From journalist Peter Ames Carlin Sonic Boom captures the rollicking story of the most
successful record label in the history of popular music Warner Bros. Records and the
remarkable secret to its meteoric rise.The roster of Warner Brothers Records and its subsidiary
labels reads like the roster of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Jimi Hendrix the Grateful Dead
Joni Mitchell Neil Young James Taylor Fleetwood Mac the Eagles Prince Van Halen Madonna
Tom Petty R.E.M. Red Hot Chili Peppers and dozens of others. But the most compelling figures
in the Warner Bros. story are the sagacious Mo Ostin and the unlikely crew of hippies
eccentrics and enlightened execs. Ostin and his staff transformed an out-of-touch company
revolutionized the industry and within just a few years created the most successful record
label in the history of the American music industry. How did they do it? One day in 1967 the
newly tapped label president Mo Ostin called his team together to share his grand strategy: he
told them to stop trying to make hit records Let's just make good records and turn those into
hits. With that Ostin ushered in a counterintuitive model that matched the counterculture. His
offbeat crew recruited outsider artists and gave them free rein while rejecting out-of-date
methods of advertising promotion and distribution. And even as they set new standards for
in-house weirdness the upstarts' experiments and innovations paid off to the tune of hundreds
of legendary hit albums. Warner Bros Records conquered the music business by focusing on the
music rather than the business. Their story is as raucous as it is inspiring-pure entertainment
that also maps a route to that holy grail: love and money. Includes black-and-white photographs
