Exploding

More music biz mishigaas
Exploding: The Highs, Hits, Hype, Heroes and Hustlers of the Warner Music Group. Stan Cornyn and Paul Scanlon. William Morrow & Co. 480 pages.

BY RICHARD PACHTER
Published January 21, 2002 in The Miami Herald

If you've ever read histories of companies penned by insiders, you quickly discovered that they either glossed over or omitted huge chunks of potentially actionable material, or the author wielded and ground such a colossal axe that the reminiscences were worthless.

Such is not the case with Stan Cornyn's terrific history of Warner Brothers Records and the Warner Music Group. One would expect no less from the man who wrote such dynamic and irreverent advertisements and album-liner notes in the '60s and '70s that they are recalled with alacrity and fondness to this day.

But deft copy writing is no guarantee of anything, although Cornyn's memory, aided by surprisingly revealing interviews with key (and bit) players makes for one of the most authoritative books on the now-past golden age of the music business.

Hard to believe today, as the world's few remaining companies cling to their existence in the wake of the digital music suicide-massacre, but Warner Music was once a nimble, fertile enterprise run intuitively by hardheaded businessmen.

Now, like most labels swallowed up by successively larger corporate fish, the Warner Music Group is but an appendage of a many-tentacled conglomerate, with AOL at its head. But once it was a key component of a smaller, though formidable corporate enterprise headed by Steve Ross, who parlayed his marriage into a family who ran funeral parlors in New York City into the CEO-ship of a company that owned everything from parking lots to DC Comics.

Then he acquired the Warner Brothers film studio, with its afterthought of a record company, and was astounded to discover the huge gobs of cash generated by the music entity. So he got into it with a vengeance, adding Atlantic and Elektra Records to the mix, creating a music monster that dominated the industry for decades.

Cornyn and Scanlon accurately evoke many of the casual excesses of the industry as it grew like mad in the '60s and '70s, cooled in the '80s and achieved nova status in the '90s. The book works on many levels: For business people, it's a fascinating view of the inner workings of one of the country's most interesting, celebrated and imitated companies and its blindingly colorful cadre of executives, including Steve Ross, Mo Ostin, Joe Smith, Ahmet Ertegun, Robert Morgado, Doug Morris, Richard Parsons and the rest.

For music fans, it's a trip through the history of popular (and unpopular but influential) music of the last half century: Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, The Grateful Dead, Madonna, Debbie Boone and everyone in between.

For music industry personnel, Exploding is the very best attempt yet to make sense of a time when what used to be called "the record business'' was an irresistible magnet for creative people — before the hegemonic destruction of the domestic radio and concert businesses, when bands sometimes didn't take off until their third albums — or fourth tours, when promotion was in still in motion . . . back in the day.

Jimi Hendrix Live at the Fillmore East

Jimi Hendrix Live at the Fillmore East (Experience Hendrix/MCA)

Live at the Fillmore East, the latest in a never-ending series of reissued Jimi Hendrix material, is essentially an elaborate repackaging of Band of Gypsys, the final album released prior to the inventive guitarist's death in September 1970.

To settle a lawsuit from an old contract still in force, Hendrix had to come up with a new album -- and fast -- so he enlisted army buddy bassist Billy Cox and former Wilson Pickett/ Electric Flag drummer Buddy Miles. The trio, dubbed Band of Gypsys, played four Fillmore gigs plus another at Madison Square Garden before Miles departed and incumbent Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell returned.

The resulting album, issued in April 1970, consisted of six selections from those shows. In 1986 Capitol released Band of Gypsys 2, which offered another six tunes from the same sessions. But when it was discovered that only two tracks came from the Fillmore shows, the album was quickly pulled from the shelves.

Fast-forward a few years: After a series of legal battles, Hendrix's family assumed the rights to his recordings. Though a bunch of reissues were already under way, Janie Hendrix, Jimi's half sister, took command and reissued the records with some new material.

Unfortunately instead of expanding the original Band of Gypsys (like the Who did with Live at Leeds, for example), the producers reconfigured and resequenced enough of the original material to fill two discs. The result, Live at the Fillmore East, is fine, though it ain't exactly Band of Gypsys. But the music is still transcendent, and the sound -- remixed and remastered -- is more vibrant and warmer than in earlier incarnations.

On the series of jams, oldies, and unfinished songs, Hendrix is at the height of his powers. Billy Cox is a far better bass player than the Experience's Noel Redding, a guitarist who learned bass only after he became Experienced. Buddy Miles was the odd man out. It's puzzling that Hendrix selected him as a percussionist in the first place; the man simply didn't swing and barely keeps up with the rock-solid and mellifluous Cox.

But the material maintains its power and transcends Miles' limitations. "Stone Free" is pretty hot, as are the two takes of "Machine Gun" and "new" live versions of "Stepping Stone," "Izabella," and "Earth Blues," all of which were posthumously issued in studio form. "Power to Love" is retitled "Power of Soul" here, "Message to Love" from the original collection is absent, and the take of "Who Knows" differs from the one on Band of Gypsys.

Live at the Fillmore East could ultimately have been pared down to one great disc, but for fans it's a good collection, with solid annotation and wonderful sound. And it's a potent reminder that there will never be another Jimi Hendrix.

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originally published in The Broward Palm Beach New Times, May 1999