Routes: Reno-based airline stops flying new DOT site helps passengers with airline customer service issues.Tahoe and Vegas casinos were plagued by bomb threats in the 1970s.California musician and his wife found dead in Mojave Desert.While an undergraduate at UCLA, Ostin helped Granz sell concert programs and he dropped out of UCLA law school in the mid-1950s to manage the finances at Verve (called Clef at the time). The family moved to Los Angeles when he was 13 and ended up next door to the brother of jazz impresario Norman Granz, whose Verve label included Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Charlie Parker. “The guy was so unbelievably talented it was overwhelming.”īorn Morris Meyer Ostrofsky in New York City in 1927, Ostin was the able and lucky son of Jewish immigrants. “It bugged me, but I understood where he was coming from,” Ostin told Billboard in 2016, adding that he remained in awe of the late musician. He appeared in public with the word “slave” written on his cheek. For a time he changed his name, and was called The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. But Prince fought with the company over control of his master tapes and how much music he could release.
WARNER RECORDS MAC
Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac would recall his unhappiness when the group followed its mega-selling “Rumours” album with the experimental double record, “Tusk.” Some of Prince’s greatest hits, including his “Purple Rain” and “1999” albums, came out through Warner. Ostin did have occasional conflicts with artists. Numerous artists and executives left Warner after his departure. “Mo, Mo, why do you have to go?/You’re the first record company guy/That looked me in the eye,” the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea wrote. He even inspired some songs, including Young’s “Surfer Joe” and Harrison’s playful ballad “Mo,” featured on a six-CD compilation of music that Ostin had helped release. Ostin was praised for his judgment and for his patience, sticking with artists such as Simon and Van Morrison even when their albums didn’t sell. Ostin’s prime was an era of high-level bidding and poaching, whether Warner’s taking Simon from Columbia or Columbia’s convincing Taylor to leave Warner. With corporations finally embracing the music they once disdained, Warner competed fiercely with CBS Records - and its leader, Yetnikoff - for industry leadership. Ostin started at Warner in 1963, became president in 1970, chairman soon after and rarely faltered over the next quarter century as the once-marginal label eventually included Elektra, Atlantic, Sire, Geffen’s Asylum and Madonna’s Maverick Records among others. David Geffen, whose Geffen label was distributed by Warner, would eventually hire Ostin to run the DreamWorks music division. He also assembled an elite and trusted team of executives, including producer-Warner president Lenny Waronker and advertising-marketing head Stan Cronyn. Sure, you can squeeze another dollar out of anything, but that’s not what makes a record company run profitably.” “I don’t know why, but corporate people have a tendency to think in terms of immediate gratification. “Intimidation is not the answer,” Ostin, in a rare interview, told The Los Angeles Times in 1994. and Guns N’ Roses were among the other performers who joined Warner during his reign. John Lennon and Yoko Ono, George Harrison, Nirvana, Madonna, Eric Clapton, James Taylor, Prince, R.E.M. Under Ostin’s leadership, Warner signed Hendrix when the guitarist was hardly known beyond the London club scene, Fleetwood Mac when they were a blues act and the Grateful Dead when their legend was confined to the Bay Area. Mo’s artists deeply impacted contemporary music and culture profoundly and historically.” “The company he chaired was truly unique in its very special management of artists and the extraordinary depth and range of talent on its roster. “Mo Ostin was one of a kind,” Davis tweeted.
For decades, Ostin thrived on the simple, underused idea of taking on talented and original performers and letting them remain talented and original, whether Hendrix and Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac and Paul Simon, or R.E.M. Short and bald and mild in demeanor, “Chairman Mo” was never as famous as such rival moguls as Clive Davis or Walter Yetnikoff, but few equaled his power or prestige as rock music officially became big business.
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