How and when the Warner Bros. music machine kept cranking out hit records
“Sonic Boom: The Impossible Rise of Warner Bros. Records, from Hendrix to Fleetwood Mac to Madonna to Prince” by Peter Ames Carlin (Holt, 288 pages, $29.99)
Over the years since I first entered the work force, I have enjoyed a lot of different occupations. One of my favorite jobs was during the early 1980s when I managed a record store in Des Moines.
Every week the record salesmen (always men) would come by to hype their latest album releases.
We saw sales reps from the record labels RCA, MCA, Columbia, Polygram and Warner Brothers.
Back then the fellow from Warner was the king of the music mountain.
Warner had all these associated labels; Elektra, Sire, Asylum, Reprise, Island, and many others under their corporate umbrella.
It seemed like almost every single week the Warners had at least one truly smoking record to peddle.
I was there to order from them the first records ever issued by the then totally unknown artists Prince, U2, Madonna, and Van Halen.
When I heard how a new book details why Warner became this potent force in the
music biz, I had to read it. In “Sonic Boom: The Impossible Rise of Warner Bros. Records, from Hendrix to Fleetwood Mac to Madonna to Prince,” Peter Ames Carlin shows that some visionary label execs had guided Warner and how their somewhat counterintuitive strategy paid off bigly.
The shift in their marketing approach happened during the mid 1960s when they made their credo “let’s stop trying to make hit records.”
This revolutionary concept eventually succeeded and catapulted Warner into becoming the music company that dominated the industry between 1967 and 1994.
Carlin shows how they did it. They turned the artists Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Jimi Hendrix, The Kinks, The Grateful Dead, Van Morrison, James Taylor, and Neil Young into big stars. Then there was their whole second tier of performers like Dire Straits, ZZ Top, R.E.M., and
Devo, who also sold millions of records.
Warner created a whole new style of advertising to engage the public. They had a marketing whiz named Stan Cornyn who came up with inspired campaigns. Some readers might recall his loony “OUR FLOWER CHILDPUTUP-OR-SHUT-UP FREE ALBUM OFFER.”
The Warner labels signed some artists who were way out there on the fringes of the music world.
Some of those musicians were geniuses. Their roster included names like Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman and Warren Zevon. Incredibly, some of these performers ended up scoring hits on the record charts.
Warner’s eccentric approach eventually paid off as profits surged; many of their artists became millionaires. Their focus had been to first make good records then turn them into hits. Browsing through this book was a nostalgic trip down memory lane for this reviewer.
The Warner stable of musicians was deep; lots of this music holds up just fine today. I see the names and I hear their songs; Little Feat, Seals and Crofts, Christopher Cross, The Doobie Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, Frank Sinatra and on and on.
This book was one happy, hippie flashback.
Vick Mickunas of Yellow Springs interviews authors every Saturday at 7 a.m. and on Sundays at 10:30 a.m. on WYSO-FM (91.3). For more information, visit www. wyso.org/programs/booknook. Contact him at vick@ vickmickunas.com.