Sonic Boom: The Impossible Rise of Warner Bros. Records From Hendrix to Fleetwood Mac to Madonna to Prince
From the publisher's website:
The roster of Warner Brothers Records and its subsidiary labels reads
like the roster of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Jimi Hendrix, the
Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac,
the Eagles, Prince, Van Halen, Madonna, Tom Petty, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili
Peppers, and dozens of others. But the most compelling figures in the
Warner Bros. story are the sagacious Mo Ostin and the unlikely crew of
hippies, eccentrics, and enlightened execs. Ostin and his staff
transformed an out-of-touch company, revolutionized the industry, and,
within just a few years, created the most successful record label in the
history of the American music industry.
How did they do it? One
day in 1967, the newly tapped label president Mo Ostin called his team
together to share his grand strategy: he told them to stop trying to
make hit records.
“Let’s just make good records and turn those into hits.”
With
that, Ostin ushered in a counterintuitive model that matched the
counterculture. His offbeat crew recruited outsider artists and gave
them free rein, while rejecting out-of-date methods of advertising,
promotion, and distribution. And even as they set new standards for
in-house weirdness, the upstarts’ experiments and innovations paid off,
to the tune of hundreds of legendary hit albums.
Warner Bros.
Records conquered the music business by focusing on the music rather
than the business. Their story is as raucous as it is inspiring—pure
entertainment that also maps a route to that holy grail: love and money.
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