Lennon, The Mobster & The Lawyer!

John Lennon Attorney and author Jay Bergen reflects on his experience representing John Lennon in 1975.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Tick two.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
It's Kendash's Beetle Revolution Bunk to Faith all.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
On the Ihart Radio. Though.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
On this episode of Ken Dashaus Beatles Revolution, we look
into John Lennon's legal troubles, but not the government of
the United States trying to kick him out, not Nixon's
paranoia and the FBI wiretapping him. No, it's about the
problem he had with music biz notorious gangster Marris Levy.
As John was doing the rock and Roll album, Marris

(00:33):
Levy reached out and said, Hey, I'd love to hear
what you're doing. And John was naive about certain things
and didn't realize even though his name was on a
lot of those songs, he had nothing to do with
the music business.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
He was just a mobster. So he said, yeah, he
wants to hear it.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
And producer Jack Douglas told him, John, be careful, don't
leave a copy of that album anywhere in any form,
because he'll steal it. He told us this on a
previous podcast. John went up there, he left him a cassette,
and two days later, Mars Levy had released it before
John could trying to untangle all this was a great

(01:06):
lawyer who's helping him Jay Bergen, who finally wrote the
book Lenin The Mobster and the Lawyer, The Untold Story.
You're facing one of the most powerful mobsters of the time,
but you're representing John Lennon, and it's going to be
a fight.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Well, I need somebody, not just an it bad you know,
I need some long John Lennon certainly needed help.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Any musician did facing the wrath of Mars Leavy, and
my guest today did the work Lennon The Mobster and
the Lawyer, the new book. Jay Bergen, thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Ken, Thank you very much for having me. It's great
to be back in New York City because we live
in the wilds of southwestern North Carolina and a town
with about seven hundred souls, I declare, in the Blue
Ridge Mountains, I.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Declare, haven't you moved in this world?

Speaker 2 (01:57):
There isn't even a traffic light in town Blinker. Where
did you grow up Long Island?

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Oh well, that's cosmopolitan compared to that Valley Stream law
school for you. J Fordham, all my friends Fordham Law.
There's so many mobsters. I mean, the Jewish mobster business
ran all of the records, it was, but of all
the Jewish goddesfs. There was one name, and that name
is mister Marris Leafy. That stands head and shoulders above

(02:25):
the others. Well, I know if it's above or below,
but would you agree it's It's universal. If there's a
story about some illicit goings on in a record company
in northern Nebraska, if you just read long enough, somewhere
the named Mars Leafy'll come up in places you never
even thought of. It's always And then Mars Levy showed
up and dot dot So that's where this happened. When

(02:48):
John Lennon was doing the rock and Roll album and
Jack Douglas was up here. If you guys remember, and
you can go back and listen to the podcast. And
for a guy who is so hip and so smart,
there are a lot of times you could bamboozle him
and sell him. You know, the Brooklyn Bridge for example,
Magic Alex, who's going to build the studio and because

(03:10):
you could see sounds that would be color, the whole
room would be And of course Jeff Emmerck had to
come and rip out all that crap and make a
real studio for them at Apple. But he saw for that,
and please correct me because this is the story. I
heard that he saw Mars Levy's name on all these
songs and thought, well, he must be a songwriter because
it's on there, and he wanted him to hear the

(03:30):
rock and Roll album. And Jack Douglass told me he said,
if you go see Marris Levy, don't leave a copy
or a tape or anything of the album. That's what
that's the part. I know, Jay shaking his head. No,
will you take it from here and explain it?

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, you know. John Klaus Foreman told me before the
trial started when I interviewed interviewed him and a couple
of other members of the band in Los Angeles and
finally decided to use Jesse ed Davis and Eddie Motto
as witnesses in the trial. Klaus telling me that John
is very naive about business. He'll start talking about, well,

(04:10):
maybe I'll do an album with Bob Dylan, not even
thinking that Bob Dylan's with one record company and he's
with another record company. And John, I think also was
just in some ways naive. Generally, he did not want
to be involved in business. He was very shy, and
he did not like telling people no if they got

(04:34):
if he got invited someplace, you know, he'd either make
up an excuse or say, you know, no, I don't
want to be there. But as far as Mars went,
I don't think he knew a lot about Mars before
he met him. And the reason he met him was
because the next album that was supposed to come out,

(04:55):
the Phil Spector album, the Golden Oldies album, didn't come
out because Phil disappeared in December of nineteen seventy three
with all of the master tapes. So John went ahead
and made walls and bridges of his own songs, and
then Marris started yelling where are my songs? Where are

(05:16):
my songs? And Mars knew that none of the rock
and roll oldies would fit on an album of John
Lennon songs, but he just wanted to meet John, and
that led to this meeting at the club Cavallero with
John and Harold Sider, who was his business manager. May

(05:37):
May Pang was there and Mars.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
When was this Jay, When did this happen?

Speaker 2 (05:41):
This was in This was October of nineteen seventy four,
about I think it was October eighth, and John was
about to go back into the studio having had Walls
and Bridges released go back into the studio with the
same band that he had used on Walls and Bridges
October twenty first to the twenty fifth. He was going

(06:04):
to record the basic tracks from the oldies album because
he knew he couldn't use all of those tracks because
there was so much drinking and partying at the studios
in nineteen seventy three in Los Angeles. So that's when
he met Marris, just before he was going to record
some of the additional tracks to add to the ones

(06:25):
that he could use.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Got it totally understand where it's coming from now, And
of course Leevey wanted to get his hooks into John Lennon,
who didn't want to get his hooks into from.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
Alan Klein, to anybody.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
Everybody wanted if you could get a piece of a
beatle financially as mister Klein knew, Yeah, you're set.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
He insisted to Harold Sider, I want to meet I
want to hear the story from John Lennon himself. And
it was during that meeting that John talked about the
first of all, he apologized to Marris. He said, I
didn't you know he testified in the trial. He said
I didn't know who this man was. I knew he

(07:04):
was angry with me, so I was very nervous. You know,
this is John Lennon, one of the most prominent people
in the world, and he's nervous about meeting somebody, right,
I mean, but that's who he was. Yes, he wasn't kidding, Yes, yeah, no,
he was not kidding. And during the course of the meeting,
he said to Mars, you know, I've thought of putting

(07:25):
this out on TV because I'm worried about the critics.
I think the critics may be laying in wait for
this album because there was so much negative publicity about
what was going on during my lost weekend. And Mars said, Ah,
I've got a company, Adam eight, that does that. That
market's on TV. How about you know, we do it

(07:49):
that way? And John said and Harold said immediately, well,
John's under an exclusive contract to em I Slash Capital,
and we'd have to get their permission. And Marris from
that moment on had this mantra that he kept repeating,
when are you going to Harold, when are you going

(08:09):
to London to get the permission? Well, we can't do it.
The album isn't finished and everything. And then in November
John made a fatal mistake because Marris started hounding him
about when can I listen to my three songs? And
John finally he was at Marris's club, the same club

(08:31):
that where they'd had this meeting in October. John called
the record plant told him. He asked, Marris, what do
you want? You want to just a cassette or no, No,
I want a real to reel so I can play
it in my office. So John orders two reel to reels, unmixed, unfinished,

(08:55):
seven and a half ips. As we all know.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
That's home level, not professional.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Right, you don't put that anything out on that and
had it delivered to Mars. So Marris had the entire album,
even though it was unfinished and unmixed. And when John
told Harold Sider that what he'd done, Harold said, I
wish you hadn't done that. So now you just mentioned

(09:21):
about Mars Levy having his hooks in John, he had
the hooks deep in his mouth now at this point
because he had the album.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
Right, John was so hit musically, was so inventive and creative,
but like so many great artists that we've met, they're
completely at a loss for handling their business affairs, for
handling any of life, because a big part of it
is that they started so young. I'm dear, dear friends
of mine.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Billy J.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Kramer who is part of the British Invasion, and John
gave him his name the band. He wrote the first
song for him, you know, to be able to beat
to me, and told.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Brian Epstein to manage him.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
And Billy now is struggling trying to find you know,
there has to be millions of dollars that are gone
that he never found.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
And when I said to Billy, how did you get paid?

Speaker 3 (10:11):
And he said, I don't know what he said, I
don't know. Brian had hired a London accounting firm and
they gave me a number and if you need something,
if you wanted to buy a car or a house
or something, you'd call this number and they'd wire you money.
So you didn't even have to keep two sets of
books on these guys because they didn't even know all

(10:31):
he knew. He worked at the railroad, his dad worked
on the railroad. You got a wage packet at the
end of the week, and that's how you got paid.
He said, Accountants, do you think in Liverpool were all
boor kids. There was ever a discussion about accounting and
since then because the other thing I don't make excuses
for as an adult not being aware of especially when

(10:52):
you're the top tier of lenin. But since they were
on this rocket, since they were sixteen seventeen years old,
when were they really going to sit down and study
their finances or how to handle them? You trusted people
who came into your world to do that for you.
Lennon the Mobster and the Lawyer. Let's take a quick
break and we come back. Let's find out how this

(11:12):
graduate from Fordham University winds up being a white knight
to save John Lennon from the clutches of Marris Levy.
Jay Bergen, the author of his own story Lennon, the
Mobster and the Lawyer. When you say that these guys
were naive, it was just that they were on a rocket.
The way I look at it, if you were in

(11:33):
the Beatles rocket supersonic rocket, are they never had time
to learn finances.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
My friend Billy J. Kramer, who was part.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
Of Beatlemania the British Invasion, said, you know, we're working
class kids from London. We got a wage packet at
the end of the week working on the railroad on Fridays,
you got a wage packet, You went to the pub,
you brought some home. We didn't know from accounting or
what it was. They didn't even know how much they
were getting paid per gig. They didn't Everything was sent
to an accountant in Lund and they were told, if

(12:01):
you need money, why are the accountant and he'll send it.
So they could steal from these guys left, right and sideways.
They've always had someone to rely on. Everybody says Yoko
was arrogant. Yoko was controlling. John Lennon didn't know how
to control Lenin Enterprises, the brand. He needed Yoko to
do it. She had that for business she did.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
I got involved because as we got into nineteen seventy five,
then Marris started making noises about having an agreement with
John to sell this on TV on a worldwide basis,
and in fact wrote a letter to my partner David Dalgenus,
who passed it on to Harold Sider. The problem was

(12:44):
nobody answered that letter. Harold said he would take care
of it. He told Marris, we don't have a deal.
I have to get EMI's permission, and we don't know
whether they're going to want to use the album. And
of course Capital as soon as they heard the album,
there's no way they wanted to sell it on television.
They wanted to sell it the way everything else has been,

(13:06):
all the other Beatles albums. So David, my partner, had
been hired by John after they he and George and
Ringo split with Klein to kind of negotiate the Beatles dissolution.
And on February third, David asked me, came down to
his office and asked me to go to a meeting

(13:26):
at Capitol Records about the possibility that this Marics Levy,
who I didn't know who he was, was going to
release this pirated album. And so I went to the
meeting and we were talking. There were three Capitol lawyers there,
one from headquarters in Los Angeles, and all of a sudden,

(13:47):
the conference room door opened and in walk John Lennon.
Now to say that I was a little bit stunned
with the yes, absolutely, and because I didn't know he
was there, and I don't think I'm not sure that
the Capitol lawyers knew it, but and he walked. I
quickly gathered myself together, He put my wits together, and yeah,

(14:12):
we all introduced each other. We started talking about the
possibility that Marris was going to put out this album,
and John was very disturbed because he knew the album
sounded awful and it was not only the critics at
that point, but it was his fans. He was really
worried that his fans were going to hate it. So,
to make the long story short, we finally I suggested

(14:35):
to him, how long will it take you to finish
the album? John said two days, because he'd been working
on it all through the fall and through December, so
he went in on the fourth and fifth finished it Capital.
At that point, Marris started advertising around the country on
various TV stations the album. We sent a series of

(15:00):
telegrams to these TV stations saying this is not the
authorized John Lennon rock and roll album, And finally, on
February thirteenth, Capitol released the official version of the album.
Marris pulled his ads. I think he sold twelve hundred
and fifty copies and about ten days later sued John Capitol,

(15:24):
Emi Cider, and Apple Records, claiming that he had this agreement.
There were other There were other causes of action, and
this was in New York Supreme Court when he didn't
get any reaction from John, and I think I think
he thought he would because John had settled to come
together case in seventy three. He then filed. They made

(15:49):
a big mistake. He filed an anti trust case in
federal court now in claiming the capital emi John had
conspired to prevent Marris from selling this album. The mistake
was that cases in New York Supreme Court moved very,
very very slowly, but in federal court they are assigned

(16:13):
to a judge from the first day they're filed, and
this one was assigned to Lloyd McMahon sixteen years on
the bench. I knew Judge McMahon. He ran a very
fast calendar and so we were at that point we
were off for the races.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
This is all stuff we wouldn't know as layman or
understanding how all this works. So it gets to federal court.
And by the way, I'm shocked and also elated that
he filed a lawsuit instead of sending two guys named
Cheech over to your house to say this isn't going
to happen, you know, to just give him the money.

(16:51):
Which I don't know if that ever happened, if you
ever felt threatened or were threatened by no very lucky
you know.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
Now, well, I think it was. I think John had
two bigger profile.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
I don't leave leave every what everybody told me about,
you know, Tommy James to everybody. You know, if Tommy
James's story, and that's a whole nother podcast that we'll
do with Tommy. But he's got the number one record
in America. I think we're alone now. I think it was,
and I think we're alone now. Nobody was more alone
that night than Tommy James, who is driving with his

(17:25):
headlights off from New York to Florida to hide because
there was an internal war, and as two guys came
to his house and said, you got a relative, somebody
you can stay with for a while, Well yeah, why
you know, there was a little, a little disagreement and
we came out on the other side. So, you know, Marston,
guys are on a cruise to Europe. You should go

(17:47):
somewhere because what do I have to do with it? Well,
you're a prize canary. So if they can't get to him,
you know what I'm saying, Okay, like now would be
a good time. Do you need to help packing? As
we'll pack now. And at that moment, he gat the
sandwich and took off for Florida. And we're listening to
his number one song in America with the lights off,
sleeping behind rest stops, trying to survive. So I'm just saying,

(18:11):
knowing that that existed back in the late sixties, I
am thrilled that this actually went into a court of
law and wasn't fought in Sopranos Land.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
No.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Well, and I've read Tommy's book. Okay, So when I
started working on my book, I read a number of books,
including the one with Marris's picture on the front that
says the Godfather of rock and roll.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
So guys, well, here's your reading list for Jay and
I Tommy James's book. And there's a movie I've told
you about one hundred times about. It's called Bang, the
Bert Burns Story.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Do you know that one? Jay? Have you seen them?

Speaker 3 (18:49):
I'm telling you Brett Burns' son made it about Bird.
And when you realize there are points in that story
where they've completely left the music business. We're just in
the last season of Panos it's just a war, and
you know Van Marrison and Neil Diamond are in the
middle of it, you know, just trying to get records out,
and it goes off the rails so fast. It's absolutely astounding.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
What looked for it?

Speaker 3 (19:14):
What Atlantic did? It's a documentary. I think it's on
Netflix or Amazon or someone called Bang Records.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Bang Records.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
I hit every.

Speaker 3 (19:23):
Time and it was a logo of a gun with
the word bang coming out, which was for bert amet
Neshui and Jerry Wexler, and I thought, I knew this stuff.
It's terrifying, you know, Oh my god, it was really
like that. Holy I just heard the funny stories. I
didn't hear those stories. But anyway, so Jay again, Lennon,

(19:45):
the mobster and the lawyer take us pick it up
where they're going. They filed in federal court and you know,
the judge and it usually goes quickly.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Well, you know, I immediately sat down with John and
started really going over the facts and May and Harold
uh and to me, as a trial lawyer, the facts
have always been the most important thing, and I thought
we really had a good case on the facts. Yes,
did John give him the the unmixed album. Yes he did,

(20:17):
and that's what he was using to put out. But
I was fairly confident that we had, you know, we
had a good case. I thought John would be a
terrific witness. John asked me one day to come up
to the Dakota to meet Yoko. I went up. She
spent about an hour and a half kind of mildly
cross examining me. And it wasn't until years and years

(20:40):
and years later, ken that I realized that was an audition.
Yeah that if she hadn't liked me, no, I would
have been out exact you. So anyhow, the case, the
case moved along very quickly, and William Shertman, who was
the partner who was supposed to be in charge of
the case, turned the whole case over to a very

(21:02):
very young partner uh and named Alan Kanser. Shertman did
not appear until the trial, and I anticipated that he
was going to be totally unprepared.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
We started the trial. Well, let me let me go
back a little bit. I spent a lot of time
with John before his deposition. UH that was taken by uh,
by this Alan Kanser.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
There was an there was a funny incident in the
deposition because Marris showed up to the deposition in Kansor's
office and sat in back of Canser, and throughout the
early questions to John, every time John answered a question,
Marris would roll his eyes, grimace, you know, shake his head,

(21:48):
you know, do something to to try to intimidate, intimidate John. Finally,
I said to Alan Kanzer, mister Canser, if mister Levy
doesn't stop making faces, grimacing every time John Lennon makes
an answer, gives an answer, we're going to have to leave.
And Kanzer said, well, I'm sure mister Levy is not

(22:11):
doing something improper. I said, I don't know how you
can say that. You're looking at me. He's in back
of you, and I'm facing him, so and we had
this back and forth. I finally said, look, if he
say to stop, we'll leave. That's all. He finally stopped
when we took a break for lunch. He did not
come back. But the night before the trial, John called me.

(22:32):
I was staying in the Drake Hotel because at the
time I was living way out in New Jersey and
I couldn't do the commute every day and asked if
Yoko could come to the trial, and I said, well,
of course, yeah. I'm sorry I didn't know she was
she might be interested in coming. Fool that I am.
I should have realized that she would want to be there.

(22:53):
Sean then was about three months old. He'd been born
in October. So next morning they picked me up. Off
we go to uh to the courthouse. It picked me
up in their limo with my colleague Howard Roy and
we trial started. The trial picked a jury here in
New York City, Yes, yeah, right down in Foley Square,

(23:17):
near just north of the library of the City Hall.
Right now. So on the second on the first day
of the trial, at the lunch break.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
By the way, excuse me for interrupting jury trial notes.
This is just this was a jury jury trial. This
was a jury trial. We picked a jury. Wow, are
you a beetle fan?

Speaker 1 (23:33):
I can't imagine for daring a jury and asking if
they're a beetle.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Well, you know, in federal court the judges control selecting
the jury to a large extent. They're the ones who
and judge Judge McMahon had been on the bench for
sixteen years. He was also an experienced trial lawyer. Before that,
he was the United States Attorney in the Southern District
in Manhattan, so he knows what he's doing. Yes, oh yeah, yeah,

(23:58):
And I don't know whether you know. It didn't seem
to me like Shertman knew anything about Judge McMahon. But anyhow,
at the lunch break, we get in the limo and
I said to John, what do you want to eat?
And he said, well, we're only eating fish, and I said, okay.

(24:18):
I asked the driver to take us down to the
old Fulton Fish Market near the East River, not far
away from the courthouse, and we pull up in front
of Sloppy Louis, which was I knew was a great
seafood restaurant, very plain, wooden tables, no tablecloths and or anything.
We went there ken. We went there for twenty days

(24:40):
every time that John and Yoko came to the trial.
And John came every day, even though there were days
when he did not have to testify. And I think
he did that because he wanted to make it clear
that I'm not giving up on this and this is
important to me. Marris once the trial got going, did

(25:00):
not show up. He'd be there once in a while,
but so we ate at Sloppy Louis for twenty days.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
It was my greatest gift that restaurant ever had in
its life was that trial.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
And you know, I think there was only one person.
This was a kind of a Wall Street type place
that was the blank clientele for lunch. I think there
was only one person that came up and asked John
for an autograph. And John's rule is no autographs when
I'm meeting, right before I'm meeting, or after I'm meeting. Yes,
I'll give you an autograph. So the the trial went on,

(25:36):
and I'll tell something that is in the book. The
next morning, Tuesday morning, John says to me when sitting
in my office before we left for the courthouse, Yoko
has something to tell you. And I looked at Yoko
and she said, I consulted my swami last night and
the swami said the trial is going to be interrupted today.

(25:59):
So I'm thinking, I'm thinking a swami now.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
Out of all the things you've heard, and you're obviously
have the gift of gab, you're a trial lawyer, but
that had to stop you called.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah. I looked at John. He's looking straight across the room,
at Yoko. He would not look at me. I said,
what did the tawm he say?

Speaker 1 (26:16):
She repeated.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
He said, the trial's going to be interrupted today. I said, Yoko,
we've got witnesses coming in from London from California, and
this judge is a racehorse.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
I mean, we're just going to go, go go. She
had no comment. Off we go. I started cross examining
Marris late in the morning, and all of a sudden,
my colleague, Howard Roy starts pulling my jacket and pointing
to Shirtman who's at the table in front of me,
and Shertman is holding up the Two Virgins album and

(26:50):
turning it around with the nude photos of John and
Yoko on the front and back so that the jury
can see it. And this was a narrow courtroom. The
judge jury was right there. I grabbed it off his table,
came up to the judge and said, your honor, mister
Shehrtman was showing this to the jury, and the judge

(27:12):
looked at it, and he took it, and he turned around.
He tried to stuff it into a round waste paper basket.
Shehrtman's right in back of me, standing there and says,
your honor, your honor, please, that's going to be one
of my exhibits, and McMahon says to him in a
very loud voice, not in my court room. That led
to a long argument between the two of them. The

(27:35):
judge declared a mistrial and he called Shirtman a liar
for claiming that the judge had been against his case
right from the beginning, and the judge accused himself. We
had no jury and no judge, but.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
You had one hell of a swami.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
Dave Burgen, I know you're staying with this because we
made Let's take a short and we come back more
with Jay Bergen his book. You just have to get
this book and read it. Lennon The Mobster and the Lawyer,
and he's the third part of that state because he's
certainly we know number one, and we're telling you about
number two. And Jay's got this on Ken Dashaw's Beatles Revolution.

(28:21):
We are back Kendashau talking with Jay Bergen, who's the
lawyer in the new book Lennon The Mobster and the Lawyer.
The untold story about the rock and roll album that
the it's strange that the mobster. There are a lot
of mobsters in the music business, but the mobster which
was Moisch Levy, Marris Levy and trying to get it back.

(28:44):
And Jay, I know Carol Miller good friends with you,
and of course mat Pang is one of my dearest
friends and she was part of this story. Was there
as they're making this album. And one of the things
we've talked about is the name Lennon McCartney, Lennon, Lennon McCartney,
Lennon McCartney, Harrison Ringo and this there are books about

(29:05):
this that are like, oh, that's somewhat mildly interesting. But you,
Jay Bergen, knew the man named John Lennon. The world
knows the icon that's John Lennon. And what I've always
tried to do with every one of these interviews is
hopefully for all the fans and you know, hundreds of
thousands of fans that get to listen to this, not

(29:27):
bracatoccio on my part, but to make the human beings,
is that people get to see the human being, who's
who's unsecure, who's insecure or not sure of what to
do some difficult points in their lives.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
High points goes to the music.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
We know how brilliant he is as a writer, as
a creator, as a musician. That part is documented and
I prove it every day, every hour on the air.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
For the music.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
But what happens when the music gets stolen? Because the
business the music, as everybody knows, the music business is
a business, and there are a lot of dirty players
in it, and especially back in the wild West of
the rock and roll days. So Jay Bergen is trying
to straighten this out. The trial is going on federal
court to try to get Mars Levy to stop and

(30:13):
have no rights to the rock and roll album because
he doesn't have the finished product. And suddenly the trial
stops because of Levy's lawyer shenanigans.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Now what, well, I did something I've never done before
or since. As the judge went off the bench into
his robing room in back of the bench, I followed
him right into the robing room and I said, your honor,
you know you can't do this. We now don't have
a judge, we don't have a jury. He said, mister Bergen.

(30:43):
I'm very sorry, but I think mister Shertman realized that
his case was going very badly and that's it. So
I came out of the room, come out of the
robing room, and I said to all the lawyers, I'm
going down to see the chief judge. I went down.
He was at lunch, dictated a memo about what had
happened and said, we need a new we need a

(31:04):
new judge. And quickly, because we were day and a
half into this trial, went back up. Johnny Yoko was
still there. I told him what had happened. Yoko said,
oh no, oh, this this should not have happened. And
John said, Yoko, Jay's in charge. Of course she had

(31:27):
Urswami had predicted it. So by the time we got
back to the office, we had a call to go
see another judge, Judge Grise, Thomas Grise, and he became
the new judge. Both sides waved a jury and we
started the trial the next day. And here's here's the
enormous break that we got because of Shertman's misbehavior. Judge

(31:51):
Grise was young, he'd only been on the bench about
five four to five years, but he was a classical musician.
He played the harpsichord and the piano in a small
amateur classical music group. And he did not know anything
about the Beatles or John Lennon or their music. He

(32:14):
told us right away, this is not my kind of music.
I listened to a lot of music, but this is
something new. So if you want to want me to
understand what's going on in the case and with your counterclaims,
because we had filed counterclaims against Capitol Records for damages
against Marris, You're gonna have to explain it to me.

(32:37):
So John and I realized that here's two musicians. They
may not they may not, you know, listen to the
same music, but they're musicians their music fans too, and
their music fans, and so John and I decided that
we can we can conduct a class for this judge

(33:00):
on what rock and roll is, how the Beatles made music,
how John produced his own records, and that's how we
structured John's testimony, and the key parts of his testimony
are are in the book because it you know, I
think you can almost hear John's voice when you read

(33:23):
his testimony about how quote we learned the trade. That
was one of the first answers he gave to you know,
this outline of questions that I had structured for him,
and that we'd gone over and over time and again
how he would how that Beatles slowly took control of
all aspects of the of the Beatles records, including finally

(33:48):
by I think he said, by the Rubber Soul album,
the album covers, and as as you and I know,
Ken and a lot of other people know, the Beatles
really turned album covers into an art form completely.

Speaker 3 (34:02):
As I've used this quote one hundred times, I'll use
it one thousand more. As little Stephen always said, they
were the first group that evolved. Everybody else did a
type of song, or at a type of step or
a type and that's what you did. And when everybody
always said about the Beatles is everyone every one of
the British Invasion guys told me, from Peter Asher to

(34:25):
Billy J. Kramer to Ringo, like every question in the
early day says what are you gonna do when this
is over in a couple of years, And they all said,
I don't know, and I maintain and this is my
own two cents, it was over in a couple of years.
By late nineteen sixty five, the Beatles fired the mop tops.
They fired them, they threw them away. We're not even

(34:45):
going to tour we're not gonna shake our heads, and
we're gonna make some music like Rubber Soul, and then Revolver.
And once we get to sixty six, Revolver and we've
done our last live shows, not to full stadiums anymore,
but we're done with that. They fired them, and then
they're this new Beatles that are exploring different music styles.
And then they fired those Beatles and made them the

(35:07):
most psychedelic band in the world, with the most groundbreaking
album anybody heard, called Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
And then you bookend it with an even crazier psychedelic
album called Magical Mystery Tour. And while the whole world
is wearing plaids and check shirts and polka dots and
long hats and bell bottomed blootes, the next album comes

(35:27):
out and it's black and white, and they're wearing white
shirts and dark vests, just black and white, playing blues,
but still.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Doing some experimental stuff.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
Whenever you had them pigeonholed, they fired that band and
changed And I honestly the Stones keep going. But the Stones,
being honest, I love the Stones. They followed their path.
The Beatles were the ones John Lennon and Paul McCartney
and George by the sixty seven are out there with machetes,
carving a path that nobody ever saw well.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
And as you know, John asked Klaus Foreman to design
the cover for a Revolver and because he was an artist,
a real art I knew from day one, and it
won a Grammy for the Best Graphic Art Design Album Cover.
And then as you mentioned Sergeant Peppers, I mean they

(36:18):
got into it. John testified in the trial that they
hired two excellent graphic artists in London I don't remember
their name, Yes, Peter Blake, Yes, and got in a
huge fight with em I because it was going to
be too expensive, and they just stood their ground and
said this is going to be the album cover. And

(36:39):
also it was the first album cover that printed the
lyrics on the back of the album.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
Yes, Yes, Yes, And it was the first rock and
roll album to win a Grammy for Album of the Year,
isn't it. It's just amazing to be a friend. I
shouldn't say this, but I'm going to say this. A
friend who worked for EMI in London said, it's an acronym.
What European music, No it stands for every mistake imaginable.

(37:11):
And again this is her words. She worked for them,
not me, but those stories. Jay and this we're going
off topic a little bit. But you're a business man,
you're a lawyer. I understand. In sixty three, sixty four
it's a fad.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
We'll make some quick money.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
Sixty five we'll see if we can milk it a
little longer by sixty seven. How do you not know
what you have? You have a brand that is that
is the number one British export to the world. It's
outpacing British steel. The London Philharmonic is an afterthought. These
four guys that you put in the crappy studio too

(37:46):
in a big one. But it's dark and danky. That's
your living. It's all the money you're making. And they
still as Jeff Emerck, the em engineer, may rest in peace.
They wanted to have an orchestra and they want to
do this. So you draw to studio one where the
London filleries recording, say I need more mics. You've got
the proper number of microphones for your studio, right, And

(38:07):
he would just walk up to the string section and
unplug microphones and say you share this mic with him?
You share this mic now see here, all right, and
I'll need that one too, Sorry, thank you by put
me on report it's emeric E M E R I
C K. And like you didn't want to spend for
the album cover, you didn't want to give them extra
microphones from inside your own studio. Excuse my language, but

(38:28):
what the fuck is wrong with you? This is the money,
This is all the money that's coming in. Are you nuts?
Are you nuts? And again I get on a tire
this but even to the last moment, and Jeff told
me the story. When Abbey Road came out, they give

(38:50):
the completed thing with this iconic picture of them crossing
a street that is the second most popular tourist attraction
in London and has been ever since in Liverpool. You
know this across the street. I'm sorry, you're right. They
give it to Joseph Lockwood and said, we hope there's more,
but this is going to be it. And he looked
at it and looked at it and said it doesn't

(39:13):
say Beatles on it. You got to send this back
and put Beatles on it, like you're the president of
the EMI record Company And it's nineteen seventy and you
could say that why don't you just say, what's a record?
How stupid can you be? There's no other word to use,

(39:33):
But I digress.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Sorry jay No, But Sir Joseph Lockwood reminds me of
a story that John told when he was being cross examination,
Please examine, Please tell about the Two Virgins album. And
he said that Shertman was asking him, well, isn't it
a fact that EMI would not release it? He said, well,

(39:57):
Joseph Lockwood didn't want to release it, but he didn't
have the guts to tell me to my to my face. Instead,
he sent a letter letter around to all of the
EMI subsidiaries that you can't, you can't release this album.
And he said when they when the album finally came out,
he sent me with another record company that they got

(40:18):
that John and Yoko got. He sent me a copy
and asked me to autograph it. That's how bad it was,
because as we know, when they when it was finally
released by Tetragrammaton in the United States, as John testified,
they put a brown sleeve over it with just their faces.

(40:42):
But in Europe and and and elsewhere, they weren't so
uptight about the nudity.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
Exactly exactly, so it's it is amazing, It is amazing.
So getting back to our trial against Morris Levy and
stealing the rock and roll album which was unfinished, we
have this new judge. They've talked about, you know, you've
explained how it works, how John managed this brand and
built the brand called the Beatles. We're what two days

(41:09):
in now we're a day or two into the world.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Well, this was the thing I forgot to mention was
that we we at the beginning when we were meeting
with Judge Grise and talking about the case. Just that
afternoon both sides decided to waive a jury and that
enabled us to take the case. You know, you didn't

(41:31):
have to you didn't have to handle it in order
of everything, so we could move witnesses around. It depended
on the judges schedule. But we did spend most of
all of January on the breach of contract allegation that
Morris had made, and I brought in Jesse Ed Davis
and Eddie Mottow to testify.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
There were band members, by the way, for those they
were band members for the Yes.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Because Marris had invited John and the band up up
to his farm to rehearse before they did the basic
tracks back in October of nineteen seventy four, and another
example of John not being able to say no, Marris

(42:17):
kept asking him and asking him, no, I can't come
this weekend because I'm going out to Montauk to visit
my friend Mick Jagger, you know, on and on and
on with that. And so I used the two of
them to testify, and we would we would take witnesses
out of order. So the trial went on. Jesse Ed

(42:40):
and Eddie Motto testified one morning and part of an afternoon,
and then John started testifying. I think it was I
think it was about January twentieth, and his testimony was
just fantastic, and we we wove into it the trial,
the the actual testimony about what he was going to

(43:04):
how he would produce an album, and that a lot
of that testimony is in the book.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
And obviously you prepped him best you could about what
the questions were. Shertman is still the lawyer for Mars
Levy at this point. He's still running the Levy's case.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, but he hadn't prepared, He hadn't been involved in
the case the whole eight or ten months before the trial.
I mean, we got this case to trial in ten
months that it almost never happens.

Speaker 3 (43:32):
So he wasn't really so because I'm sure, as any
good trial lawyer would you prep your witness for what
might be asked by the complainant.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
But obviously he wasn't really sure of where to go
with this.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
No, and Mars being Mars couldn't keep the story straight
because the whole story was made up anyhow. So it's
the classic example of the liar just not being able
to keep the story straight. So his testimony was was
very bad, and in fact, in the book I don't

(44:08):
quote very much of it at all because he wasn't
telling the truth. I remember telling John one day that
we really I thought we really had an advantage in
the case, and he said, what's the advantage. I said,
we're telling the truth. Mars is not going to be
able to tell the truth, and he's going to get
all mixed up, and he has a lawyer representing him

(44:30):
who isn't prepared. I mean, when when they took John's deposition,
Shertman didn't take it. When I took Mars Levy's deposition.
He didn't Shehrtman didn't defend the deposition. Terrible mistake, almost malpractice.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
I was just going to say, even I mean, in
an accident case, you would be there, if you were
my lawyer, you would be there to make sure you
know nothing happened, there was the oordin there. You'd want
to make sure because that's a basis that would go
into a court of law. You want to know exactly
what happened, or say, excuse me, that's off limits, that's
not pertinent.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
It seemed. Did he ever forge a document saying that
Lennon had agreed that he forge John's name on an agreement.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
No, he just had a letter that he sent on
January ninth, nineteen seventy five, to David dalganus, my partner,
saying this is the agreement. And then they repeated that
that same language I think fourteen or fifteen times in documents,
the complaints and other documents over the course of the case.

(45:37):
And they couldn't prove it. But there was never signed. No, No,
it wasn't. There wasn't anything signed.

Speaker 3 (45:43):
Listen, I can send a letter to Bob Pittman, who
iHeartMedia and say, Ken's new salary is a million dollars
a year in eight weeks vacation. And if I don't
hear back from him for a month, I'll say, I
guess it's good.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
I mean to make it that simple. It kind of sound.

Speaker 3 (46:00):
It's like, hey, it's in writing, because I put it
in writing. Seems like there's some politicians who do things
like that really days.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
But I don't know. I digress. We can talk about
that for hours.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Jay Bergen, my guess this book Lennon The Mobster and
the Lawyer. Let's take a quick break. We are back
Kendaschau talking with Jay Bergen, who is the lawyer in
the new book Lenin The Mobster and the Lawyer, the
Untold Story.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
How long did the trial go on?

Speaker 2 (46:38):
It went on the January part went on for fourteen
or fifteen days in in January. The judge rendered a
decision in February saying no contract. We then on St.
Patrick's Day, March seventeenth, seventy six, we started the counterclaims

(46:58):
and that was when the judge really stressed, You've got
to explain all of this to me if you're going
to if I have to decide damages he made it
very clear right away that since he had found that
Mars had no right to release the album, he was
going the Roots album. That's what it was called. John

(47:19):
Lennon sings the great rock and Roll Hits Roots. And
you've seen the album, Like the cover is this hideous
yellow cover with a John Lennon picture from nineteen sixty
eight out of focus. So we brought sound equipment from
the record plant into the courtroom and played the records

(47:41):
and when John testified, and there's a there's a photo
in the book taken by Bob Gruen who somehow sneaked
to camera of course, into the court.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
That's what Bob does. Bob's brilliant, Bob. Bob is not
going anyway, He's not having eggs without a camera.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
John is looking at the judge. The judge is looking
at him. John has his finger pointing at the judge.
So the two of them would get into these colloquies
that we'd go on and on. And that picture also
in the foreground is Shehrtman standing up objecting. He kept
trying to interrupt these colloquies between the two of them

(48:20):
because he realized that the two of them were completely
in sync right, John was explaining, the judge was questioning
the judge. If the judge didn't understand what John was saying,
he'd ask another question. And all the time he's taking notes.
Since there's no jury, he's the decider, right, he decides everything.

(48:41):
He decides the facts and the law and the damages, which.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
Is absolutely to your advantage. Then trying to explain to
twelve people what a contract is, what music is. It's
a guy who is a musician at least and understands sound.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
And if we had stayed with McMahon, he would not
have permitted. He would not have permitted long discussions about
what the music was. But this case was completely different.
So we tried that case. The counterclaims because the judge
told us right in the beginning, I'm going to reward damages.
So the damages would be lost royalties for John because

(49:21):
the album should have sold X instead of Y. Losses
to Capital because for the same reason, losses for damage
to John's reputation because the public was confused. I mean,
John testified about how he got into a taxi cab
and the cab driver said to him, John, I bought

(49:41):
the wrong album. So the public was confused because the
two albums. You know, Roots was out there first, but
then Capital put out the official version, but people had
already bought the other one online. So that part of
the trial lasted into parts of April. Not every day

(50:05):
we'd have we'd have breaks. But finally we got to
a point where where I put Dave marsh on the
witness stand. Nice I had asked Dave to listen to
the the album, the two albums and compare them, and
you know, then we talk about it. The next day

(50:29):
I get a two and a half page single space
letter from Dave critiquing the Roots album and comparing it
negatively to the rock and Roll album. In fact, that
that's on my website. That Dave's Dave's letter. So Dave,

(50:49):
we got to the point where were going to play
the two albums and compare them. Dave's on the witness stand. Uh,
the judge had to take a break for a minute.
I went back and talked to John, and John said
are they going to Are you going to play the
Roots album now? And I said, yeah, we'll play some
of the tracks and then we'll play the same tracks

(51:10):
from Rock and Roll. And he said, well, I'm going
to have to leave. I said leave. He said, you
can't leave. He said, I just can't. I can't sit
here and listen to it. It's I know how terrible
it's going to be. You know, the artist is going
to be embarrassed, embarrassed, and even if there's only ten
people in the courtroom, he's going to be embarrassed. I said,

(51:33):
you can't leave that the judge. The judge is going
to notice that you're not here, and that's not good.
So we looked at each other. We looked at each other.
He didn't say anything more, but he didn't leave, good man.
So we played Ain't that a shame from the Roots album?

(51:54):
And then ate that a shame from the rock and
Roll album? And Shertman stands up and make probably the
worst objection he'd ever made, Well, you're honor. We don't
need an expert. Dave's on the witness stand listening to this.
We don't need an expert to tell us what we
just heard, do we? And Judge Griesay said no, do

(52:16):
you want to tell me what? Want me to tell
you what I heard? And Shertman says yes, like he
couldn't couldn't say yeah, I couldn't say. No. The judge
just ripped the Roots album to shreds. I couldn't even
tell whether that was John Lennon singing or anybody singing.

(52:38):
It was just a voice because it was so it
was so bad. And Dave, in a column called American
Grandstand that he used to write for Rolling Stone in June,
said that since he was looking right at Shertman when
the judge launched into this critique, this criticism of the

(52:59):
Roots album and comparing it and saying that the rock
and roll album was very clear, very well produced, I
could hear John Lennon's voice. Dave described the look on
Shertman's face as I think he said, like the miner
who hears the first crack in the timbers.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
What a great line, what a great image, What an image?
Oh my god, run run because it's coming down on
your head. Right exactly brilliantly said Jay Bergen, my guest,
this book Lennon, the Mobster and the Lawyer. So as
we come around to the home stretch here, how does
it wrap up?

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Well, it wraps up with when when the testimony. When
Dave's testimony ended, the judge said, all right, we're going
to have the final argument tomorrow. And John said to me,
I'm not coming tomorrow. I don't want to listen to
any more of Shehrtman's nonsense. So I said, well, okay,

(54:01):
that's up to you. Well, when we have the final argument,
the judge announces, I'm going to render my decision right now, Shirtman.
Not a good sign for Shirtman. No, Shertman says, your
honor please. I was up until three o'clock in the
morning writing my brief and you know all this. And
Judge said, mister Shertman, We've been here for days listening

(54:22):
to this. I'm ready to render my decision and I'm
going to read it into the record right now. And
he proceeds to read this twenty four page opinion into
the record. He awarded He awarded capital two hundred and
twenty thousand dollars in damages. He awarded some punitive damages,

(54:46):
and he also awarded some damages to em I. He
awarded John a total of I think it was about
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Because we had also
put an acclaim there under a statue in New York
law that you can't use somebody's name and likeness without
their written permission. So he awarded thirty five thousand dollars

(55:09):
for that, and that was it. I mean, Shertman, the
total damages were over four hundred thousand dollars, right.

Speaker 3 (55:17):
I mean, it's not about John Lenning wanting or needing money.
It's about the point. It's I mean, John's fine financially,
it's the point of this. That's what it's all about.
And I wonder did leave he ever pay well?

Speaker 2 (55:29):
He'd you know, remember the judge in the first first
decision in February February twentieth, yeah, seventy six, had found
that Marris had absolutely no right to put out this album.
So that was a that was a given. It was
just then a matter of calculating damage to damages. What

(55:50):
happened was that when we got to the point of
beginning to get ready for an appeal, Capital and EMI
settled the case behind my back and behind John's back.
And I've never understood why they did that. John's contract
and the Beatles contract had expired in January, and I

(56:12):
don't know whether John or and was doing some negotiating.
John and Harold Cider but they settled the case for
one hundred and seventy thousand dollars and a down payment
of twenty thousand dollars and left us John and Jay
Bergen holding the bag to defend the entire appeal. So

(56:33):
we went ahead with the appeal. We argued the appeal
in January of nineteen seventy seven. John and Yoko came
and Yoko was sitting next to me in the Second
Circuit Court of Appeals, which is a courtroom, a beautiful
courtroom in the right in my hood, well Folly Square,

(56:54):
probably one of the most important federal courts of appeal
in the country. And Yoko sitting next to me with
the tarot cards, and she's turning over the tarot cards,
and I'm thinking of myself, Oh my god, we gone
from a swami to the tarot cards. And I don't

(57:14):
know anything about tarot cards, but I was thinking, I
just hope she gets a good reading.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
I hope we get a good one.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
The court did reduce the damages to about eighty five
thousand dollars because they found that Judge Grise had made
a mistake as to what the rock and roll album
would have sold without roots, but Levey had to pay
because in order to finally appeal, he had to put

(57:45):
up a bond.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
He had to pay for a bond socrow.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Yes, it had to be an escrow in the form
of of a bond, so that whatever the damages were
he would have to pay. Got it and and he did.
We kind of straightened all of that out. And the
other thing that happened, Ken was that part of the
order was that Marris had to turn over all of

(58:10):
the unsold roots albums. And how about this, the eight tracks?
Nice remember eight tracks?

Speaker 1 (58:19):
Oh yeah, oh.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
Yeah, we're old enough to remember eight tracks. So I
had these boxes of eight tracks and I called I
never I never talked to John again once. Once the
case was over, John was back. He was into Sean right.
He wanted to raise Sean. He wanted to spend time
with Sean. He didn't want Sean to be treated the

(58:45):
same way that Julian was as a child. Because John
was off with the Beatles running around.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
In Beatlemania, it was impossible to be a dad.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
Yes, yeah, So I called up there and got Yoko
on the phone. I said, Yoko, I've got these boxes
of records that I want to bring up to you.
She said, what records. I explained the whole thing to her,
and she seemed to be mystified that I would not

(59:13):
keep these records. And I don't know, maybe she thought
I'd start selling them, you know, five years down the road.
She said, you're going to bring them up to John.
I said, yeah, they're John's. That was part of the
final judgment of the court and the Court of Appeals.
Oh she said, okay, So I bloated these boxes into

(59:36):
a taxi, took them up, put them on the elevator,
you know, delivered them to Yoko and that was it.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
And you never had contact with him again.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
No, I didn't.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
It's a shame, and I don't think it was he
yet any bad feelings. That was that. And now moving on,
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
Yeah, because after the trial that summer of nineteen seventy seven,
I think they took a long trip to Japan with
Sean to see her family and just kind of chill out.
And as we all know, this was that time of period,
that time period when John, starting in February of nineteen

(01:00:12):
seventy five, dropped out of the music business until we
watched the wheels go round exactly until he and Yoko
started working on Double Fantasy, and I think it was
August of two thousand and nineteen eighty.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
This book is You're going to love this book, Guys Lenin,
The Mobster and the Lawyer, The Untold Story by Jay
Bergen at the law firm. Did you become like the
John Lennon lawyer? Did people know you as the Lenin lawyer?
Was that a thing for you?

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
The only thing for me was that that, you know,
when John died, I got a call about twenty minutes
of twelve from a friend saying John was dead, and
I was, you know, I was completely stunned, and the

(01:01:05):
friend told me to turn on the TV. And I
turned on the TV. They had interrupted the Johnny Carson Show.
John was dead by that point, and when I turned
off the TV and got back into bed, I suddenly
realized I had to call somebody, and I called Jimmy
Iovine because I knew that Jimmy was in a studio

(01:01:27):
with the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and they were
producing the follow up to Damn the Torpedoes. And when
I got Jimmy on the phone, because Jimmy was very
close to John, and told him what had happened. All
I heard was, oh my god, in the alignement dead.
And the next day when I went into the office,

(01:01:49):
people were kind of walking around on eggshells because they
knew how friendly that John and I had gotten. Not
that we were close friends or pal that we hung
out or anything, but you worked on this. It was
a client attorney relationship, but we also developed a friendly
relationship and a working relationship, and it was a tragedy.

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
That it was for us, for your friend, for your client,
and for the world. Jay Berkin, thank you so much
for spending time, for being part of this. Lennon the
mobster and the lawyer. It's fascinating if you're a John
Lennon fan, to take him through and to get a personally.
As I said, we know the music icon, but to
get this image's personal life and the music business is

(01:02:36):
just absolutely fascinating.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Good luck with this.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
It's out now available on Amazon anywhere you want to
grab it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Yes, it is.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
It is.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Thank you very much for having me, ken It's it's
been fun talking about it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
My pleasure