Paul McCartney spent the end of the 1960s in a state of distress over The Beatles’ new manager, Allen Klein. He hadn’t wanted Klein as the group’s manager, but his bandmates outvoted him. McCartney said he grew so stressed about Klein’s presence in band affairs that he started to have nightmares about him.
Paul McCartney frequently had dreams about The Beatles’ manager
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In 1967, The Beatles’ longtime manager Brian Epstein died. In the aftermath, the band struggled to manage themselves and began looking into new managers. McCartney wanted his future father-in-law, John Eastman, to take the job, but his bandmates outvoted him three to one. Against McCartney’s wishes, Klein became the band’s new manager.
Before they signed with Klein, though, he visited The Beatles in a recording session. McCartney knew John Lennon and George Harrison wanted Klein, but he was “dragging his heels.”
“So we got to the session, and Klein came in,” McCartney said in the book All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines. “To me, he was like a sort of demon that would always haunt my dreams. He got to me. Really, it was like I’d been dreaming of him as a dentist.”
McCartney felt Klein was rushing the band to sign with him.
Paul McCartney said his stance on The Beatles’ manager made him feel like Julius Caesar
During the meeting, Klein pushed for the band to sign, and Lennon needled McCartney over it. He accused his bandmate of stalling for saying he wanted to take the weekend to consider the deal.
“I dug my heels in, and they said, right, well, we’re going to vote it,” McCartney recalled, adding, “I said, ‘No, you’ll never get Ringo to.’ I looked at Ringo, and he gave me this sick look like, Yeah, I’m going with them. Then I said, ‘Well this is like bloody Julius Caesar, and I’m being stabbed in the back!’”
He said that this was the first time the band had outvoted someone three to one. They moved forward with Klein as their manager.
He shared why he thought John Lennon liked Allen Klein
Lennon was Klein’s strongest supporter, which McCartney believed had to do with the manager’s treatment of Yoko Ono. She faced a chilly-at-best reception from the other Beatles, but Klein promised to help with her career.
“I always had the impression that Klein had got them to go with him because he was the only one who was ever sympathetic to Yoko,” McCartney said. “Klein saw the Yoko connection and told Yoko that he would do a lot for her. Give Yoko a lot. And that was basically what John and Yoko wanted, recognition for Yoko.”
After The Beatles broke up, Lennon, Harrison, and Ringo Starr maintained Klein as their manager. By 1973, though, all had parted ways with him, which prompted him to sue them. They settled the lawsuit in 1977.
