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One can and should be forgiven for greeting the news of yet another book about The Beatles<\/strong> with more than a hint of skepticism. I mean, the Beatles phenomenon has been exhaustively dissected from most every vantage point: artistic, sociological, cultural, and so on. Not to deny for a second the value and importance of them and their music, but pretty much everything that needs to be written about them \u2013 save for the next two installments in Mark Lewisohn<\/strong>‘s obsessively detailed yet eminently readable trilogy \u2013 has already been published. Right?<\/p>\n I was certain the answer was yes. But then I learned of a new book by Stan Soocher<\/strong>, Baby You’re a Rich Man: Suing the Beatles for Fun and Profit<\/em>. Setting aside the amusing (but perhaps needlessly snarky) second part of that title, Soocher’s goal is a fascinating, largely heretofore-unexplored topic: the myriad of lawsuits directly and\/or indirectly involving The Beatles.<\/p>\n There’s nothing dry or unnecessarily knotty in Soocher’s prose. With the skill of a forensic accountant — but the storytelling finesse of a novelist \u2013 the author details many of the major legal entanglements that plagued the Beatles at various points in their career. And \u2013 understandably drawing upon the historical scholarship of those who have written before \u2013 Soocher places the lawsuits into a context that lay people (that is, non-lawyers, non-accountants) will understand and appreciate.<\/p>\n Some of these topics have been covered before, most notably in Apple to the Core: The Unmaking of The Beatles<\/em>, the 1972 book by Peter McCabe<\/strong> and Robert Schonfeld<\/strong>. And the topics were discussed in Peter Brown<\/strong>‘s 1983 book (with Steven Gaines<\/strong>), The Love You Make<\/em>. But the former could draw only upon information then in the public domain, and much of what Soocher covers was officially secret at the time, or not easily learned. And the latter suffers \u2013 at least to some degree \u2013 at the hands of its author’s desire to paint himself \u2013 a significant participant in that book’s stories \u2013 in a favorable light.<\/p>\n Soocher isn’t exactly a disinterested observer; no, such a point of view simply wouldn’t provide the initiative required for an author to piece together all of the information. But Soocher is a largely impartial witness, a writer who sets out the facts and context while exercising commendable restraint and no more editorializing than is necessary.<\/p>\n The legal messes that involved The Beatles \u2013 or at least the ones discussed in Baby You’re a Rich Man<\/em> \u2013 fall surprisingly neatly into four categories: Messes brought on or exacerbated by manager Brian Epstein<\/strong>; entanglements caused or worsened by the involvement of Allen Klein<\/strong>; crises borne of dealings with Morris Levy<\/strong>; and difficulties at the hands of government and\/or law enforcement authorities. Also unsurprisingly, there’s an unhealthy amount of overlap among these, if you will, four horsemen.<\/p>\n Brian Epstein is seen by most historians as a hard-working, well-meaning, and ultimately tragic figure who generally did his best, yet who often found himself out of his depth in business matters. His naivete concerning matters of licensing and publishing meant that The Beatles \u2013 although we think of them as fabulously rich people \u2013 often left money on the table in business negotiations. And the mess in which their management structure was left in the wake of Epstein’s death led directly to two new realities. The first was Apple Corps, a high-minded but ultimately failed business venture run by the group members themselves. (Yes, today the company is wildly successful, but that has only come about in the last few decades.)<\/p>\n The second was to send the group \u2013 or at least John Lennon<\/strong>, George Harrison<\/strong>, and Ringo Starr<\/strong> \u2013 into the (arguably) evil clutches of Klein. As Baby You’re a Rich Man<\/em> illustrates time after time, page after page, seemingly everything Klein did for his clients ended up (surprise!) benefiting him to a greater degree. So while he got the group a better royalty rate on their albums, he took a massive cut. And when Apple received promotional copies (records \u201cwritten off\u201d and designed to be sent to radio stations and reviewers), Klein \u201csold them out the back door\u201d to retailers, pocketing the illegal profits.<\/p>\n The Beatles’ tangles with Klein led as much as any other factor (and arguably more than the presence of Yoko Ono<\/strong>) to the ultimate breakup of the Beatles. And he’d continue to cause them problems for years afterward, as a seemingly unending litany of court cases demonstrates.<\/p>\n
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