The forgotten clash between John

Lennon and the mafia

BY DOMINIC UTTON

Can you go to a 5 o’clock meeting at Capitol Records?” he was asked. “Their lawyers are discussing a John Lennon bootleg record that this Morris Levy is threatening to release. If there’s litigation I want you to handle it.”

It was to be the beginning of one of the strangest, most fascinating, and most overlooked episodes in the post-Beatles career of John Lennon—and the catalyst for the coming together of three very different characters. As Bergen says now: “Unbeknownst to me and even more astonishing was the friendship the two of us would develop—John, the 34-year-old rock icon, and Jay, the 37-year-old, buttoned-down, ‘just the facts, ma’am’ lawyer. I could not have fathomed that night where my representation of John Lennon would take me.”

If Jay Bergen had no idea how things would develop in February 1975, fast-forward 47 years and he has chronicled the whole thing in (occasionally a little too) exhaustive detail in a new book, Lennon, The Mobster, & The Lawyer. The result is a first-hand account of a court case that attracted little attention at the time… but that today would surely have generated front page headlines around the world.

Lennon at that time had just emerged from his “Lost Weekend” period, 18 months between 1973 and 1975 during which he had split with Yoko Ono, taken up with their former personal assistant, May Pang, and, along with Harry Nilsson, had set about drinking Los Angeles dry.

Not that such rock ‘n’ roll hedonism had stifled his creativity, however: the LP that emerged from this period, Walls and Bridges, topped the charts, and in the singles “Whatever Gets You thru the Night” and “#9 Dream” contained two of his finest post-Beatles moments. Walls and Bridges would also notably be his last album of original material until 1980’s Double Fantasy, released just three weeks before his murder in 1980.

By February 1975, Lennon was back in New York, back with Yoko Ono, and was set to release a new record, Rock ‘n’ Roll, a collection of cover songs that had influenced and inspired him as a young, pre-Beatles, wannabe.

If this was to be the record that would see Lennon’s version of “Stand By Me” show that a cover could not only breathe fresh life into an original, but even add a new magic to it, it would also be the album that would see him embroiled in a two-yearlong court battle with a Mafia-connected businessman… and represented by the self-deprecating “37-year-old, buttoneddown, ‘just the facts, ma’am’” Jay Bergen.

Perhaps ironically, it all began with a song called “Come Together.”

If the lyrics to the 1969 Lennon-McCartney composition are now recognized as a kind of surreal self-portrait (“He got joo joo eyeball / He one holy roller / He got hair down to his knee / Got to be a joker, he just do what he please”), the opening line also landed the band in hot water.

According to Morris Levy, the boss of Roulette Records, “Here come old flat top” was a direct lift of the lyric “Here come a flattop” from Chuck Berry’s 1956 single “You Can’t Catch Me,” the copyright of which was owned by Levy’s publishing company Big Seven Music. Levy brought a lawsuit, and in 1973, he and Lennon settled out of court, cutting a deal that saw the Beatle agree to record three Levy-owned songs on his next album… meaning that Big Seven would recoup some publishing fees back.

Whether that deal was the inspiration for the Rock ‘n’ Roll covers album, or just fitted nicely into an existing plan is unknown… but in late 1974 Lennon began rehearsing and recording tracks for the LP, all while Levy pestered him to hurry up and get the record released. Eventually, in the face of increasing pressure to hear how the sessions were going, Lennon gave Levy a batch of “rough mix” recordings—and told him: “They’re not the final version of my album. I might have to delete some crummy tracks.”

Levy didn’t see it that way: he suddenly had an album’s worth of unheard John Lennon recordings in his hands… and he was going to cash in. In January 1975, Levy pressed the tapes and released them as Roots: John Lennon Sings the Great Rock & Roll Hits, claiming they had a verbal agreement for him to do so. Capitol Records and John Lennon disagreed— with the singer especially furious that inferior versions of the songs that he saw as little more than glorified demos should be released. And so it was that in February Bergen found himself summoned to the meeting at Capitol… a meeting he was astonished to find was also attended by Lennon himself.

According to Bergen now, the Beatle was not only angry about the release of music he didn’t consider polished enough to be heard by the world at large, but he also wanted to make a stand for all the other musicians who had been cheated out of their royalties by avaricious record company bosses.

“That was one of the reasons John did not want to settle,” Bergen explained. “He wanted to try to put an end to some of these really bogus lawsuits and a pattern of managers, publishers and record companies who stole royalties from their artists, particularly the Black artists.”

Bergen also remembers Lennon telling him: “I want to be rid of him. I’m tired of these phoney legal cases. I want to put a stop to them… I don’t want to do any deals with Morris. He wants to cheat me like he’s cheated other singers and songwriters.”

So fired up was Lennon that he not only wanted Capitol to take Levy on, but he insisted on being involved at every level: from attending that very first meeting with Bergen, to taking the stand himself to explain the recording process and why, as an artist, he did not want those rough mix demos released.

Perhaps most extraordinarily, Lennon was not the most colorful character in the dispute. The case was given added spice by the business interests and associates of Levy himself. As Bergen writes: “I later researched Morris Levy’s background. The condensed story about him convinced me he was well connected to the mafia.

“Morris Levy was not simply in the recording and music publishing business. Thomas Eboli had been his partner in Roulette Records along with Angelo DeCarlo, maybe silently. Both were high-ranking members of the Mafia. Thomas Eboli had been assassinated gangland style. Levy was not a member of the Mafia because he was Jewish, but he might as well have been.

“The real back story was that Levy was a ‘business’ associate of Vincent ‘The Chin’ Gigante, reputed head of the Genovese crime family.”

Vincent Gigante had been involved in the mob since he was a teenager, becoming the protégé of Vito Genovese, and racking up arrests for receiving stolen goods, gambling, possession of an unlicensed handgun and heroin trafficking; in 1957, at age 29, he shot and wounded Luciano family boss Frank Costello, intimidating Costello into retirement and ceding power to Vito Genovese. By 1975 Gigante had risen to an unassailable position at the top of New York’s oldest and largest crime families.

Levy’s association with figures like Gigante made him a dangerous opponent, but it had also made him complacent. And neither Lennon nor Bergen were going to back down. As Bergen succinctly puts it: “The lawsuit was just another one of Morris Levy’s bogus quick threaten-andsettle scams.”

With such a dynamite set-up—the chippy English rock star on one side, the arrogant New York mobster on the other, the buttoned-up lawyer in the middle—one might think Lennon, The Mobster & The Lawyer would essentially write itself from that point on. And to a certain degree one would be right. Much of the book is a fascinating insight into a side of Lennon rarely seen… but a great deal of it is also a rather-less fascinating insight into a side of the legal process that holds little interest to those outside the legal profession.

Bergen enjoyed a career as a trial lawyer in New York for 45 years—and much of the book reads like it too. The very qualities that no doubt made him an excellent attorney— meticulous attention to detail, obsessive collection and retention of every pertinent fact and salient point, insistence on absolute clarity concerning what exactly the litigation concerned—unfortunately also make him occasionally a lessthan-enthralling writer.

In his drive for laying out the case exactly as it happened, Bergen falls into the trap of repeating himself, sometimes explaining what appear to be rather obscure details several times in different ways… and losing a good deal of the drama along the way.

Where it does work, however, Lennon, The Mobster & The Lawyer works very well. Bergen takes us deep into John Lennon’s creative process, in the Beatle’s own words. Reading Lennon’s own testimony concerning all the different steps he would take from getting even the most seemingly-simple song (“Stand By Me,” for example) from first play in the studio to recording, mixing, mastering, lacquering, test-pressing and distribution is genuinely absorbing not only from a technical point of view, but because it really does shine a new light on a man so often seen as the kind of creative genius who would throw something on tape and walk away.

As Bergen shows us, through Lennon’s own words, this clearly was not the case: witness the Beatle’s angry insistence on the huge difference in quality between songs recorded at 7.5 IPS (inches per second) and 15 IPS. In a nutshell, higher speed means better quality, though the way Lennon (and by default Bergen) tells it, those seven-and-a-half-inches per second could represent the gulf between base metal and gold.

The blossoming friendship between Lennon and Bergen himself is a joy too, as the pair grew close through the course of the trial, eating together, strolling through New York together, sharing jokes together… Bergen’s initial fanboy bewilderment at even being in the same room as a Beatle slowly gives way to genuine affection, as well as a deep respect for his abilities as an artist, and the eloquence with which he could articulate those abilities.

Bergen also describes Lennon as the best witness he ever represented or put on the stand: “John rarely forgot anything we discussed,” he insists. “He never let the questioner push him around or intimidate him, but he also never showed obvious anger.”

In one instance Lennon is asked how he could be qualified to know if the record-buying public cared whether or not the songs on Roots were less polished than he wanted on Rock ‘n’ Roll, the official Capitol Records release. He replies:

“I met the public who talked to me about my product. I met a taxi driver who said, ‘Sorry, I already bought the wrong one.’ They talk about me on the street. I know what they are thinking. I don’t live in some ivory tower. I walk the streets. I get in taxi cabs and I know what they think.”

This portrait of Lennon walking the New York streets, willing to talk to fans, unwilling to protect himself in an ivory tower, takes on a chilling significance with hindsight.

In the end, justice prevailed. On August 10, 1976, the final judgement ruled in Lennon’s favor, awarding over $400,000 in damages against Levy and his company to Lennon and Capitol Records—a judgement upheld on appeal the following year. For Bergen—and Lennon—it was more than just a victory for artistic integrity. It was a victory over all those who would seek to get their own way through bullying and intimidation.

“Many executives, artists and managers feared [Levy]. His underhand methods and mafia connections were well known. Yet John Lennon had shut him down.”

The lawyer and the Beatle went their separate ways after the victory—Bergen to a long and successful career before retirement to the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia… and Lennon to a more violent and tragic end.

As for the mobster: 10 years after the ruling, a federal investigation into organized crime’s involvement in the record business led to an indictment of 17 individuals including Levy, who in 1988 was convicted of conspiracy to extort. Among the others convicted was a cop in the Genovese crime family. Two months before he was due to go to prison Levy died of colon cancer.

Bergen’s book, fittingly, does not end with Levy’s death, or even his conviction. It ends with an homage to the man who dared take the mobster on, and whose death continues to resonate over 40 years later.

“We all remember him as someone who gave, and continues to give, unique witness and voice to the struggles and triumphs of his—and our—human experience,” Bergen writes. “Perhaps that is the beauty of his legacy.”