Sonic Boom: The Impossible Rise of Warner Bros. Records, from Hendrix to Fleetwood Mac to Madonna to Prince

by Peter Ames Carlin

Overview

In Sonic Boom, bestselling music journalist Peter Ames Carlin captures the rollicking story of the most successful record label in the history of rock and roll, Warner Bros. Records, and the remarkable secret to its meteoric rise.

The roster of Warner Brothers Records and its subsidiary labels reads like the roster of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Prince, Van Halen, Madonna, Tom Petty, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers, and dozens of others. But the most compelling figures in the Warner Bros. story are the sagacious Mo Ostin and the unlikely crew of hippies, eccentrics, and enlightened execs. Ostin and his staff transformed an out-of-touch company, revolutionized the industry, and, within just a few years, created the most successful record label in the history of the American music industry.

How did they do it? One day in 1967, the newly tapped label president Mo Ostin called his team together to share his grand strategy: he told them to stop trying to make hit records.

“Let’s just make good records and turn those into hits.”

With that, Ostin ushered in a counterintuitive model that matched the counterculture. His offbeat crew recruited outsider artists and gave them free rein, while rejecting out-of-date methods of advertising, promotion, and distribution. And even as they set new standards for in-house weirdness, the upstarts’ experiments and innovations paid off, to the tune of hundreds of legendary hit albums.

Warner Bros. Records conquered the music business by focusing on the music rather than the business. Their story is as raucous as it is inspiring—pure entertainment that also maps a route to that holy grail: love and money.

Includes black-and-white photographs

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250838407
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/01/2022
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	1,123,619
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Peter Ames Carlin is a writer and the bestselling author of several books, including Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon and Bruce, the biography of Bruce Springsteen. Carlin has also been a free-lance journalist, a senior writer at People in New York City, and a television columnist and feature writer at The Oregonian in Portland. A regular speaker on music, writing, and popular culture, Carlin lives in Portland, Oregon.

Table of Contents

1 Song Cycle 1

2 Welcome to the Chalet 13

3 Warner Bros. Records: Terribly Sophisticated Songs 19

4 Reprise Records: Newer, Happier, Emancipated 39

5 Warner/Reprise: A Quite Unlosable Game 53

6 Christmas and New Year's and Your Birthday All Together 67

7 Once You Get Used to it, His Voice is Really Something 84

8 How Can We Break The Rules Today? 109

9 The Gold Dust Twins 125

10 The Rock Morality 146

11 It Ain't Nothin' But a Warner Bros. Party 166

12 Fuck the Bunny 179

13 The Name of the Game is Performance 195

14 Just Go Do 209

15 Coming for the Cowboys 230

16 Losing My Religion 241

Postlude: On Vine Street 247

Notes 251

Bibliography 255

Acknowledgments 257

Index 259

Editorial Reviews

"Captivating. . . . What makes Sonic Boom so appealing is that it is actually three books in one. It’s a book about how music is made, but it’s also a book about how companies are run and then go off track. It’s also a biography of sorts of Mo Ostin."
- Wall Street Journal

“There will never be another record company quite like Warner Bros Records . . . an enterprise that so inhabits the culture of the moment, introducing a mass audience to the cream of current innovation and becoming both a commercial and artistic titan. . . . Sonic Boom does justice to the label's accomplishments."
- Financial Times

"Music journalist Carlin (Bruce) relays in his characteristic colorful style how music mogul Mo Ostin built Warner Bros. Records into an industry leader... Those looking for a gossipy tell-all won’t find one here; Ostin stuck with a formula, trusted and invested in his artists, took the music seriously, and honored the intelligence and taste of his customers. This brisk portrait of the man who made Warner Bros. into a powerhouse offers essential reading on the business and history of popular music."
– Publishers Weekly

"[Mo] Ostin and his cowboys rode off into a sunset that grows ever darker as the record business declines, but Carlin captures their glory days without sentimentality or untoward nostalgia. ... Fans of LP–era rock will enjoy Carlin’s knowledgeable deep dive."
- Kirkus Reviews

"Having already penned definitive biographies of America’s musical titans, from Springsteen to Simon, Peter Ames Carlin turns his keen eye to the history of the country’s preeminent record executive and label in Sonic Boom, the story of Mo Ostin and Warner Bros. With this compellingly shaped, finely etched portrait of a company and a culture that would produce some of the most crucial music of our times, Carlin again shows why he’s the absolute master of his craft."
– Bob Mehr, author of the New York Times best seller Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements

“Peter Ames’ Carlin’s rollicking Sonic Boom is an endlessly juicy and entertaining account of a time when excess and indulgence (chimps on tricycles!) went hand in hand with artistic freedom and hands-off corporate support. It will make you mourn a wild-west industry that no longer exists—but inspire you to reach for classic WB albums by Randy Newman, Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young to celebrate that extraordinary time and company.”
– David Browne, author of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: The Wild, Definitive Saga of Rock’s Greatest Supergroup

“A sweeping and vital music history that stretches from Hendrix and the Kinks to Prince, Madonna and R.E.M., written by a rock geek with an eye for storytelling. . . Carlin writes with authority, joy and detail. Sonic Boom will make you pine for a time when true artists were supported, whether they sold 50 albums or 5 million.”
– Geoff Edgers, The Washington Post

"Carlin chronicles this unusual bit of popular music history in a breezy and irreverent style, a perfect match for the story, and seems almost to disbelieve that such a record company once existed. An entertainingly informative read."
- Booklist

"Carlin’s spring-loaded narrative keeps the reader involved, and characterizing the empathetic side of some of the outsize personalities humanizes the Warner mythos."
- Library Journal

From the Publisher

09/21/2020

Music journalist Carlin (Bruce) relays in his characteristic colorful style how music mogul Mo Ostin built Warner Bros. Records into an industry leader. In 1960, Frank Sinatra formed Reprise Records, asking his friend Ostin—who had earned Sinatra’s respect at jazz outlet Verve Records—to run the label, which Warner bought in 1963, becoming Warner/Reprise Records. Ostin succeeded at Warner, Carlin writes, because he focused on producing strong albums rather than “surefire” singles: “Something good was always going to happen because you’d just made a great record.” Between 1967 and 1970, the label signed 90 new acts—among them Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Fleetwood Mac, and Alice Cooper—most of which eventually, through marketing and artist development, found commercial success. Through the ’80s and early ’90s, Ostin brought in an eclectic array of artists, including soul singer Chaka Khan and blues guitarist Bonnie Raitt—and notably, Prince and Madonna. Those looking for a gossipy tell-all won’t find one here; Ostin stuck with a formula, trusted and invested in his artists, took the music seriously, and honored the intelligence and taste of his customers. This brisk portrait of the man who made Warner Bros. into a powerhouse offers essential reading on the business and history of popular music. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

11/01/2020

Featuring musical superstars ranging from Frank Sinatra to the Grateful Dead and even encompassing comedians such as Bob Newhart, Warner Records and its subsidiaries Reprise and Atlantic showcased a powerful lineup of popular and innovative artists during their glory years between the 1960s and 1990s. Starting with the company's genesis in 1958 and ending with a 2019 reunion, Carlin (Homeward Bound) provides a riveting, behind-the-scenes look at how the executives of the company sought out groundbreaking talent, cultivated established acts, and achieved commercial success. Although noting the behavioral excesses rampant in those decades, Carlin wisely avoids belaboring the point, using it mainly for humorous asides, and focuses more on the struggles to compete with other labels to sign musicians, and on Warner's goal of creating appealing and artistically satisfying discs. The author's research and access to interviews with key figures sustain his argument well. VERDICT Carlin's spring-loaded narrative keeps the reader involved, and characterizing the empathetic side of some of the outsize personalities humanizes the Warner mythos. Record label books abound, but there has been little available about Warner itself or its sister companies since Warren Zanes's Revolutions in Sound; Carlin's title admirably fills that gap.—Barry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH

Library Journal

2020-12-25
The author of biographies of McCartney, Simon, and Springsteen delivers a fast-paced, overstuffed history of the storied record label.

In 1958, Warner Bros. Records began as a kind of joke, with records by pseudonymous artists and titles like But You’ve Never Heard Gershwin With Bongos. Jack Warner’s only rule was that “the company made money—and that nothing they released sounded anything like rock ’n’ roll.” Never mind that Elvis was the king of the charts. When Frank Sinatra took up with Reprise Records—whose name, writes Carlin hinted not just at the musical reprise but also at reprisal, “which appealed to Sinatra’s desire to exact revenge on Capitol Records”—the rule held until Mo Ostin and a handful of A&R men and producers seized the reins. Though Ostin’s guiding principle was “Let’s stop trying to make hit records,” everyone involved was won over by the success of a slate of 1960s acts, including the Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, and Jimi Hendrix, for whom Ostin “offered a fifty-thousand-dollar contract for three albums, a pretty rich deal for an untested artist.” Pressing records became like minting money. In February 1973 alone, writes the author, “Of the sixteen albums Warner Bros. Records uncorked that month, ten of them had climbed onto Billboard’s best-selling album charts by April.” The good times continued long past the hippie heyday up until the era of MTV and video-friendly artists like Madonna. Alas, Ostin’s hands-off attitude, willingness to share the spoils, and demand for independence increasingly fell athwart of corporate executives as the record business conglomerated, with one particularly obnoxious corporate exec gloating, “We’re coming after all the cowboys.” Ostin and his cowboys rode off into a sunset that grows ever darker as the record business declines, but Carlin captures their glory days without sentimentality or untoward nostalgia.

Not as much fun as Almost Famous, but fans of LP–era rock will enjoy Carlin’s knowledgeable deep dive.

Kirkus Reviews