” He agreed to work for Warner for an additional five years. In 1972 Geffen sold the company to Warner Communications for $7 million, “the biggest number could think of. After parting company with Geffen, the Eagles achieved a dizzying level of success and eventually recovered their publishing rights through a lawsuit. The Eagles worried about the conflicts of interest of Geffen-Roberts acting as both their manager and record company -essentially, both employee and employer -while at the same time controlling their publishing revenues. This proved attractive to some of the most-successful performers of the 1970s, including Ronstadt and the rock band the Eagles, who found their start on Asylum. In both the Geffen-Roberts management company and Asylum Records, Geffen allowed the artists unprecedented creative control. California songwriter Jackson Browne, whom Geffen had earlier tried to pitch to Atlantic, was first to record for Asylum.
Geffen announced Laura Nyro would be the first artist signed to the label, but she in fact surprised him by signing with Columbia Records. It featured stars such as Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt. Geffen founded Asylum Records, bankrolled by Atlantic Records, in 1970. Geffen owned three-fourths of the partnership. Afterwards Geffen formally switched from the role of agent to manager in forming the Geffen-Roberts Company with Eliot Roberts. In 1969 he became a vice-president at Creative Management, the forerunner of ICM. Geffen returned to California and soon became known as an aggressive advocate for other acts.
The deal he engineered with Columbia on her behalf made him a millionaire at age 27. Geffen took folk artist Laura Nyro under his wing, helping restore her career and confidence, and eventually left the Morris agency to become her full-time agent. The hippie politics of the 1960s opened the way for folk rock, an infusion of rock and roll with the tradition, artistic aspirations, and populist leanings of newly revived American folk music. Geffen eventually became an agent for the likes of Buffalo Springfield, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Janis Joplin, harbingers of an emerging musical scene. His stint as a trainee there indoctrinated him in the pace and the lifestyle of the entertainment business. Then, after returning to New York, David Geffen forged UCLA graduation credentials to land a job in the mail room of the William Morris talent agency. Upon graduating from high school, Geffen promptly departed for Los Angeles. Geffen ’s father, an intellectual dilettante, died when Geffen was 17.Īs a child, Geffen dreamed of becoming an entertainment mogul. She is credited as the source of her younger son ’s drive and business savvy. As a seamstress, she was the breadwinner of the family. She had fled the World War II pogroms of the Ukraine to Brooklyn, and later learned most of her family had been killed. Geffen ’s mother, Batya Volovskaya, was a Jewish emigr é from the Soviet Union. David Geffen is also one of three founders of the entertainment enterprise Dream-works SKG with partners Stephen Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg. The record labels he founded and has since sold are both identified with a legacy of highly respected popular music, produced by artists ranging from Bob Dylan to Peter Gabriel.
#Geffen records series
A series of business deals highly favorable to Geffen left him with a personal fortune approaching $1 billion. is the second record label founded by David Geffen, the richest, most successful entertainment mogul of the 20th century and certainly one of the most controversial. SICs: 3652 Phonograph Records & Prerecorded Audio Tapes & Disks Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Universal Music Group/Seagram Ltd.
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