PETER BROWN REVEALS JOHN LENNON ENCOUNTER THAT LEFT MICK JAGGER “UNCOMFORTABLE”

ByBeatles Magazine

Apr 8, 2024 #The Beatles

Peter Brown, 87, is releasing a new book of interviews conducted in 1980 and 1981 with the band and people nearest to it, including business representatives, lawyers, wives and ex-wives — the raw material that Brown and Gaines used for their earlier narrative: “The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles,” published in 1983.
Peter Brown was a witness to some of the band’s most important moments and was a trusted keeper of its secrets. “The only people left are Paul and Ringo and me,” he said. His new book with the writer Steven Gaines is the oral history “All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words.”

The book contains a number of controversial stories from the band’s heyday, including one “uncomfortable” moment featuring The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger and the unscrupulous accountant Allen Klein, who simultaneously managed both bands for a time.

Brown revealed he was compelled to do so after a journalist asked him to talk following the success of Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary Get Back. Brown was reminded that he was the only one left apart from Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, and in response, felt he had a responsibility to clear things up for good.

From the deteriorating relationship between John and Paul to Yoko Ono’s role in the end of the group and here’s one moment that’s particularly fraught, featuring Jagger, John Lennon and Klein. It was a meeting Brown had set up in private for The Rolling Stones vocalist to expose what Klein was really like.

Paul was highly suspicious of the American from the beginning. He knew that Klein’s business model made him the middle man, making all his artist’s publishing rights his legal property.

Paul simply did not want to depend on someone with Klein’s nature to distribute royalty cheques, particularly after The Rolling Stones had been duped by one of his supposedly well-intentioned contracts.

Brown said: “He was a hideous person. He even looked like a crook: sloppy and fat, always wearing sneakers and sweatshirts. Everything he didn’t like was ‘for s**t’.”

Why John Lennon was so into the idea of Klein managing the band?.. Gaines said: “The interviews suggest it is because Allen Klein offered Yoko a million dollars for her movie project. She was enticed and John would do anything Yoko said.”

Peter Brown recalled how “deeply embarrassing” the meeting was, as Klein surprisingly showed up, invited by John.

“I asked Mick Jagger to come over and explain to the four Beatles who this Allen Klein was,” Peter Brown states. “And John, in his wonderful way, had Klein turn up to the same meeting, which was deeply embarrassing. It made Mick very uncomfortable too.”

Klein kept a stranglehold through the release of “Imagine” (John)and “The Concert for Bangladesh” (George).

Things eventually broke down for Lennon and Klein, with John finally firing him and later admitting that Paul’s suspicions were right all along.