Kinks Documentary On The Way!

11:23 AM GMT 06/07/2009

The Kinks are to be the subject of a new documentary directed by Julien Temple.

Temple, the man behind such music doc classics as The Filth and the Fury and Joe Strummer: The Truth Is Unwritten, directed several of the Kinks' '80s videos - Come Dancing, Don't Forget To Dance and State of Confusion among them.

The project has been in development since 2007 and has a working title of Kingdom Come. A release date is yet to be confirmed.

______________________________________________________________________

Allen Klein, the legendary manager whose clients included The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, has died in New York at the age of 77. He had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

During his 50 year-career as a ruthless businessman, Klein worked with some of music's biggest acts. Having supervised the rise of Sam Cooke, Bobby Darin, the Dave Clark Five and Herman's Hermits, Klein stepped up to guide the Stones to the top of the rock tree, only to be fired in the late 1960s when Mick Jagger became dubious of his financial and legal wranglings. Klein successfully sued the band and won the rights to a large portion of their '60s catalogue. Keith Richards later famously described the deal as "the price of an education".

In 1969, he turned his attention to The Beatles. Still desperately trying to stabilise their affairs following the death of Brian Epstein two years earlier, the Fabs began looking for new management to oversee both the interests of the band and those of their fledgling record stable Apple.

An impressed John Lennon eventually convinced George Harrison and Ringo Starr that Klein was the man for the job. Paul McCartney, who favoured his soon-to-be father-in-law Lee Eastman, detested the hot-headed Klein and vehemently objected to the idea. When the band split in 1970, Klein helped Harrison stage the groundbreaking Concert For Bangladesh at New York's Madison Square Garden and also aided Lennon and Yoko Ono during the making of their Imagine documentary.

In later years, Klein would take more of a back seat, but ABKCO, the company he started in the late '50s, continues to own the rights to a swathe of songs including most of the Stones '60s material and all of Phil Spector's Philles Records releases.

A full obituary will appear in a future issue of MOJO magazine.

______________________________________________________________________

And finally...Happy Birthday Bill Haley! The Rock Around The Clock legend would have been 84 today. Here he is giving one of his final performances in London in 1979...