David Geffen
Co-founder
DreamWorks SKG
David Geffen doesn’t run the day-to-day operations at DreamWorks Records, but his presence looms large. In effect, Geffen set the standard that Lenny Waronker, Mo Ostin and Michael Ostin are striving to achieve at the 2 & #733;-year-old label.
Geffen, 55, who founded Asylum Records and Geffen Records and then sold them for handsome profits, has been a critical resource for the new label, which is still finding its place in the industry.
“David believes in allowing people to do what they do. He wanted us badly and knew what he was getting into when he hired us,” says Waronker, who along with Ostin left Warner Bros. Records to head up the DreamWorks Records. “But he has opinions and we go to him probably more than he comes to us.”
Geffen has come a long way from the mailroom at the William Morris Agency. There, he quickly rose through the ranks and used his contacts to manage some of the biggest acts in contemporary music, stars like Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, The Eagles, Cher and Guns N’ Roses. Geffen also had a knack for reviving careers, like Cher’s.
At Asylum, he pioneered the California folk rock sound that became synonymous with the Los Angeles music scene in the early 1970s. Geffen sold the company to Warner Communications Inc. for $7 million and became the head of a new label, Warner Elektra-Asylum. He left after three years, but returned with a new label in 1980, Geffen Records. There, he snared the hard-rock sounds of Aerosmith, Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana and Whitesnake. Expanding his musical horizons, he invested in such Broadway musicals as “Cats” and “Dreamgirls.”
Geffen subsequently sold Geffen Records to MCA in a deal that included stock in the entertainment company. Shortly after that, those shares zoomed in value when the Japanese electronics giant, Matsushita, bought MCA.
By selling off his record companies, Geffen became one of the richest men in Hollywood with a net worth of $2.1 billion. That keen business sense preceded the first great round of corporate consolidation that paved the way for the big media deals of the 1990s.
While many of his competitors were enamored with the music they were selling, Geffen looked more at the bottom line and shrewdly dealt his hand, an art he learned from his mother, who ran a corset and bra business from her home in Brooklyn.
Now in partnership with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg at DreamWorks SKG, Geffen has his sights set not only on the record business but film and television as well.
“He has an unusual ability to understand how to put people in positions to have a successful career,” said Lisbeth Barron, an analyst with Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. “There is not a mind like this on the horizon.”
Frank Swertlow
