continue indefinitely for any deals signed while the contract was in force. There were two important exceptions to this rule: Klein would not receive any portion of the Beatles' record royalties unless he negotiated a new deal for the group, and then he would only receive 20 per cent of the increased royalty, not the full rate, and he could only claim 10 per cent of the gross income generated by the Apple Records label. In return, Apple would agree to pay expenses for Klein and other ABKCO staff working on their behalf. As this deal stood, then, it was in Klein's interest to negotiate an improved royalty rate for the Beatles from EMI, and particularly to persuade the Beatles to perform in public, as often and as lucratively as possible. The contract would stand for three years, although either party could terminate it after each year, if sufficient notice were given.

On the surface Klein's percentages seemed modest: the Beatles had paid Epstein 25 per cent, for example, while Elvis Presley's manager Colonel Tom Parker took no less than 50 per cent of his client's earnings. Yet there was a profound difference: Epstein and Parker had masterminded their clients' rise to fame, so their percentage rewarded their original faith and the energies they had invested. Klein was simply inheriting the most famous entertainers in the world.

On Wednesday 7 May 1969 Klein, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Ono met EMI executives at Lincoln's Inn to discuss where the Beatles' royalties should be paid. EMI insisted that they would retain the money until the dispute with NEMS was concluded. After lunch Starkey joined his colleagues. Klein and his lawyer were asked to leave the room while the managerial contract was discussed. The Beatles took advice from a lawyer acting on behalf of all but McCartney, and also a legal counsel. At this stage none of them queried the percentages, let alone the intention to appoint Klein manager. The deal was agreed in principle, and then Klein and his lawyer Harold Seider were invited to rejoin the gathering while minor changes were negotiated, with Harrison and McCartney the most vocal of the four musicians.

Thursday morning brought another legal conference, at which the group's advisers inserted an extra clause, effectively transforming the contract from a binding deal into a basis for further discussion. Lawyer Peter Howard took this revised document to Lennon at Apple, explained why it had been changed and obtained his signature. Howard then drove to Harrison's home in Esher. Meanwhile, Lennon had visited Klein at the Dorchester Hotel and proudly showed off the revised deal he had signed. Klein retorted that the agreement was now meaningless – nothing more than a piece of paper. 'I was not prepared to accept a document in this form, ' he recalled, complaining that its effect was 'to make it doubtful whether the contract would be binding'. He phoned Howard to say that he would only sign if the new clause were deleted and replaced by something that affirmed the binding nature of the deal.

With typical ebullience, Lennon completely changed his mind and supported Klein's view. He spoke briefly to Harrison, who declared that he also preferred Klein's revision. At this point the saga nearly slipped into farce, as Howard discovered that he had left behind the document that Lennon had signed at Apple. Fortunately, Harrison agreed to sign a carbon copy. Before he did so, he felt obliged to tell McCartney what was happening. But he was unable to get through. McCartney had changed his phone number and neglected to tell the man who had been his friend since he was 15 years old. So Harrison felt he had no alternative but to sign. Howard then drove to see Starkey at his home in Elstead. Like Harrison, Starkey agreed to sign whatever Lennon had approved.

Alone of the three Beatles, however, Starkey seems to have made some attempt to wrestle with the financial implications of the contract. Suppose Klein negotiated a more lucrative recording contract for the Beatles, he said, and received his 20 per cent of the increased royalty. Wasn't there a danger that he could also claim 10 per cent of the entire royalty when it arrived in the coffers of Apple Records? Howard admitted that the current wording was ambiguous, but reassured Starkey that both sides had agreed verbally that the Beatles' royalties would not qualify as part of Apple Records' income. The lawyer also advised Starkey, as he had his colleagues, that it was possible – more than possible, in fact – that McCartney would choose not to sign the deal.

Starkey told him that wasn't a problem: he, Lennon and Harrison wanted the American to manage them, and McCartney could look after himself.

There were now two versions of the document: one signed by Lennon alone, the other by Harrison and Starkey. So Howard returned to London, where Lennon was waiting in Klein's hotel room. Lennon added his signature to the carbon copy, and so did Klein. Eventually, in the early hours of 9 May, Howard's arduous day of negotiations came to an end. The document was now legal, but for one thing: it needed to be officially ratified by the Apple board of directors.

Around twelve hours later all four Beatles assembled at Olympic Studios in south-west London, as Glyn Johns made another forlorn attempt to salvage their January recordings. But the session quickly dissolved into a fractious business meeting. 'It was like a divorce, ' said original Beatles press officer Tony Barrow, 'where you don't like what the lawyers are doing, but you have to go along with it. Lots of rash things were said and done on both sides. ' As McCartney testified later, 'It became clear to me that the other three had already signed the agreement on the previous day without my knowledge. ' He was informed that he wasn't told because he had not bothered to give his colleagues his phone number. Neil Aspinall and Peter Howard listened as the four men argued. McCartney recollected that he disagreed with the percentage Klein was being offered: 'I said, " He'll take 15 per cent. We're massive, we're the biggest act in the world, he'll take 15 per cent. " But for some reason the three of them were so keen to go with him that they really bullied me and ganged up on me. ' Crucially, though, McCartney did not reject outright the idea of being managed by Klein; he merely wanted his lawyer, who was not present, to draft a rival agreement.

By this time Klein was at London airport, where he was about to board a plane for New York under the impression that the negotiations were over. He was paged and called to a phone, where he heard Lennon tell him, 'Paul's making trouble. You have to come back to Olympic. ' So Klein returned to the studio, where he explained to McCartney that the ABKCO board insisted that he obtained the Beatles' approval that day. This was merely a tactical move: Klein had single-handed control over ABKCO. McCartney told his colleagues that he would present them with an alternative document to sign on Monday, and the other Beatles agreed that if they preferred his version, they would sign it. But, with the innocence of rich young men, they insisted that the document they had already signed should be ratified by the Apple board. McCartney objected, and was told, 'Well, we'll do it without you. ' 'They couldn't, ' he insisted years later, but the minutes of the board meeting that followed proved otherwise. Officially only three directors were required to form a quorum, and just before 8 p. m. on 9 May 1969 Aspinall, Lennon and Harrison signed a resolution noting that the agreement with Klein had been ratified, and was now binding on the Beatles, their company and their new manager. With a final fierce exchange of words, the Klein faction exited the studio, leaving McCartney to face the reality of his separation. He wandered through the Olympic complex and stumbled across the American rock musician Steve Miller. After McCartney had poured out his troubles, Miller suggested that work might distract him from his rage. So McCartney thrashed his drums while Miller recorded a song with the symbolically appropriate title of 'My Dark Hour'.

Regular legal missives were exchanged over the next few weeks. One side insisted that neither

McCartney nor any of his companies could be held to an agreement he hadn't signed; the other conceded that Klein did not seek to manage McCartney as a single artist, or any companies that he solely owned, but that the deal was binding for Apple, as it had been signed by the requisite number of Beatle directors. It was like two colour-blind men arguing about a rainbow: destined to end in disharmony. From this point on McCartney rejected Klein and all his works, while Lennon, Harrison and Starkey stayed loyal to their financial guru. As Apple aide Tony Bramwell noted, 'Allen Klein had achieved his ambition of managing the Beatles, but in doing so, he blew them apart. ' There were still – just – four members of the Beatles in May 1969. But the unity that had sustained them for the previous decade had vanished forever.