George Harrison Said All the Beatles' Money Was 'Pilfered' by 'Famous Gangsters'
When they were in The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were massively successful. According to Harrison, though, they didn’t walk away from the band with as much money as they should have. He said that their company, Apple Corps, employed too many “gangsters.” George Harrison said The Beatles lost millions
After The Beatles broke up, they became embroiled in a lawsuit. McCartney had never trusted their new manager, Allen Klein, and sued the band in order to take control of their catalog from him. Harrison said that as they dealt with this, others were profiting off of their music unfairly.
“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,” he said, per Far Out Magazine. “It was a mess, and Paul was suing us three because we had this guy managing us, and it was just a mess.”
He said he found himself in a precarious legal and financial situation.
“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,” he said. “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 organized me.”
Source: cheatsheet.com/Emma McKee
