Walter Yetnikoff Was once a Wolf Among ‘Hit Males,’ But That Was once His Undoing

Yetnikoff rose from modest beginnings in the Brownsville piece of Brooklyn, the son of a laborer who periodically beat him. He edited the law evaluation at Columbia Law College, and after a stint in the military, joined the law firm that represented CBS and its founder and chairman William Paley. CBS Recordsdata hired him as a workers felony professional in 1961, and he moved progressively up the ranks to bustle the mark’s international division, turning into mark president in 1975. Unlike sizable fable men such as Ahmet Ertegun, Clive Davis or Berry Gordy, Yetnikoff had a tin ear for tune. But he had most involving pitch when it got here to artist relationships. When Michael Jackson swept the 1984 Grammys for Thriller, he grabbed Yetnikoff by the arm and introduced him onstage to part in the glory.

The Walter Yetnikoff I met in the late ’80s became bearded and barrel-chested, and chain-smoking Nat Sherman cigarettes, a dependancy that left his Brooklyn baritone a puny bit raspy. The beard, I consistently suspected, became venerable to masks a used chin, however it moreover accented his ethnicity, which he paraded with delight. He called himself Velvel, Yiddish for “Little Walter,” and dubbed Thomas Wyman, CBS president from 1980 to 1986, “the goy upstairs.” At the conclusion of my first bump into with him, he relayed plans for a brand original musical style, “Hasidic rock,” and crooned one of his get compositions, “The Shiksa Shtupping Song.”

When Laurence Tisch — a “landsman,” as Yetnikoff build it, Yiddish for “fellow Jew” — ousted Wyman in September 1986, Yetnikoff became in the starting attach pleased. NBC Recordsdata had not too prolonged ago singled out Yetnikoff for opposing an investigation of alleged organized crime affect in fable promotion, and implied he became a cocaine user. Tisch rushed to his protection. A month after he grew to turn out to be CBS president, I asked Tisch in regards to the NBC document, and he all nonetheless wagged a finger at me. “Walter Yetnikoff is a if truth be told honorable man,” he stated. “Don’t trip by the true fact that he’s not wearing a tie and has a beard. Walter is a conservative businessman, and too tidy to abolish the relaxation that may per chance per chance jeopardize the corporate or himself.”

The honeymoon didn’t final prolonged. By 1987, Yetnikoff became calling the immediate and bald Tisch “the kike upstairs” and “the Substandard Dwarf.” That year, Walter midwifed the sale of CBS Recordsdata to Sony for $2 billion, making himself neatly off in the technique, with a impress-on bonus estimated at $20 million. He became gleeful. The final time I seen him, in May per chance most seemingly well well also 1988, Yetnikoff became standing exterior the Titus Theater on the Museum of Neatly-liked Art in Unique York City. Inside, Tisch became conducting the annual CBS shareholder’s assembly, fielding questions in regards to the sale of the fable division. “,” Yetnikoff stated, noticeably underneath the affect of alcohol, “in the springtime, life blooms, and the vegetation grow, and the grass is inexperienced, nonetheless dwarfs die in the gentle of the solar. And it’s style of early spring. That’s a dream I had.”

Tisch, for his piece, had ceased relating to Yetnikoff as “a if truth be told honorable man.” In 1991, he asked a reporter for Unique York journal, “Did you learn that book Hit Males? Produce you understand why I equipped that enterprise? Would it’s good to be in that enterprise?” Tisch died in November 2003, about a months sooner than the publication of Howling on the Moon, which vindicated a factual deal extra his resolution to sell — Yetnikoff’s confessed cocaine use at Dusky Rock may per chance per chance moreover grasp jeopardized CBS’s federally sanctioned broadcast licenses, which were self-discipline to FCC oversight.

Walter’s self-portrait became harsher than the relaxation I had written about him, yet prolonged after his expose-all became printed, the mark of Hit Males aloof home him off. In a 2010 interview, he called me “a plagiarist,” claiming I had appropriated passages from a privately recorded tribute to the late Goddard Lieberson “with no attribution.” (No longer apt: the attribution became in my supply notes.) Walter became consistently swearing to lift apt action in opposition to all enemies, exact or perceived — in 1988, he instructed journalist Fred Goodman he became contemplating a RICO, or racketeering, grievance in opposition to MCA Recordsdata — nonetheless not once did he threaten me with litigation.

That honor fell to Clive Davis and David Geffen. In late 1989, the unedited manuscript of Hit Males became leaked by somebody at Random Condominium, and sooner than prolonged it appeared the total book’s considerable topics had a duplicate. Davis sicked the outstanding trial felony professional Robert Morvillo on me, and amongst his litany of complaints became my purportedly fake and defamatory story of an unfortunate assembly between himself and the 21-year-ragged Bob Dylan. The Random Condominium felony professional asked to seem my supply self-discipline fabric. I confirmed her. It became Clive’s 1974 autobiography. Geffen, meanwhile, unleashed his apt bulldog Bertram Fields, and wasted his cash, for the reason that disputed passages had already been removed at some level of truth-checking and enhancing.

Leisure felony professional Allen Grubman took a special capacity, cordially engrossing me to his region of enterprise, where he insisted on serving me chicken soup with kreplach. Grubman wanted some adjustments to the chapter about him, and handled the topic in his conventional vogue, as a friendly negotiation, an capacity that underneath no circumstances would grasp occurred to Geffen. Yetnikoff had thrown a range of clients Grubman’s capacity, including Bruce Springsteen, and in return he expected absolute fealty and even some groveling — he once obtained Grubman to beg on his palms and knees to shut a fable distribution deal. My manuscript included one other extra egregious instance of Grubman’s subservience to Yetnikoff, nonetheless I agreed to lift away it, merely since it became not a if truth be told crucial detail. Beyond that, I stated I’d alternate nothing that he couldn’t persuade me became nonfactual. “You grasp this quote here from Walter,” Grubman stated. “‘Once I yelled at Allen, and his partner instructed me he needed to lift three Valium.’” No longer apt? “It is apt,” Grubman stated. “But I need you’d add I needed to lift three extra Valium when I learn your book!”

By the level Hit Males became printed, Grubman now not had reason to anguish Yetnikoff, because Yetnikoff became self-destructing. In 1989, Yetnikoff had checked himself into the Hazelden clinic in Minnesota, rising orderly and sober, and final so, he maintained, till the discontinue of his life. But sobriety, he wrote in Howling on the Moon, made him a larger person easiest in plenty of ways. “On many other levels,” he stated, “I grew to turn out to be worse.” In lower than a year, Yetnikoff alienated nearly all his closest allies in the enterprise, including David Geffen, whom he had roused to rage with his insults. Bruce Springsteen manager Jon Landau, who called Geffen his “rabbi,” issued a damning observation to Billboard in late August 1990. In it, Landau stated he and Springsteen had prolonged loved “a astounding professional relationship and a satisfying social one” with Yetnikoff, nonetheless for the past two years, “neither Bruce nor I if truth be told grasp had a most principal conversation with him.”

To this day, I am gratified that Landau’s declaration shook up the brass at Sony a long way bigger than Hit Males, and played the decisive role in Yetnikoff’s ousting. Afterward, I asked Landau whether or not Geffen had introduced on him to self-discipline the observation. He denied it, asserting of Yetnikoff, “He took a 14-year relationship and trashed it for irrational reasons. I harbored a sizable deal of emotion, and I don’t feel fancy I needed any instruction from David or any one else. I wrote it in session with Bruce.”

I don’t know whether or not Landau ever made peace with Yetnikoff, nonetheless I need I had. Walter may per chance per chance moreover grasp disliked me, nonetheless the feeling became underneath no circumstances mutual. In 2014, I updated Hit Males’s book version with a brand original final chapter — excerpted in Billboard — and the additional self-discipline fabric became complimentary to Yetnikoff. Within the bigger than two a protracted time for the reason that book had first been printed, Walter had taken to coronary heart the 12-step notion to be of service to others, drawing on his experiences as a getting better addict to volunteer at recovery facilities across the Unique York pronounce. And as a megastar trial ogle, he had helped Steve Popovich, the founder of Cleveland Worldwide, bring collectively better unpaid royalties from Sony on Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, which had been issued on Popovich’s custom mark. Appropriate, whereas helping Popovich, Yetnikoff may per chance per chance moreover grasp pleased in sticking it to Sony. No topic his motive, his sinful-examination by Sony’s felony professional, whom Yetnikoff brilliantly flummoxed, makes for hilarious reading.

When the information broke of Yetnikoff’s loss of life, I obtained a range of messages from pals and colleagues, who, fancy me, were saddened by his passing. I particularly loved the mark sent by Adam White, a frail editor-in-chief of Billboard and Universal Song Neighborhood executive, and a factual friend for the reason that Hit Males days: “So adieu, Velvel. I underneath no circumstances regarded as him as ageless, nonetheless became reasonably stunned. Shock if he’ll allege on the gatekeeper, whether or not above or underneath.”