The Lawyer Who Saved Lennon

I was such a musical illiterate back in the day that I was routinely mocked in high school when a friend discovered that I could not name the four Beatles. One morning late in 1980, this same classmate spotted me in the halls and held up three fingers. “You only have to remember three now,” he said morbidly.

John Lennon had died the previous night.

Left to my own devices forty-one years later, I probably would not have sought out a nonfiction book entitled Lennon, the Mobster & the Lawyer (Devault-Graves Books, 2021) if I hadn’t met the author at a book event last fall.

It was the same weekend that Hurricane Helene bore down on our region in Appalachia. At the time of the storm, I was at a book event in Charleston when I overheard a gentleman named Jay Bergen tell a group of writers and hosts how he had come late in life to write his one and only John Lennon story, and how, when the book was done and published, he donated five banker boxes of legal documents in his possession to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Because of my hearing issues, my brain sometimes has to replay for me what my ears have heard. Oh shoot, I said to myself later, this guy was John Lennon’s lawyer!

It’s a riveting story whose prelude began in 1970, when Lennon was sued by record producer Morris Levy over alleged similarities between Lennon’s song, “Come Together,” and Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me.”

The real-life inspiration for the fictional Hesh Rabkin character on The Sopranos, Levy had a longstanding habit of attaching himself as a songwriter to the copyrights of his performers’ songs, thus ensuring for himself a forever share of their royalties. An associate of the Genovese crime family, he was a violent individual who had once beaten a cop so badly that the officer lost an eye. Levy filed frivolous lawsuits to bully people into paying him cash or to extract otherwise juicy commitments.

Predictably, the two parties settled out of court, with Lennon agreeing to record three songs that Levy owned the rights to on Lennon’s next album. Lennon, by then a solo artist, was such a star that Levy was sure to be adequately compensated by whatever royalties flowed his way.

Except, the production of that next album bogged down. The record, which Lennon intended to be a collection of oldies that he’d long admired, became a “problem” project. For one thing, its producer, the legendary Phil Spector, flaked and absconded with the master tapes. Lennon moved on to another album, Walls and Bridges, which became his fourth solo release when it arrived in stores September 1974. Assuming Lennon had reneged on their agreement, Levy threatened to sue. Lennon mollified the manipulative hothead by informing him that twenty-eight boxes of the oldies tapes had been finally recovered. Listening to them again, Lennon felt some of the songs were salvageable but a lot would need to be re-recorded. He assured Levy that the oldies album would be released…soon.

Levy grew increasingly impatient for his expected payday. Since the two men lived in New York City, Levy kept insinuating himself into Lennon’s life, badgering him to visit Levy’s nightclub, inviting Lennon to Disney World in Florida so their families could hang out, and to his horse farm in upstate New York, where Lennon and his fellow musicians rehearsed.

Every time they met, Levy tried to persuade Lennon to let him release the album. Lennon always brushed him off. Lennon had an exclusive deal with EMI stretching back to his days with the Beatles. The firm alone decided how his music was marketed. Levy knew this, but was ever the noodge.

Lennon did not regard Levy as a friend, but he found it hard to say no. So when Levy asked if he could hear some of the recordings Lennon had made of “his” songs, Lennon sent over a rough cut, reel-to-reel tape of the entire album—sixteen songs in all—hoping to get Levy off his back.

With the tape in hand, Levy must have realized that every creative person he’d ever bilked was small potatoes compared to Lennon and the artistic firmament he had at his disposal. “I’m gonna put it out!” Levy shouted in his office in front of witnesses. “I’ve got a shot! I’ve got a shot!”

In 1975, Levy announced to the world that his (s)crappy record company would release Lennon’s new album, which Levy called Roots and which he planned to market via cheesy television ads. Of course Capitol Records/EMI filed an injunction. In a pair of lawsuits, Levy sued Lennon, EMI, and Capitol Records, claiming Lennon had breached a verbal agreement permitting Levy to release the album. He claimed damages of $42 million, a laughable figure designed to rattle his opponents and force them to capitulate to a high-dollar settlement.

Enter Mr. Bergen, whose job it is to save John Lennon’s musical reputation, stop the bootleg album in its tracks, and keep John from having to pay millions to settle.

When he enters the story, Mr. Bergen is a young but seasoned litigator. The lawyer and the musician are both in their thirties and conflicted fathers who long to make amends with the children from their previous marriages.

Consisting as it does of court transcripts, legal maneuvers, and scenes of the two men roaming Manhattan in between depositions and court appearances, the book shouldn’t work but does. As they walk the streets, visit New York landmarks Lennon has never visited, eat lunch in dives and legendary restaurants alike, they form an unlikely but charming bond. Lennon comes to life as a decent fellow who always has time to sign autographs for fans as long as they agree not to bug him when he’s eating or tail him everywhere he goes.

Summoned to Lennon’s Dakota apartment on the West Side, Mr. Bergen is grilled by Yoko Ono, who, while noshing on caviar, stresses that they must keep the settlement figure down. She and everyone else assumes that Lennon will have to pay; they just want to keep him from paying big. Admittedly, Lennon’s case suffers from some glaring inconsistencies. If Lennon didn’t like and trust Levy, why did he spend so much time with him? Why did he and his musicians rehearse at Levy’s farm? If Lennon didn’t want Levy to release the album, why did he give Levy a tape of the entire record?

Mr. Bergen may well be a suit (that’s him in the dark, pinstriped suit in the 1976 Bob Gruen photo shown on this page) but he’s got the soul of a rock ’n’ roller. The moment he heard the Penguins sing “Earth Angel” on the radio back in high school, he fell in love with the form. When Elvis made a rare east coast appearance in 1957, young Mr. Bergen ordered two mail-order tickets from the venue—only $3.50 each!—but could not find a single college classmate at Fordham who wanted to make the long bus trip to Philly to see the pre-glitter King’s performance in a cavernous but half-populated ice hockey arena. Lennon, who idolized Elvis, demands a beat-by-beat recounting of Jay’s experience, which his lawyer is happy to provide. In short, Jay loves rock ’n’ roll. Chiselers like Levy sicken him. And if he can help it, his client will not pay a freaking dime.

In a scene that made me laugh, Mr. Bergen decides he will fly to Los Angeles and Detroit to interview the session musicians who witnessed Lennon’s interactions with Levy. Seeking to blend in, Mr. Bergen decides to leave his suits at home and dress casually. What sort of attire will put rock musicians at ease? We watch as he hilariously buys his first pair of cowboy boots, western-style shirts with snap buttons, and a crisp pair of black jeans that he washes a few times to break in. (It’s an aesthetic that will become Mr. Bergen’s sartorial preference later in life.)

Author publicity photo by Paul Mehaffey

Mr. Bergen’s key courtroom strategy is to get Lennon to recount exactly how he creates a song, records it, and polishes it before releasing it to the world. On the witness stand, Lennon’s creative process unfolds, and we (and the court) grasp that the rough cut tapes Lennon shared with Levy were never intended to be released. Doing so would have been like us writers allowing a digest magazine to publish the first draft of one of our short stories.

After the Lennon case, Mr. Bergen’s professional and personal life shifted. He built a lucrative practice representing rock stars, baseball teams, and even George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees. In time Mr. Bergen loosened up, let his hair down (literally and figuratively), remarried for a third time, and retired to our mutual corner of the southeast, where neighbors and local writers motivated him get his story down on paper. His book is a fine addition to his Nashville publisher’s long-running Great Music Book series.

In December 1980, like the rest of the world, Mr. Bergen was devastated to learn of the murder of his friend at age 40. These days Jay Bergen tells audiences that he is haunted by the fact that he missed seeing Lennon five days before his passing. John was in the same recording studio where Mr. Bergen was visiting a client, but Yoko was being weird, and Mr. Bergen did not permit himself the liberty to knock on a few of those studio doors to say hello (and goodbye).

Had he lived, Lennon might well have written books or granted interviews that shed even more light on his creative process. But since he was taken from us far too soon, we are lucky to catch a glimpse of that artistry in this story. We are lucky too that Mr. Bergen, now in his eighties, is around to help us imagine it all.

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You can inspect some artifacts in Mr. Bergen’s Lennon archives here.

See you in three weeks!

— Joe

josephdagnese.com