Howling at the Moon: The Odyssey of a Monstrous Music Mogul in an Age of Excess
By Walter Yetnikoff with David RitzBroadway Books, 304 pp., $24.95
You want sex, drugs, and rock & roll? Behind-the-scenes stories of Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, and … uh, Meat Loaf? International intrigue, billion-dollar wheeling and dealing, and, of course, the inevitable 12-step program in under 300 pages? Then, Walter Yetnikoff and David Ritz have the book for you! Remarkably, there have been few accounts written about the music industry from the inside, and Howling at the Moon is now the one to which all the rest will be compared. A lightning-quick read, it details Yetnikoff’s tenure at CBS Records, his rise from the legal department to the presidency of the company (where he increased label revenue from $485 million in 1975 to $2 billion in 1990), and on to his demise and, finally, redemption. Told in the street language Yetnikoff is famous for, Howling at the Moon – which he did while locked in a Tokyo hotel room to keep him under control – is a drug- and alcohol-fueled romp that recalls some of the best of Hunter Thompson. The difference being that Thompson’s stories were likely hallucinations, while Yetnikoff’s stories are likely real. The book’s main sticking point is its page after page of conversations with the likes of Jackson, Mick Jagger, and even Jackie Onassis that he couldn’t possibly recall in such detail. Especially juicy are detailed descriptions of his dealing with his competitors, business partners, and superiors, Clive Davis, David Geffen, CBS corporate head Larry Tisch, the Japanese bosses of the Sony Corporation, and Steve Ross of Warner Bros., among others. Since his dismissal in ’90, Yetnikoff has been sober, and he makes it plain that while initially it was a considerable test of his will and enormous ego, by book’s end, he’s at peace with his present, if not with his crazed, excessive past.
This article appears in May 28 • 2004.