Looking through the Helter Skelter catalogue
for something to add to my list to Santa this
year, I found the following (has anyone here
read this and have any comments?)
> Exploding: The Highs, Hits, Hype, Heroes,
> and Hustlers of the Warner Music Group
> by Stan Cornyn (29.99 UK Pounds)
which HS describe as:
"The most insightful book on the record business
for some time, one that takes the reader behind the
scenes, seats us at the conference table and shows
us the interaction between the stars and the suits.
Populated by stars such as Sinatra, Ray Charles,
the Doors, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and many more."
and found this review by Barney Hoskyns of Mojo
> LET ME 'fess up. This is a book I would kill to have written.
> It's a book I've been saying should be written for the last
> ten years a book, a huge book, about possibly the hippest,
> bravest, most nurturing record company rock'n'roll ever
> spawned. Now Stan Cornyn, a Warners "insider's insider"
> if ever there was one, has gone and done it with help from
> smart Rolling Stone vet Paul Scanlon.
> "The really important factor was that we were a younger
> company than Columbia," Cornyn said when I interviewed
> him in 1993. "We weren't structured so tightly that we
> couldn't bend."
> Bend Warner Brothers did or at least Warner Bros. and
> Reprise Records,under the inspiring helmsmanship of
> sometime Sinatra accountant Morris "Mo" Ostin and
> Boston disc-jock Joe Smith. For a golden half-decade,
> roughly 1967-1972, Warner-Reprise was the ultimate
> haven for the crhme of the talent pouring out of (and into)
> the canyons of Southern California. Between 'em,
> Mo'n'Joe bagged the signatures of Jimi Hendrix, Neil
> Young, Randy Newman, Joni Mitchell, Ry Cooder,
> Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison, James Taylor, Frank
> Zappa, Little Feat, Van Dyke Parks and on and on and
> on. Cornyn calls that "a spurt of prescience heretofore
> unknown in the record business". Frankly, it's hard to argue.
> Warner-Reprise didn't do too badly either side of those
> halcyon five years, of course: from the Everlys to REM,
> Ostin and Smith green-lit signings that helped the WM
> Group shift gazillions of albums. But that heady turn-of-
> the-decade stretch, full of bold impulses and daring risks,
> is the guarantor of Warners' place in the history tomes.
> It's also why Exploding is as much a lament a "They Don't
> Make 'Em Like That Anymore" about record execs as it
> is a racy, fact-packed narrative about company politicking.
> Like Cornyn, the Creative Services ace who conjured up
> mad as for the emerging underground press ("Win a
> Dream Date With the Fugs", "the Pigpen Lookalike
> Contest"), Mo'n'Joe 'n Lenny Waronker, and others like
> them cared deeply about talent. And the talent, generally,
> cared about them.
> Don't get me wrong: Stan's yarn is first'n'foremost about
> players, workaholic Jews jockeying for position in worlds
> of fast deals and loaded stock options. Stan, a token
> Burbank guy, is as besotted by the greed and manoeuvring
> of the David Geffens and Bob Krasnows as he is by the
> talent-rich rosters of Warner-Reprise, Atlantic, Elektra and
> the other labels woven into the WM fold. Written in prose
> that's at once manic and jovial and with both eyes on a
> Vanity Fair serialisation Exploding contains swathes of
> detail about money, sales, executive toilets and, above
> all, who reported to whom. If you want to read about
> Joni'n'James and all the other ladies'n'gents of the Canyon,
> you may be better off elsewhere.
> If, on the other hand, you dig sweeping accounts of musical
> empires, and you loved Hit Men and The Mansion on the Hill,
> get your teeth into Cornyn, whose sardonically honest take
> on the vanity, megalomania and brilliance of the key dramatis
> personae from Ahmet Ertegun and Jac Holzman to Steve Ross
> and Seymour Stein is never less than entertaining and nearly
> always affectionate. ("There are the shrewd," he writes nicely,
> "and then there are the shrewder.")
> Cornyn, retired for several years and living the sweet life in
> Santa Barbara, says he still talks to people at Warners. "Stan,
> it's just not like it was," they sigh to him. "Now it's just about
> money and covering your [rear]."
> Once 'pon a time, it was about money, covering your [rear]
> and making astonishing music. Who's to say it couldn't still be?
~~~~~
PaulC
