A hoard of legal papers relating to the Beatles' break up and final legal separation have been discovered and will be auctioned off later this month.
Over 300 pages of typed documents compiled by the group’s various advisors and legal representatives were found in a cupboard where they had been stashed since the 1970s. Auctioneers Dawsons are selling them on December 12 in Maidenhead – they are expected to fetch anywhere between £5000 and £8000.
Denise Kelly, Head of Entertainment and Memorabilia at Dawsons said that the documents had only been discovered in bthe last year after the seller’s brother died. They reveal how fiendishly complicated, and exhausting, the whole process was: "As I read the minutes of meetings - notes which included discussions between the legal teams and accountants - I wondered how on earth they were going to sort everything out, and at times I could sense panic in the room as more and more complexities came to light.”
"One of the lawyers even suggested during one meeting when they had gone round and round and round in circles: ‘Would it be easier if The Beatles just retired?’"
She added: "It has crossed my mind that if I were a script writer, these documents would be all I'd need to tell the real story of what led to one of the best-selling bands in history splitting up and going their separate ways."
As we all know, the Beatles' break-up was drawn-out and acrimonious. Though the group had ceased to function as a creative unit after the release of Abbey Road in 1969, the four were still linked as one legal entity via Apple Corps, which had by then fallen under the control of Allen Klein.
Paul McCartney essentially had to sue his three bandmates, and Klein, to break up the partnership. This he began in early 1971, but as is the way when large sums of money are at stake and lawyers are involved, things dragged on for years. The final documents ending The Beatles were only signed in December 1974, fifty years ago this month.
Inevitably, the legal marathon coloured the four members’ songwriting. George Harrison’s Sue Me Sue You Blues, from his 1973 Living In The Material World album comments in typically sardonic fashion on the whole turgid process: ‘Hold your Bible in your hand/Now all that's left is to find yourself a new band’.
Later in the year McCartney and Wings released Band On The Run. The title track is in itself a metaphor for escape from the legal morass, pivoting as it does on the phrase ‘if we ever get out of here’, which Harrison had a habit of using during the Beatles’ endless legal meetings.
