What I learned from Eddie Rosenblatt
The industry lost a great leader when the Geffen CEO walked away from the music business in 1999.
Eddie Rosenblatt, one of the last great record men from the peak era of the music business, died a couple of weeks ago in Santa Barbara. He was a huge influence on both my career and my life, and I’m going to spend a couple of issues of this newsletter talking about why he was so important to the artists and the people who worked for him.
Eddie started his career working for vinyl distributors in Cleveland before moving to Los Angeles to work for Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss. During a later stint at Warner Bros. Records, he was one of the key architects of the branch distribution system that brought so much prosperity to the music business.
David Geffen hired Eddie as president when he launched Geffen Records, and Eddie was a key reason that artists like John Lennon, Donna Summer, and Elton John signed with the label in its early days. He remained president until David left to start DreamWorks and served as chairman until the label was sacrificed on the altar of consolidation in 1999.
Although I can’t vouch for what he’d think about some of the points I’m going to make, I hope he’d agree that he was a record man who cared about a lot more than the bottom line. Eddie always made me believe that he felt a responsibility to the artists who trusted him with their careers and to the employees who worked so hard to make their records succeed, and he promoted the idea that their success was just as important has how much money the company made.
Of course, there were times when finding a balance between competing interests was a challenge, and those challenges began to pile up when David Geffen left and our new corporate overlords were determined to make the record business adapt to their MBA strategies.
Art v. capital
If I’m going to explain what Eddie Rosenblatt taught me, I’ve got to take a detour into the history of the modern U.S. economy. Apologies in advance to anyone who reads this and thinks I’m stating the obvious, but I’ve done business with too many self-styled pirates who think that money is the only way we should keep score. You can’t presume that any of them realize there are other ways to think about the economy.
Over the past few decades, our culture has embraced the idea that the sole purpose of business is to enhance shareholder value, i.e. make lots of money for your investors. All decisions should be for the good of the shareholders, and the definition of “good” usually means the short-term performance of the stock price instead of the long-term health of the business itself.
I’m particularly amped up on this topic lately because I had some first-hand experience of the fallout from the CrowdStrike software crisis, the disastrous update that tanked a huge chunk of the world economy in mid-July. I somehow managed to take a Delta flight to Los Angeles amidst the chaos even though the computers that ran the airline’s staff scheduling software had been tanked by CrowdStrike.
My flight was on a Tuesday four days after the meltdown. Most of the morning flights were canceled, so I was lucky that I’d booked an afternoon flight that actually took off. It was a stressful few days as we waited to see if the airline would recover enough for me to make my flight.
The stock market punishes any corporation that spends too much money on the backups and redundancies designed to cushion this kind of blow when a crisis strikes. Too much stock on hand represents dead money on the books, so we live with a “just in time” manufacturing and shipping network that totally freezes up when we lose a link in the supply chain. That’s what happened to toilet paper when the pandemic hit. Factories shut down and next month’s supply hadn’t yet been manufactured when things had to close.
The CrowdStrike crisis may be even more alarming. Almost every corporation in the world outsources its online security to independent contractors. CrowdStrike’s security software is designed to identify and shut down hacking attacks from outside. To perform this task, users must grant that software access to the deepest parts of the Windows operating system.
If you run this company, what’s your job? If you said “to provide the most consistent and flawless security to our millions of customers around the world,” you’re just not getting it. A CEO’s job is to extract maximum value for his or her company’s investors. With a company like Crowdstrike, running a skeleton crew of programmers is likely the best way to keep those costs down.
There are also people at Microsoft who should have tested and signed off on this update before it was released into the wild, but I guess they’re not “overinvested” in software screeners up there in Redmond, either.
What happened was a disaster that affected millions of people and Delta now estimates its losses at half a billion dollars. On a smaller scale, I was able to buy some car parts at my local AutoZone on the day of the meltdown only because there was one computer in the store that hadn’t gotten the update and the store manager knew his stock so well that he could locate almost anything in the back without having to consult the corporate stock database.
If any of the above interests you, check out Edward Zitron’s post “Crowdstruck” for more technical details. He identifies as a PR person, but his Where’s My Ed At newsletter offers the kind of cold analysis that usually pisses off tech entrepreneurs. Also, he’s British, so I’d imagine he won’t appreciate my USA-style quote/italics scheme for article/publication identification.
Stop ta-ta-talking that blah, blah, blah
What does any of that have to do with the music business?
I’ve always believed a successful business as one that works to balance the sometimes competing interests of its customers, employees, and shareholders. For a market economy to work, it’s got to deliver the best goods and services it can at a sustainable price and it’s got to pay the people who create the value. If you take care of the first two, you’ll make money for the investors over time. You may not make the absolute maximum number of pennies for each shareholder, but the business will prosper for a long time if you’re following that plan.
Once you add artists into that mix, you’ve got at least a fourth set of complicated interests in that equation. You definitely have to make the artists believe you’ve got their interests at heart, but I’d also argue there’s a responsibility to the legacy of the albums they make (which makes the music itself a fifth stakeholder). Taking stewardship of a film or a song comes with a set of responsibilities to both art and artist.
I started writing this in a room at the Edition Hotel in West Hollywood, near the western end of the Sunset Strip and just across North Doheny Drive from the old Geffen Records Headquarters. There’s a photo of David and Cher above my nightstand.
It’s always been weird to come back here since the company shut down in January 1999 after the newly consolidated Universal Music Group folded the imprint into Interscope at the same time they shuttered A&M and also abandoned the old Chaplin lot over in Hollywood. The logos lived on, but hundreds of people lost their jobs and the institutional memories of both companies were wiped out in a day.
A handful of Geffen and A&M employees were kept on to work for Interscope, but almost none of us lasted very long after what turned out to be a profound clash of cultures.
The story of these end times went something like this: Edgar Bronfman, Jr. promised the Seagram board that he could find $300 million in annual savings if they allowed him to buy the PolyGram Music Group (home of A&M, Island, and Mercury) and merge it with Seagram-owned Universal (MCA, Geffen, Interscope).
Apparently, that was the number wasn’t based on any in-depth analysis of the two companies but it turned out to be the one that the Seagrams board needed to hear to allow the deal go forward at the price PolyGram wanted. Edgar figured he could figure out the details later.
After the deal was approved, there was a plan to merge Geffen and A&M and have Geffen Records chairman Eddie Rosenblatt run the combined companies from the A&M Records lot, which was also home to one of the great recording studios of the era.
Eddie had first moved to LA to work in the A&M Records sales department, where he learned his incredible artist relations skills from Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, two masters of the art. He was David’s first hire at Geffen and was the force behind the company’s artist friendly reputation. At a time when media companies were making idiotic decisions (see the post-Steve Ross destruction of Warner Music culture), this seemed like a move that made perfect sense.
Unfortunately, Bronfman realized sometime in November 1998 that there was no way to make the numbers work and that he’d have to make brutally deep cuts across the company to satisfy the Seagram board members. He decided to shut down A&M and Geffen and transfer a handful of successful artists to Interscope.
Eddie was left with the ugly job of firing his entire staff, a task he performed with has much grace as any person could muster in those circumstances. He left the building with everyone else in January 1999 and walked away from the business. In an era when so many other senior executives desperately tried to hold on and keep up their profile, Eddie Rosenblatt decided that the business had changed and he no longer wanted anything to do with the hustlers who were now running the show.
Many of us 100% believe that the Geffen/A&M merger plan was real, but some people might try to tell you that this version is a fairy tale that A&M and Geffen employees made up to make themselves feel better for being the losers when the industry finally rid itself of that pesky artists-first mindset.
Fact check
I went back and checked out my story. By the time Fred Goodman wrote Fortune’s Fool, his 2010 chronicle of Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s path of destruction through the Universal and Warner Music groups, he bought into the idea that the decision to merge A&M and Geffen into Interscope was “relatively straightforward.” I’m sure that’s what Doug Morris told him and, by that time, Eddie was unavailable for comment.
What Doug Morris and Edgar Bronfman Jr. did to Geffen and A&M most certainly broke Eddie’s heart, and I believe that a huge part of his disappointment was that he couldn’t protect the artists and employees he spent his career supporting.
Maybe he secretly wrote down a lifetime of stories and there will someday be a book that chronicles his amazing career. I hope we eventually find out that he decided to share those memories with the rest of us.
There’s no way to keep everyone happy in a business filled with creative people. Bands fight amongst themselves. Sometimes A&R people want artists to use producers that make it easy for the executive even if the artist doesn’t vibe with the producers. Artists want a different single than the radio promotion people, or sometimes there were disagreements between the rock and alternative radio promo execs over which song was going to work best for their format.
The trick is balancing everyone’s need to have their say with the ultimate mission of the company. What you always felt with Eddie Rosenblatt was that the primary mission of his company was to make hit records. Take care of the music, and you’ll turn a healthy profit and make the world a better place.
Eddie always listened, showed patience, asked questions, and made me feel like I had his support even when we disagreed or when I did things he thought were stupid. He never, ever talked about artists like they were a lower form of life or some alien race who were just as much a burden as a benefit to the company.
At some point during the waning days of Geffen Records, I was assigned to Guns N’ Roses as the latest A&R executive tasked with trying to help Axl drag Chinese Democracy over the finish line. While Eddie understood the frustrations with the lead singer that had led Slash and Duff to quit the band, he also knew that Axl was an artist who still had a lot of hit records in him and what he needed was patience, a counselor who would listen and remind him how much support he had from the label and the world at large.
There were a lot of reasonable people who had given up on him at this point, but Eddie was still playing the long game with Axl’s career even while chaos reigned around us as Edgar tried to figure out what to do with his giant music company. Even when Axl was being unreasonable, Eddie remained calm and reminded me to conduct myself the same way.
After Geffen shut down and both my employment contract and GNR’s record deal were transferred to Interscope, I tried to explain this approach to Jimmy Iovine. He actually laughed at me and told me that someone needed to give Axl a dose of reality. Either that, or a giant bonus if he delivered the record for Christmas 1999.
After Axl’s spiritual advisor warned him that I had been exposed to some allegedly negative energy that would derail the project, I was out. Now Jimmy was going to show the Geffen idiots how to work with a stubborn artist and get Chinese Democracy into the hands of the fans.
As we all know now, Jimmy eventually did get Axl to hand over the album. Chinese Democracy was released 9 years and 9 months later in November 2008.
This is where I confess just how much I was asking for it during my brief employment at Interscope. On the first day after the changeover, I started asking for my new Interscope Records business cards because I didn’t want to hand out the old Geffen and DGC cards with the Sunset Blvd. address on them. No one wanted to talk about a shutdown because Universal was still trying to sell the myth that Geffen and A&M still existed but had been merged with Interscope.
This was not true. I was happy to slap a Geffen (or A&M or DGC) logo on anything we released, but I now worked at Interscope. Was it misguided solidarity with my fallen comrades or an ill-considered dose of truth that I wouldn’t play along? On reflection, I don’t think embracing the “Geffen still exists” myth would have extended my career at Interscope. That culture clash was never going to be resolved in favor of the few holdovers from the company that had been declared redundant.
There’s more than one way to run a record company, and I think there were many artists whose careers suffered after leaders like Eddie Rosenblatt, Jerry Moss from A&M, and Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker from Warner Bros. left the business at the turn of the century. Their “follow the muse” philosophy didn’t impress the new owners.
In a culture where executives were expected to maximize shareholder value, there wasn’t much room for gut decisions and irrational patience in the face of failure. Some of the greatest successes of the ’70s and ’80s came after record companies kept bands around who had previously shown no potential by the standards that would dominate the business at the turn of the century.
Warner Bros. never dropped Fleetwood Mac even though they completely changed their sound at least three times before revamping with a couple of American kids whose previous LP as a duo had been a flop everywhere in the world.*
(*Except in Birmingham, AL. If you want a nice copy of the Buckingham Nicks LP at a somewhat reasonable price, check out your Alabama used vinyl stores. I’ve seen hundreds of copies for sale in that state over the past five decades.)
What would the industry have looked like without Rumours? Eddie understood Fleetwood Mac. He lived their success alongside every else at the WB and learned what returns patience could bring.
Geffen Records was a tough job. David liked to stir the pot and sit back while he watched what happened as the staff fought things out amongst themselves. Sometimes Eddie was faced with impossible decisions and, over the course of its 20-year life, Geffen Records made as many mistakes as every other big record label.
My most frustrating professional experience came when I worked there. Eddie chose not to step in to major dispute I was having with the promotion department. With some time and distance from a volatile situation, I understand what he was trying to do by standing down, but I still think he should have backed me. I hate blind items, but I’m waiting to tell that story until after the artist shares it first in their upcoming book. They get first crack at the tale.
In the next few weeks, I’ll share the story of why I never signed Semisonic even though I really, really wanted to work with them. Eddie and I had some of our most intense conversations about that band, and you probably can’t guess what the issue was.
There’s also an extremely out-of-print book that covers Eddie’s time at Warner Bros. in the ’70s. Since it’s so hard to find, I’m going to tease out the best parts and share the stories here.
If you want to know more about Eddie, I especially like this obituary from the HITS Magazine website, which also features a rare photo with both of us in the same picture.