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Farewell Mo Ostin, the man who made your record collection rock

Mo Ostin (centre) with his signing Frank Zappa - WireImage
Mo Ostin (centre) with his signing Frank Zappa - WireImage

You may have never heard of him. But Mo Ostin gave the Baby Boomer generation their soundtrack, and in so doing changed the music industry for ever. The American record executive, who has died aged 95, signed Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Van Morrison, James Taylor, the Grateful Dead and many other to his Warner-Reprise label in the 1960s and 1970s.

The fact that he was still in charge at Warners to ride the CD boom of the 1980s – a boom largely fuelled by the artists he himself had signed – shows just what status and impact Ostin had in the industry.

Ostin’s modus operandi was simple: while other record labels chased pop hits and instant commercial success, he signed unconventional artists in whom he saw long-term potential. He gave them creative freedom and paid little heed to instant commercial returns. As author David Hepworth has put it, Ostin’s label “carried itself more like a prestigious publisher of books or boutique advertising agency than a mere vulgar peddler of pop tunes.”

It was a risky strategy. When Neil Young’s 1973 live album Time Fades Away saw disappointing sales, Young summed up the attitude of Ostin’s artists. “What sells and what I do are two completely different things. If they meet, it’s coincidence,” Young said. Yet four years later, Fleetwood Mac released Rumours. It topped the US charts for 31 weeks and became one of the best-selling albums of all time.

Ostin’s success didn’t stop there. When head of Warner Bros. Records in the Eighties, the label’s roster included Prince, Madonna (via its Sire subsidiary), Dire Straits, Paul Simon, REM, Van Halen, The Pretenders, The Cure and The Smiths (the latter three also on Sire).

Mo Ostin in 1970 - Getty
Mo Ostin in 1970 - Getty

“Mo was one of the greatest record men of all time,” said Aaron Bay-Schuck and Tom Corson, the current co-chairmen of Warner Records in a statement after his death. They called Ostin a “prime architect of the modern music business” who ushered in a “golden era of revolutionary, culture-shifting artistry” and tirelessly championed creative freedom. “His ‘nose’ for talent was the stuff of legend,” said Sir Lucian Grainge, the chairman of rival label Universal Music Group, last night.

It was Frank Sinatra who gave Ostin his first big break. In the late 1950s, Ostin was working at revered jazz label Verve records (previously known as Clef Records) which Sinatra tried and failed to buy. When his approach was rebuffed, Old Blue Eyes launched his own label called Reprise Records and poached Ostin from Verve to run it.

The idea with Reprise was to give its musicians more artistic freedom than was normally afforded by traditional labels. The artists were even promised their publishing rights back in the future. This became Ostin’s blueprint. In 1963 loss-making Reprise was bought by Warner Bros. and Ostin was appointed boss of the new company, Warner-Reprise. He now had serious financial heft behind him. One of the first things Ostin did was secure the US distribution rights for The Kinks. Things snowballed from there.

It is easy to characterise music moguls like Ostin as cigar-chomping executives sitting in their top floor offices in gilded ivory towers while minions do the grunt work. This wasn’t the case with him. Ostin relished life at the coalface. He signed Jimi Hendrix (already big in the UK) after seeing him play at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. It was Ostin who found the song Like A Virgin and passed it on to his newish signing Madonna and her producer Nile Rodgers in the early Eighties.

Mo Ostin with Neil Young, Lorne Michaels and Paul Simon in 2019 - WireImage
Mo Ostin with Neil Young, Lorne Michaels and Paul Simon in 2019 - WireImage

Meanwhile the late Tom Petty told a story about how one of his best known songs, 1989’s Free Fallin’, wouldn’t have seen the light of day but for Ostin. According to Petty, his label MCA rejected the song when they first heard it. One night he was at Ostin’s house with George Harrison and Jeff Lynne. After dinner, the trio played some songs including Free Fallin’. Lenny Waronker, Ostin’s co-boss at Warners who was also there, said, “That’s a hit.” When Petty said that MCA wouldn’t release it, Ostin said, “I’ll f-----’ put it out.” Free Fallin’ was Petty’s highest- and longest-charting ever hit.

Ostin ran or co-ran Warners for over three decades (he left in 1994 after the company merged with Time Inc.). Over that period it went from a minnow to a vast conglomerate. Today it is one of the Big Three remaining labels. The creative freedom that Ostin championed wasn’t always in evidence.

In 1992, Prince and Warners fell out over what the musician took to be his lack of artistic freedom. He wrote "Slave" on his face during performances and changed his name to a symbol. But Prince was the exception that proved the rule: under Ostin, Warners became a powerhouse label for exceptional artists. Ostin was also in the extraordinary position of being able to ride the wave that he created when the CD explosion of the early 1980s saw Baby Boomers re-buy all their vinyl albums on a shiny new format. To create one revolution would be enough for most people. To oversee two is quite something.

Mo Ostin (centre) in 1970 - Getty
Mo Ostin (centre) in 1970 - Getty

According to Hepworth in his book 1971: Never A Dull Moment, Warners under Ostin introduced “into the marketing of pop records a quality that had never previously been thought relevant – good taste.” Nick Stewart is a music manager and label boss who signed U2 to Island Record in 1980. “There were two people who had an incredible influence on my life,” Stewart says. “One is Chris Blackwell, who I ended up working for at Island. And the other is Mo Ostin, who effectively provided me with my American record collection. They have the same mantra: find good artists, believe in them and stick with them.”

The digital revolution means we won’t see the likes of Ostin again. The rise of streaming and the atomisation of listening habits – a song here, a playlist there – have turned the music world on its head. For all but the luckiest young artists today, the unquestioning faith and long-term backing provided by execs like Ostin is much harder to find.

These days, industry managers simply wouldn’t cross their fingers and hope for the “coincidence” of good sales, as Neil Young once suggested. Besides, the idea of a three-decades-long career in a single company, such as the one Ostin had, is anathema to modern working patterns. Of course, maverick-spirited musicians will find new ways to survive and thrive. They always do. But it’s unlikely to be via the slow build, ‘I’ll-back-you-all-the-way’ model espoused by Ostin.

Ostin’s legacy is probably sitting in your living room. I am willing to bet that most record collections of most people who read this article will feature a clutch of those earlier records (whether it be Mitchell’s Blue, Morrison’s Moondance or Young’s Harvest), the globe-straddling Rumours, and a clutch of the latter ones too (Prince’s Purple Rain, Madonna’s Like A Prayer, REM’s Automatic for the People). The Ostin era not only bookended modern pop, it built the bookshelf.

Next time you stick one of them on, raise a glass to Mo.