Walter Yetnikoff obituary
Record company executive behind global stars including Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson and Meat Loaf
He was not on the list.
The former CBS Records chief executive Walter Yetnikoff, who has died from bladder cancer aged 87, became as high-profile as some of his bestselling artists. His autobiography, Howling at the Moon: The Odyssey of a Monstrous Music Mogul in an Age of Excess (2004), reads almost like a parody of music industry outrageousness and debauchery. Yetnikoff portrayed himself as a cocaine-and-alcohol-crazed wild man, partying with rock’n’roll stars while entertaining a string of mistresses, yet still able to pull off brilliant business deals as he soared up the corporate hierarchy.
Lurid episodes from his book naturally proved irresistible to journalists, but it was as if he was embroidering his own myth as a distraction from the painful reality of being ousted from his job by Sony’s management in 1990. Colleagues who worked under him point to the way he fought to save their jobs in the teeth of the savage cost-cutting regime implemented by the then CBS president, Larry Tisch, in the mid-80s. He also inspired loyalty in his artists. After Yetnikoff’s death, Billy Joel wrote: “I will always be eternally grateful to him for ensuring that my song copyrights and publishing rights were returned to me – intact. I loved him as a dear friend and a mentor, in a business where real friendships don’t exist.”
His enormous successes with artists including Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson and Meat Loaf are the stuff of music industry folklore, while his bullish negotiating skills drove through Sony’s historic purchase of CBS Records in 1988, a feat that earned him a $10m bonus. He was even able to bring about cultural changes, such as when he accused the MTV network of racism for refusing to play Jackson’s Billie Jean video (MTV backed down when Yetnikoff threatened to withhold all CBS material). Collecting his eight awards for Thriller at the 1984 Grammys, Jackson called Yetnikoff to the podium and described him as “the best record company president in the world”.
Yetnikoff was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Max, was employed by the city to paint hospitals, while his mother, Bella, was a bookkeeper. The family home was owned by Bella’s parents, Lazar and Miriam, who lived with them. In Yetnikoff’s memoir, he recalled frequent beatings from his father.
After attending Brooklyn technical high school and Brooklyn College, Yetnikoff studied law at Columbia University, with financial help from his uncle Morris, a lawyer himself. After his first year he earned a scholarship, then, armed with his law degree, he joined the firm of Rosenman & Colin as a junior litigator. One of his colleagues was the Harvard law graduate Clive Davis, who would leave to work at the legal department of CBS Records. In 1957 Yetnikoff married June Horowitz, flying back from his mandatory military service in Germany for the ceremony.
In 1961 he accepted Davis’s offer to join him at CBS, at a salary of $10,000, and both of them ascended through the ranks of the company. Davis became president of Columbia Records in 1967, having accurately sensed the way popular music was heading after attending the Monterey pop festival and begun signing artists such as Janis Joplin, Simon and Garfunkel, and Santana. In 1969 Yetnikoff was made executive vice-president of CBS International, and in 1971 president.
While Davis became renowned for his intuition for detecting musical quality, Yetnikoff admitted that “I was tone-deaf”, but heeded Davis’s advice to develop strong relationships with his artists while helping them navigate the industry’s many pitfalls. “I sometimes feel like their shrink, their rabbi, priest, marriage counsellor, banker,” he told the New York Times in 1984.
His antennae were sharp enough to swoop in 1975 on the Jackson 5, who had become disillusioned at Motown, an investment that ultimately led to the global dominance of Michael Jackson. Yetnikoff made a point of nurturing and protecting Jackson as he blossomed into the biggest star of the 1980s, with Thriller eventually selling more than 60m copies.
Having been made president and CEO of CBS Records in 1975, Yetnikoff also made the decision that he was going to engage in all-out war against CBS’s major rivals Warner Bros, and would spend whatever it took to become the dominant force in the record industry. He had banners printed for his company’s annual convention reading “Fuck Warner. Fuck the Bunny”, Warner being the home of the cartoon character Bugs Bunny, and hounded the Warner artist James Taylor until he agreed to sign to Columbia (Warner would retaliate by signing the former Columbia artist Paul Simon, with whom Yetnikoff had a mutually hostile relationship).
The mid-70s brought the surge to superstardom of Springsteen, who made his big breakthrough with the album Born to Run (1975). In his office, Yetnikoff later had the framed cover art for Springsteen’s album Live/1975-1985, signed “To Walter – The wildest man north of Asbury Park. Thanks for your friendship – Bruce.”
The ascent of the Boss coincided with the beginning of a formidable stream of successes for CBS, with Boston’s eponymous debut album (1976) eventually selling 17m copies, Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell (1977) racking up more than 50m sales to date, and Joel’s The Stranger (1977) selling 10m in the US alone and igniting a long streak of Joel bestsellers. Starting with Wish You Were Here (1975), Pink Floyd’s albums were released on Columbia in the US. Further lucrative icing was applied to the corporate cake by Barbra Streisand, the Rolling Stones, Cyndi Lauper and Public Enemy.
Yetnikoff duly found himself being feted as the most powerful man in the record industry. In 1967, he had flown to Tokyo with the then Columbia Records president, Goddard Lieberson, to draw up the contract for a joint venture between Sony and CBS, which would prove a long-running money-spinner. His close relationship with Sony’s management helped him play a key role in the Japanese company’s 1988 purchase of CBS Records for $2bn.
But the Sony deal was the beginning of the end of his days as a master of the universe. In 1989 he went into rehab after his drug and alcohol abuse reached life-threatening proportions. His erratic behaviour on returning to work reflected the pressure he knew he was under from ambitious rivals. In 1990, Sony’s CEO, Norio Ohga, informed him that his time was up, and Tommy Mottola became chairman and CEO of the renamed Sony Music.
Yetnikoff attempted, unsuccessfully, to make a film about the life of Miles Davis, and launched a record label, Velvel, which closed after three years. He entered a 12-step programme to battle his substance abuse problems, then worked with a Catholic priest, the Rev Monsignor Vincent E Puma, in setting up the Eva’s Village recovery facility in Paterson, New Jersey. A newly philosophical Yetnikoff seemed to be at peace with himelf.
Two marriages ended in divorce. Yetnikoff is survived by his third wife, Lynda Kady, and two sons, Michael and Daniel, from his first marriage.
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