Mo Ostin, Longtime Warner Bros. Records Head, Dead at 95

Mo Ostin, the vastly influential music govt who helmed Warner Bros. Records for greater than 30 years, has died on the age of 95.

Born Morris Meyer Ostrofsky in 1927, the long run music mogul spent his early childhood in New York, earlier than he and his household relocated to Los Angeles in 1941. In 1953, after finding out economics at UCLA, he landed a job at Verve Records working within the finance division. Seven years later, following a failed try to buy Verve, legendary singer Frank Sinatra launched his personal label, Reprise, and poached Ostin to run it. In 1963, Reprise was bought by Warner Bros.

Ostin rapidly made a reputation for himself at Warner Bros., signing the Kinks in 1964 and the Jimi Hendrix Expertise in ‘67. In 1970 he was promoted to the president of Warner-Reprise; two years later, he’d be made chairman/CEO — a title he held till his departure from the corporate in 1994.

Beneath Ostin’s watch, Warner Bros. gathered a roster of shoppers that featured a few of music’s largest acts, together with Fleetwood Mac, Van Halen, the Who, Van Morrison, the Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, James Taylor, Rod Stewart, R.E.M., Steely Dan, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Pink Sizzling Chili Peppers and Inexperienced Day.

Ostin earned a status for his artist-friendly strategy, one thing he mentioned he gleaned by working for Sinatra. “He divined that the thrust of the corporate must be its artists,” Ostin defined within the 2002 ebook Exploding. “All of it appears logical at present, however again then it was actually revolutionary.”

Although prolific, Ostin’s tenure at Warner Bros. wasn’t at all times straightforward. The label was notably going by means of a tumultuous interval within the early ‘90s, following the merger of Warner Communications and Time Inc. It was additionally round this time that Prince started a well-publicized feud with the label, indignant that he had no management over the velocity at which they launched his materials. Within the midst of this storm, Ostin determined to depart the corporate he’d assist lead for greater than three a long time.

The famed govt left Warner Bros. in 1994 and latched on with DreamWorks Records lower than a yr later. The upstart label made a reputation for itself signing an eclectic lineup of artists, together with Elliott Smith, Henry Rollins, Eels, Papa Roach, Jimmy Eat World, Rufus Wainwright and Nelly Furtado. Nonetheless, by 2003, declining gross sales and the daybreak of on-line music piracy had taken an impact and DreamWorks Records was offered to Common Music and finally dissolved.

Ostin was inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 2003 by Neil Younger, Paul Simon and Saturday Night time Stay creator Lorne Michaels. “Anyone who was on Warner Bros. in the course of the Mo years knew it to be an exalted time,” Simon mentioned in the course of the ceremony, “with the attainable exception of Prince.”

“I like Mo,” added Younger. “This man, Mo Ostin, was behind the music. He was behind making it occur. He was behind letting it occur, nevertheless it was gonna occur. And he was behind protecting it occurring. And that’s why Reprise and Warner Bros. have been the best label ever in music so far as I’m involved.”

As phrase of Ostin’s passing grew to become public, many music trade insiders paid their respects. In a joint assertion, Warner Records’ co-chairman/CEO Aaron Bay-Schuck and co-chairman/COO Tom Corson described Ostin as “one of many best report males of all time, and a major architect of the fashionable music enterprise. For Mo, it was at all times initially about serving to artists notice their imaginative and prescient.” Max Lousada, CEO of Warner Recorded Music referred to as Ostin “a pioneer who wrote the rulebook for others to comply with,” whereas Common Music Group chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge famous that his “nostril for expertise was the stuff of legend, however he was additionally an unimaginable connector of individuals; one thing sorely missed within the enterprise—and the world—at present.”