Allen Klein, Fred Goodman
Allen Klein, Fred Goodman
List: $28.99 | Sale: $20.29
Club: $14.49

Allen Klein
The Man Who Bailed Out the Beatles, Made the Stones, and Transformed Rock & Roll

Author: Fred Goodman

Narrator: Brett Barry

Unabridged: 11 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Mariner Books

Published: 08/06/2024


Synopsis

“Fred Goodman makes this world come alive, and any fan of rock or insider tales of the music industry will be in heaven reading about this fascinating, troubling character.” — Judd Apatow, Omnivoracious

“Writing about contracts, percentages, and deals can be tedious, but Goodman makes it as exciting as reading about an artist’s sex life. The book explodes with inside dope.” —New York Daily News
 
Allen Klein was like no one the music industry had seen before. Though he became infamous for allegedly causing the Beatles’ breakup and robbing the Rolling Stones, the truth is both more complex and more fascinating. As the manager of the Stones and then the Beatles—not to mention Sam Cooke, Pete Townshend, Donovan, the Kinks, and numerous others—he taught young soon-to-be legends how to be businessmen as well as rock stars. While Klein made millions for his clients, he was as merciless with them as he was with anyone, earning himself an outsize reputation for villainy that has gone unchallenged until now. Through unique, unprecedented access to Klein’s archives, veteran music journalist Fred Goodman tells the full story of how the Beatles broke up, how the Stones achieved the greatest commercial success in rock history, and how the music business became what it is today.
 
“Fred Goodman is a superb writer . . . and his account here of one of rock ’n’ roll’s most polarizing figures could not be more readable. The even-handed tone, the supposition that readers are moderately intelligent and sophisticated, and the rather astounding involvement Allen Klein had with pop music’s largest legends—put all that together, and you’ve got one highly engrossing read.” —Yahoo! Music
 
“Succeed[s] both as a compelling work of rock ’n’ roll history and as a cautionary business primer.” —Wall Street Journal

About Fred Goodman

FRED GOODMAN is a former Rolling Stone editor and the author of the books Fortune's Fool,The Secret City, and The Mansion on the Hill, which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the Ralph J. Gleason Award for Best Music Book.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Tosh on November 02, 2015

"Allen Klein" by Fred Goodman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) There are the artists, and there are the people behind the artists. I have always been fascinated with the figures behind the artists. Like the Wizard in the "Wizard of Oz," I suspected that if you pull the theatrical curtain open, not only w......more

Goodreads review by Don on October 10, 2015

(2) I have read a couple of Goodman's books and this one is right in line with the others. Interesting, well researched and fairly dry. The subject of this one, a legend in the music business, makes for some really good trivia information about the Stones and the Beatles. A fair amount of the direct......more

Goodreads review by Dave on March 10, 2016

I’ve been looking forward to reading this book because Allen Klein has been depicted for so long as a sinister character in the history of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. His name will forever be associated with the darker aspects of these bands, such as the breakup of the Beatles and controllin......more

Goodreads review by Jeffrey on June 13, 2015

If you are at all interested in the business side of the world of music, you will love this book. In addition to being a pivotal figure in the world of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Allen Klein's Life and Career intersect with other amazing artists: Sam Cooke,Marianne Faithful, Yoko Ono, Bobby......more

Goodreads review by John on May 08, 2019

For such a consequential figure in the music business, Allen Klein is largely an afterthought today. At the height of his notoriety in the late 1960's and early 1970's, Klein managed the business affairs of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. If you have read any detailed biographies of the Beatles......more