News How George Harrison and The Beatles were ripped off for millions by “gangsters”
As the most successful group of all time, everyone wanted a piece of The Beatles. From the millions of rabid fans waiting for them at every turn to the Ku Klux Klan threatening the group after John Lennon’s “bigger than Jesus” comment, the Liverpudlian quartet’s immense visibility brought many things, and not all was pleasant. The most tragic result of this was the murder of their frontman years after their split, but more immediately, The Beatles’ success meant they were dragged into the seedy criminal underbelly of their day.
During the 1960s, characterised by lenient law enforcement and a more pronounced presence of criminal enterprises in society compared to today, it was only natural for opportunistic figures to target the most lucrative cultural phenomena available.
Strangely, it seems The Beatles were always set to meet the dark side. At the start of the decade, their formative stay in Hamburg as fresh-faced 17-year-olds catapulted them straight into the murky underbelly of the Hanseatic city. There, they rubbed shoulders with gangsters, pimps, sex workers and waiters armed with truncheons and knuckledusters to protect themselves. “It was good fun”, being amongst such a wretched hive of villainy, guitarist George Harrison once said.
According to The Beatles guitarist, the band were left well alone by gangsters when in Germany, but when they had climbed to the top and reset the direction of popular culture, an array of shadowy characters appeared, with their hands stretched out and friendly smiles. This wouldn’t be as exciting as when they were younger, though. The most notable was Allen Klein, a suspect individual who managed the band towards the end of their time. He would later face years of litigation from them and his other most prominent clients, The Rolling Stones. Famously, Paul McCartney never trusted him.
According to Harrison, Klein wasn’t the only problem. He recalled that the band’s company, Apple Corps, was pilfered by an array of famous “gangsters”, which saw each member lose out on millions they had made with their creative undertakings.
In one interview, he explained: “Dreadful. I mean, all the money that we ever made from Beatles records and from Beatle films or any source, it all came into this company, Apple, which had been pilfered by all these famous gangsters. It was a mess, and Paul was suing us three because we had this guy managing us, and it was just a mess.”
Revealing how one unnamed criminal had him tied up, the ‘My Sweet Lord’ songwriter continued: “I had my own song publishing, you know, it was in New York, which was an illegal company, you know, ’cause this guy had set me in New York, and it meant that I either was breaching some company laws or if I didn’t own the company he owned all my copyrights, and I was in a mess. So when Denis (O’Brien) came along, it was like, you know it, it allowed me to breathe again, and he salvaged all the pieces that he could and organised me.”
