Voting Station

Allen Klein

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Promoter

The Resume

    (December 18, 1931-July 4, 2009)
    Born in Newark, New Jersey
    Accountant/manager/record label executive
    Owned Cameo-Parkway and ABKCO Records
    Managed the Rolling Stones (1965-70) and Beatles (1969-70)

Why he might be annoying:

    Paul McCartney's refusal to join the other Beatles in signing a contract with Klein contributed to the tensions that broke up the band.
    His relations with the Stones and Beatles ended in acrimony and lawsuits.
    The London Evening Standard wrote that his appearance at one Beatles' press conference 'must have set some kind of record for unprintable language.'
    He spent two months in jail for tax fraud from the illegal sales of Beatles promotional records (1979).
    When George Harrison was accused of plagiarizing 'My Sweet Lord,' he initially advised Harrison on how to fight the suit, then bought Bright Tunes, the publishing company suing Harrison.
    That bit of double-dealing backfired when the judge reduced the damages to be paid from the original $1.6 million to $587,000 -- the amount Klein had spent to buy Bright Tunes.
    He was dissed in songs by both McCartney ('You Never Give Me Your Money') and John Lennon ('Steel and Glass').

Why he might not be annoying:

    After his mother's death when he was nine months old, he spent several years in an orphanage before being brought up by a grandmother and an aunt.
    Early on, he gained a reputation as a sleuth who could comb through a record company's books on behalf of an artist and find hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid royalties.
    For his first managerial client, soul singer Sam Cooke, he negotiated an unprecedented deal with RCA, winning for Cooke a higher royalty rate, his own label and rights to his recordings.
    He stopped the hemorrhaging of cash from the Beatles' Apple Records and negotiated a new contract with EMI that gave the band the highest royalties paid to an artist.
    On his desk, he had a sign reading, 'Though I walk in the shadow of the valley of evil, I have no fear, as I am the biggest bastard in the valley.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 50 Votes: 66.00% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 16 Votes: 93.75% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 73 Votes: 53.42% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 119 Votes: 51.26% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 69 Votes: 59.42% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 19 Votes: 52.63% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 203 Votes: 52.71% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 14 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 16 Votes: 56.25% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 7 Votes: 57.14% Annoying
    In 2011, Out of 19 Votes: 63.16% Annoying
    In 2010, Out of 55 Votes: 65.45% Annoying
    In 2009, Out of 395 Votes: 38.73% Annoying