Tuesday, December 30, 2003
LOS ANGELES TIMES
In the gray landscape of the music business, the Warner Bros. of the '60s, '70s and '80s was an anomaly: a major label that mattered the way that small, visionary mavericks such as Sun (Elvis) and Sub Pop (Nirvana) mattered.
Back then, the Burbank, Calif.-based company (and sister label Reprise) created a Camelot where rugged individuals such as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman could slowly build an audience, where underground forces such as Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead were welcome. The legacy continued with the Sex Pistols and R.E.M., Van Halen and John Fogerty. In any debate over East Coast vs. West in the record industry, Warners was the clincher, a distinctly Los Angeles-style model that sold a ton of records while remaining an artist-friendly oasis.
So it was painful to watch the label's fate during the mid-'90s era of conglomeration, when parent company Time Warner ground that legacy to dust, forcing out such respected executives as Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker. Its once-commanding market share quickly plunged and the music operation became a minor division of the corporation that had become the even bigger AOL Time Warner.
Big change
There were some encouraging signs in 2001, notably the installation of artist-attuned executives such as Chairman Tom Whalley and creative director Jeff Ayeroff. But now comes a monumental change: the impending purchase of Warners by Edgar Bronfman Jr. and his group of investors.
It's hard not to cheer the storied company's removal from the clutches of Wall Street, with its bottom-line pressure to produce quick hits. But there are some who think the company will face more scrutiny as the investors' sole asset than it did as an afterthought at AOL Time Warner.
The chances for a return to the glory days? It depends whom you ask.
"Any time you exchange a bean counter for a music man it's a good thing," says artist manager Elliot Roberts, whose principal client, Neil Young, has recorded primarily for Warner labels since the '60s. "Edgar's into music, and I think he'll take it in that direction. ... I know Neil's excited to sit down and see what they're going to do. ... [Bronfman's] view has to be different from the view as it was. As it was, it was going in the toilet -- not making money and not developing artists."
Less optimistic
Joe Smith, who for more than three decades ran Warner Bros., Elektra and Capitol EMI before retiring from the business in 1996, is less optimistic, mainly because of the music business' weakened condition.
"Their aims are noble. I doubt whether they're going to be able to pull it off," Smith says. "The impact that hurts the Warner thing most is the nature of the product, the music itself.
"Because of the failure to allow experimental stuff and to give a new artist a chance to really develop, you can't arouse that real interest in music that kept the engine running for so many years."
The executive closest to the situation, Whalley, worked at Warner Bros. early in his career and was at Interscope when Bronfman owned parent company Universal Music. So he knows the legacy well.
"It comes from a history of artist development and not being afraid of signing things that are different and sticking with talent and believing in talent," he says. "What I sincerely believe is that this is going to help us have an easier time of it.
"[Bronfman] is someone who genuinely loves the record business. ... You have a group of investors who believe in the record business, they want to be in the record business. Those are all real positives."