How the Rolling Stones’ 1968 Klein Lawsuit Created a Decades-Long Royalty and Reissue Nightmare

The Rolling Stones hired Allen Klein as their manager in 1965 because he was the only guy who could get them out of a bad early contract. By 1968, they were suing him for fraud—Klein had secretly bought their U.S. publishing and master rights through his company ABKCO, and they didn’t realize he owned their entire pre-1971 catalog until it was too late. The settlement gave Klein ABKCO outright, and the band walked away from all those early recordings.

That split meant the Stones didn’t control “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Paint It Black,” or Beggars Banquet for the next 50 years. Every reissue, compilation, or film sync had to go through Klein’s ABKCO, which kept the royalty rates low and the band’s hands off their own history. The 2002 Forty Licks compilation was a rare truce, but for decades the Stones couldn’t sequence their own greatest hits without ABKCO’s permission.

The rift only ended when Klein died in 2009 and the band bought back the ABKCO catalog in 2022 for a reported $300 million. Until then, every vinyl repress of Let It Bleed had a middleman taking a cut—and the Stones themselves couldn’t even sample “Street Fighting Man” without Allen Klein’s estate saying yes.