The new American Masters documentary on music mogul David Geffen is very much worth watching. I suggest you drop everything now and stream it at the bottom of this page if you haven’t already.
When I was a teenager, it seemed that just about every cool record that came out on a major label did so on an imprint that had something to do with David Geffen.
On Geffen Records alone there was Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Beck, Neil Young, John Lennon, Slayer; And that’s not to mention all the amazing and sometimes life-altering albums that came out on Asylum, Elektra, Def Jam and Interscope under his guidance.
This was back when strong copyright enforcement protected artists from mega-corporations, and companies like these had to invest in musicians for the privilege of making money off of their work. A very different world, to be sure.
It could be a corrupt and ugly industry as well, that is certain, but it was also an industry that shared profits, or even paid out handsomely to artists when it took heavy losses on their work. In many cases, that was just the cost of doing business.
This was especially the case with David Geffen. He began his career as an agent, negotiating on the behalf of artists, trying and succeeding at getting them better deals than anyone else could, or otherwise would.
When he wound up on the other side of the table, Geffen still believed in paying out large sums to musicians and spending years on artist development. This is mostly because he wanted the best artists he could get — not the cheapest. He spent a lot of money. But he made more.
It was this deep-seated devotion to investment that made Geffen’s career, perhaps more so than anything else.
When he moved on to help launch Dreamworks with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, Geffen recognized that every other startup movie studio in recent memory had failed because it was underfunded.
Geffen would reverse both those trends. He helped secure $2.3 Billion dollars for the new company. It took heavy losses for years, but just when they had tapped out nearly 75% of their resources, the company turned around and started making much more than it spent.
It had long been this way with art and film and publishing and music. Historically, they’ve been high-risk, high-payoff fields that have employed a lot of people. On the average, it paid them well. But now that the payoffs have gone away, so has that willingness to takes risks, that willingness to invest and to nurture.
Granted, some of the corruption has disappeared along with the payouts, but only from one side of the industry. It pops up again now all over the internet instead. Now pirate websites make deals with advertisers, selling the eyeballs and the data of those who come for stolen work.
In the past, the artists had to get some kind of a cut, even if they lost the companies money. But today, the artists are the only ones being cut out of the profits completely.
So few have stepped up to protect musicians. Perhaps that’s because those who might be able to help feel they have so little to gain. But for so many of us, this is also thanks in part to the fact that we have bought such a line.
The promise of the 21st century was that we’d have more middle class musicians today than ever before, all thanks to the internet. The harsh reality is that we have fewer. It’s a simple and well-established fact that is not up for debate.
What is open to question and discussion however, is just how many working musicians we’ve lost, whether we should do anything about it… and if so, what?
You can never predict the future until you’ve seen the past. And even then, it’s no easy feat. People like David Geffen got paid a lot to do just that once. He had a pretty good run, and for all the flaws, we heard a lot of great music: