What do you think?
Rate this book
Exploding: The Highs, Hits, Hype, Heroes, and Hustlers of the Warner Music Group
That's how Vanity Fair described the record business turmoil of the 1990s, which moved the Warner Music Group -- the world's number one record company -- from the entertainment pages to the front pages. Suddenly, decades of riotous fun and booming business went splat. Top music executives got evicted from their offices, some escorted by company guards. Why? The answers are in Exploding -- the most insightful and delightful book about the record business ever written. In the rock explosion of the Sixties and Seventies, Warner Bros., Atlantic, and Elektra Records dominated the business as the Warner Music Group. But by the Nineties, the success of WMG was shaken by egos and corporate politics that left the company struggling for identity in a dramatically changing industry. This is the story of that long, strange trip. Your host is the ultimate Stan Cornyn, a key creative force behind the Warner Music Group's stunning rise. During more than thirty years at the company, Cornyn went through what the news media could never uncover. In a freewheeling, vastly entertaining narrative, Cornyn takes us behind the scenes, seats us in the conference rooms, and shows us the interactions between the stars and the suits -- using the same irreverent wit that produced the marketing campaigns that helped put Warner on the map. Exploding is populated by music stars like Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Lil' Kim, Dr. Dre, the Grateful Dead, Queen, Madonna, Ice-T, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, Neil Young, Alice Cooper, and dozens more, even the legendary supergroup Scorpio. (Never heard of Scorpio? You'll find out why.) And it introduces you to the most colorful businesspeople hyperintense record sellers who shave their heads; throw doves off a roof; send pig heads through the mail; provide the money, meds, and mammaries -- anything -- to get their records on the air. Here is the music business as you've never seen at its wildest, in its wackiest fifty years, bursting with hits and cash, until, by the end, it's just plain Exploding.
512 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2002
4 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 1, 2008
Stan Cornyn started out writing liner notes for Frank Sinatra albums in the early Sixties and moved up to creating insane promotional giveaways for Warner Bros. records loss leaders. His album ads and promotions (without help from an outside ad agency) was the stuff of legend in the industry, envy from other companies, and allure to recording artists. To attract musicians to your label from your advertising strategy is almost unheard of in this day and age, but Cornyn accomplished this, no small accomplishment that.
His advertisements were so notorious an entire Department was created around him (Creative Services) to allow him full flight to run ads like:
Free Laurel Canyon dirt to promote Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Van Dyke Parks albums for 1 cent only
Joni Mitchell is a virgin campaign (which pissed her off)
Cornyn has a tendency to get a bit smug in places, but you can indulge him a bit given the fact that his business sense is unique and always entertaining. I found this book to be very inspiring in the way it combines art with commerce without apology.
His advertisements were so notorious an entire Department was created around him (Creative Services) to allow him full flight to run ads like:
Free Laurel Canyon dirt to promote Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Van Dyke Parks albums for 1 cent only
Joni Mitchell is a virgin campaign (which pissed her off)
Cornyn has a tendency to get a bit smug in places, but you can indulge him a bit given the fact that his business sense is unique and always entertaining. I found this book to be very inspiring in the way it combines art with commerce without apology.
October 5, 2016
Oh. My. God. I can't believe I actually finished reading this mind numbingly dull book. Several times I almost threw in the towel, even though I really, really hate not finishing a book I start and rarely give up on reading one. What kept me going was the growing irritation and loathing I felt for all the people in this book. It's like how people hate-watch a tv show like Keeping Up With The Kardashians. You sit there amazed at how people so despicable could be given a tv show and you watch them as they live their unpleasant lives, all the while their behaviors adding fuel to the white hot flame of your disgust.
The book starts off as merely dull; a wearisome recitation of random non-famous people who worked in the music industry. I kept hoping the author would go into more details about the nuts and the bolts of the business - about how artists were wooed to the label, what was in contracts between labels & artists, how the specifics of the contracts came into being, details about the recording process, details about album covers, what went into the manufacturing of the albums, details about the album promotions, etc. Instead it was a record of jobs, of hirings and firings, with little detail about what these people actually did. "Joe Blow was hired in 1962. Then he was promoted to another random job and John Doe took Joe Blow's job. Blah blah blah." I. DON'T. CARE. It was impossible to keep track of all the people the author mentions in this book. There are fewer characters in War & Peace. All I could think of, to rationalize this compulsion to name every single executive who ever worked for Warners, was that the author was afraid to piss anyone off, by forgetting to mention him in the book. He was retired when he wrote this book, so I don't know why he would care if he burnt a few bridges but seriously, I cannot think of another reason for this ridiculous inclusion of so much minutiae.
I'd say my full blown active hatred of these executives - So many middle aged white men! So many! - probably started at the beginning of the merger between Warners and Time. My jaw dropped open when I read about the stupidly large amounts of money these guys were pocketing. 60 million cash was what the Warner CEO got in the merger - not counting the stock options and other benefits he also got. And don't get me started on all the golden parachutes these guys put in their contracts. CRAZY. For the majority of people on the planet, when you lose a job either by being fired or getting laid off, you are lucky to get at least a few weeks pay. These dudes? Tens of millions of dollars were given to them. My favorite was one guy, his contract stated that after losing his job he got his full salary paid for the rest of his life (not an uncommon term for these select few) but AFTER HE DIED his family would still get his full salary & all his benefits for two years. Yes, he was still drawing a salary even after death. Props to his evil lawyer for inserting that clause into the contract.
Throughout the book, the author wrote of the sexism, racism and homophobia that was rampant at Warners. Oh, not to say he was aware of all these jerky behaviors! It's not like he was cataloging how awful these guys were. Instead he was sharing "funny" stories. Ugh. About secretaries that "put out" and are "up for anything". Secretaries in their sexy miniskirts. Lots of *nudge nudge wink wink* about the poor women these executives were around. He writes of Freddie Mercury of Queen "prancing about" and fighting with bandmates over an eyebrow tweezer. Oh you know what those queers are like - hardy har har. He writes about the scary rappers of Interscope Records. He says nothing about the actual music - other than to say it's not really music (not like The Eagles, whoo-hoo now that was music etc) but does mention any criminal records they had. And he mentions that he had never, after living in LA over 30 years, gone into the neighborhoods the rappers talk about. Yikes, scary black people live there!
I could probably go on for an hour straight, cataloging all the shitty, selfish, sociopathic behaviors I read about but I don't want to. I had been wondering, after reading so many musicians' memoirs, if the "suits" the musicians bitch about are really all that bad. It turns out that they are worse, much worse, than the musicians ever knew.
The book starts off as merely dull; a wearisome recitation of random non-famous people who worked in the music industry. I kept hoping the author would go into more details about the nuts and the bolts of the business - about how artists were wooed to the label, what was in contracts between labels & artists, how the specifics of the contracts came into being, details about the recording process, details about album covers, what went into the manufacturing of the albums, details about the album promotions, etc. Instead it was a record of jobs, of hirings and firings, with little detail about what these people actually did. "Joe Blow was hired in 1962. Then he was promoted to another random job and John Doe took Joe Blow's job. Blah blah blah." I. DON'T. CARE. It was impossible to keep track of all the people the author mentions in this book. There are fewer characters in War & Peace. All I could think of, to rationalize this compulsion to name every single executive who ever worked for Warners, was that the author was afraid to piss anyone off, by forgetting to mention him in the book. He was retired when he wrote this book, so I don't know why he would care if he burnt a few bridges but seriously, I cannot think of another reason for this ridiculous inclusion of so much minutiae.
I'd say my full blown active hatred of these executives - So many middle aged white men! So many! - probably started at the beginning of the merger between Warners and Time. My jaw dropped open when I read about the stupidly large amounts of money these guys were pocketing. 60 million cash was what the Warner CEO got in the merger - not counting the stock options and other benefits he also got. And don't get me started on all the golden parachutes these guys put in their contracts. CRAZY. For the majority of people on the planet, when you lose a job either by being fired or getting laid off, you are lucky to get at least a few weeks pay. These dudes? Tens of millions of dollars were given to them. My favorite was one guy, his contract stated that after losing his job he got his full salary paid for the rest of his life (not an uncommon term for these select few) but AFTER HE DIED his family would still get his full salary & all his benefits for two years. Yes, he was still drawing a salary even after death. Props to his evil lawyer for inserting that clause into the contract.
Throughout the book, the author wrote of the sexism, racism and homophobia that was rampant at Warners. Oh, not to say he was aware of all these jerky behaviors! It's not like he was cataloging how awful these guys were. Instead he was sharing "funny" stories. Ugh. About secretaries that "put out" and are "up for anything". Secretaries in their sexy miniskirts. Lots of *nudge nudge wink wink* about the poor women these executives were around. He writes of Freddie Mercury of Queen "prancing about" and fighting with bandmates over an eyebrow tweezer. Oh you know what those queers are like - hardy har har. He writes about the scary rappers of Interscope Records. He says nothing about the actual music - other than to say it's not really music (not like The Eagles, whoo-hoo now that was music etc) but does mention any criminal records they had. And he mentions that he had never, after living in LA over 30 years, gone into the neighborhoods the rappers talk about. Yikes, scary black people live there!
I could probably go on for an hour straight, cataloging all the shitty, selfish, sociopathic behaviors I read about but I don't want to. I had been wondering, after reading so many musicians' memoirs, if the "suits" the musicians bitch about are really all that bad. It turns out that they are worse, much worse, than the musicians ever knew.
April 3, 2011
People whose work is brilliant in small doses are unlikely candidates to maintain interest over a long haul. But there's always an exception, and in this case, that's Stan Cornyn.
Shouldn't be a surprise, really, since Cornyn has always been exceptional. No one, certainly not before and not since, wrote album liner notes like he did (his first real paying gig at Warner's).
And when his career at WB progressed into writing ad copy for artists that were beyond worthy but who weren't at the time household names or big sellers (yes, there was a time when Randy Newman and Joni Mitchell were struggling), Cornyn broke every single rule and created ads that some folks can quote verbatim 40 years later.
You know those 2-record set LPs for $2 that Warner's used to advertise on the inner sleeves of its "real" albums...the ones you had to send for by mail? Stan's idea.
So, there's nobody better to tell the story of the little record company from the big movie studio that very nearly died in infancy from a lack of hits, how it was saved by a couple of stand-up comics no one had heard of until WB released them (Bob Newhart and Allan Sherman) and the wild ride from there through Bill Cosby and Petula Clark to The Grateful Dead and beyond...becoming the label (make that labels...the acquisitions of Reprise, Atlantic, Elektra and others are thoroughly documented here) every big act wanted to sign with.
Part business book, part memoir, part backstage pass to some untoppable bad behavior during the days of wretched rock excess, Stan Cornyn weaves it all into one can't-put-it-down volume that not only holds up to, but invites repeated readings.
Shouldn't be a surprise, really, since Cornyn has always been exceptional. No one, certainly not before and not since, wrote album liner notes like he did (his first real paying gig at Warner's).
And when his career at WB progressed into writing ad copy for artists that were beyond worthy but who weren't at the time household names or big sellers (yes, there was a time when Randy Newman and Joni Mitchell were struggling), Cornyn broke every single rule and created ads that some folks can quote verbatim 40 years later.
You know those 2-record set LPs for $2 that Warner's used to advertise on the inner sleeves of its "real" albums...the ones you had to send for by mail? Stan's idea.
So, there's nobody better to tell the story of the little record company from the big movie studio that very nearly died in infancy from a lack of hits, how it was saved by a couple of stand-up comics no one had heard of until WB released them (Bob Newhart and Allan Sherman) and the wild ride from there through Bill Cosby and Petula Clark to The Grateful Dead and beyond...becoming the label (make that labels...the acquisitions of Reprise, Atlantic, Elektra and others are thoroughly documented here) every big act wanted to sign with.
Part business book, part memoir, part backstage pass to some untoppable bad behavior during the days of wretched rock excess, Stan Cornyn weaves it all into one can't-put-it-down volume that not only holds up to, but invites repeated readings.
October 27, 2012
A comprehensive look at the rise and fall of Warner Music Group. While it contains many fantastic stories, the author's desire to document everything gets tedious in spots. Still, this is an absolutely essential read for anyone in a creative industry about what can go wrong.
January 23, 2011
great autobiography and corporate history of WBR
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews