Bruce Springsteen loved him, as did Billy Joel and Michael Jackson; the former CBS Records president was called 'the most powerful man in the record business.'
Walter Yetnikoff, the combative, profane, licentious record company executive whose frequent feuds, unrestrained drug and alcohol consumption, and skillful management of superstar egos made him a powerful, feared but also beloved music man, died Sunday at age 87.Yetnikoff was president/chief executive of CBS Records, which vied with Warner Bros. as the industry’s dominant label, from 1975 to 1990.
Walter attended Brooklyn Tech High School and then Brooklyn College, which he graduated in three years, then gained admission to Columbia Law School. Of the available career choices for smart, ambitious Jewish boys, “law seemed least taxing,” he later said. In 1957, he married June May Horowitz, and they soon had a son, Michael. A second son, Daniel, followed in 1962.
In “Howling at the Moon,” Yetnikoff gleefully recounts the decade and a half that followed, which began when he signed the Jacksons, bringing him into a fruitful relationship with Michael Jackson. His success and his indulgences, he came to understand, would feed off one another: “The more [money I made for CBS], the crazier I could afford to be.”
As he told the story, MTV refused to play the “Billie Jean” video because it didn’t fit the rock ‘n’ roll music format. Yetnikoff said he accused MTV of racism and threatened to pull every CBS video from the network if it didn’t support Jackson; MTV executives dismissed this as a self-serving lie. “That’s a typical Walter trick — make himself look important to his artists,” former MTV boss Bob Pittman scoffed in “I Want My MTV.
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