John likes Klein’s brashness and his bulldog mentality. So does Yoko, to whom Klein promises a solo art show.

“He’s a fucking sharp man, and anyone who knew me that well, without having met me before, had to be the guy to look after me,” John explains. He can’t wait to document his commitment to Klein, writing a letter to all parties with a financial interest in the Beatles, including the record company EMI, saying that “I’ve asked Allen Klein to look after my things. Please give him any information he wants and full cooperation. Love. John Lennon.”

George and Ringo are convinced that Klein is well suited. Like John, they sympathize with Klein’s hardscrabble upbringing. “Because we were all from Liverpool,” George reasons, “we favored people who were street people.”

They especially like his promises that they’ll be too rich to ever worry. “You should be able to say FYM—Fuck You, Money,” Klein tells them.

“Rock ’n’ roll specializes in that kind of, ‘This guy’s a twerp. We’ve got to have him on our team!’” Paul says, but he wants no part of any association with Klein.

When Paul tells John whom he’d rather have, John is struck by the obvious.

Of course Paul wants Lee Eastman. The Manhattan music lawyer is the father of Paul’s fiancée, Linda Eastman, the New York photographer he’d first met in 1967, then reconnected with after he and Jane split up.

Paul reaches out to Mick Jagger, who it turns out is trying to get rid of Klein. “Don’t go near him, he’s a dog. He’s a crook,” the Rolling Stone tells Paul. Jagger also calls John to advise him against “making the biggest mistake of your life,” but John’s made up his mind.

And neither one of us is going to budge.

They come to a bizarre arrangement.

Both Lee Eastman and Allen Klein move their offices into Apple headquarters in London and carve out different slices—legal and financial, respectively—of the Beatles’ pie.

*  *  *

On March 12, 1969, twenty-six-year-old Paul marries twenty-seven-year-old Linda.

None of the other Beatles is invited to the wedding. “Maybe it was because the group was breaking up,” Paul says. “We were all pissed off with each other. We certainly weren’t a gang anymore.”

The press is chasing Paul and Linda. “It rained, and this was appropriate,” The Guardian reports. “The pavements outside the Marylebone register office would have been wet in any case with the tears of fans thrown by the sudden reality of having failed to become Mrs. McCartney.”

Instead, Paul tosses candy to the lovelorn, who compete for the sweet mementos.

News of Paul’s wedding ignites John’s competitive spirit.