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Mark Mccord

Howling at the Moon

by Walter Yetnikoff

Broadway

$200

Those with even the most passing of interests in popular music will know Walter Yetnikoff as The Man. Not The Man as in the main man we'd all love to be, but The Man, as in the embodiment of corporate rock music.

He was the rock fan's arch-nemesis: the man who let Michael Jackson record Bad, the man who gave Billy Joel the latitude to record Uptown Girl and the man who encouraged Cyndi Lauper to bop us into bruised submission with Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

The egotistical and arrogant chief of CBS records and later, the president and CEO of Sony through the 1970s and  80s, he was responsible for foisting on the world some of pop's most excruciating acts and songs. In short, if you love rock, you should hate Walter Yetnikoff.

However, loathe him as you  might, the story of his rise and fall is irresistibly good fun. If you thought record executives were nothing short of accountants with a Walkman, think again. Yetnikoff's career was one  long binge of sex, drugs and if not rock'n'roll, at least sickly pop.

His run-ins with his artists - in whom, he adroitly notes, it was always best to inflict a degree of terror - are told with a gusto and pace that leaves the reader breathless. There are the screaming fits with uppity diva Barbra Streisand, sly digs at Wacko Jacko's expense, tricks played on  Joel. And that's just the people he liked.

For his rivals he pulled out the big guns. At a company convention at a time when Warner's was bidding to muscle in on CBS turf, Yetnikoff had placards made up that read 'F*** the Bunny' referring to Bugs, Warner's biggest star.

The only performer who manages to ever get one over on the boardroom brute is Mick Jagger, and even then it's during contract negotiations that end up with the wrinkly rocker signing away a big part of the Rolling Stones' back catalogue in a lapse of judgment.

Although there's little dishing of dirt on his artists, Yetnikoff spends ample time listing his own peccadilloes. A bear of a man with a fearsome temper, his tastes were big: big deals, big blondes and big lines of cocaine. If his tales of indulgence are to be believed, half of Bolivia's most famous cash crop must have passed through his office during the 1980s. He admits that in the early days he only did drugs to fit in with the artists he represented. But by the end of his tenure at Sony, he was living more of a rock'n'roll lifestyle than the rockers for whom he was making millions.

Of course, his live-fast-die-young code couldn't last, and when his drink- and drugs-fuelled madness began to irritate his bosses - the 'Happy Japs', as he  refers to the heads of Sony  - he was out on his ear and into rehab. At this point, Howling at the Moon loses pace and his blustering narrative extolling the virtues of banging hookers in rock stars' coke-dusted mansions makes way for plastic piety as he discovers God.

It would be unfair to dismiss Yetnikoff's autobiography for its lack of depth, as that's not the point of the book. It's meant to be a riotous memoir of the author's romp through what he calls the Age of Excess.

Yetnikoff's book reflects well a time when rock'n'roll was turned on its head: when the performers were the bores while the suits in the boardrooms were having the debauched fun. While the likes of  Paul McCartney and  Joel were boring the pants off everybody with  their middle-of-the-road pap, the real rebel was a record exec who was getting  sexual services from groupies on the black leather sofa in his swanky Manhattan office.

Howling at the Moon is funny, more-ish and bound to bring a pang of jealousy to any readers who hanker for a taste of the fast life.



Howling at the Moon