Walter Yetnikoff, abrasive CBS Records executive with a roster of stars, dies at 87

By Matt Schudel,

Walter Yetnikoff, an abrasive, hot-tempered executive at CBS Records who oversaw the careers of such performers as Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, only to be fired partly because of his own rock-star-like life of excess, died Aug. 8 at a hospital in Bridgeport, Conn. He died three days before his 88th birthday.

The cause was cancer, said his wife, Lynda Yetnikoff.

Mr. Yetnikoff possessed no ear for music and was, by his own admission, crude, vulgar and consumed by his uncontrollable appetite for sex, drugs and alcohol. Yet, during his 15 years at the helm of CBS Records, from 1975 to 1990, he quadrupled the company’s sales, which were built largely on such megaselling albums as Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” (1977), Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” (1979), Joel’s “52nd Street” (1980), Jackson’s “Thriller” (1982) and Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” (1984).

At the height of his career, Mr. Yetnikoff was called, in the words of a Rolling Stone magazine headline, “the most powerful man in the record business.”

Although Mr. Yetnikoff once claimed — without evidence — that he produced “Born in the U.S.A.” and wrote many of the album’s songs, his real talent was in signing musicians to his label, stroking their egos and encouraging them to produce blockbuster hits.

He spent millions to bring the Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand and Paul McCartney under the CBS umbrella, then became the confidant of many of his stars.

“I am in awe of these people,” Mr. Yetnikoff told Rolling Stone in 1988. “My role is as rabbi, priest, guru, banker, for sure, adviser, counselor friend, psychotherapist, marriage counselor, sex counselor, you name it. Punching bag.”

He reportedly threatened to pull all of his artists from MTV in the early 1980s unless the then-fledgling network included Jackson in its regular rotation of music videos. At the 1984 Grammy Awards, Jackson asked Mr. Yetnikoff to join him onstage, calling him “the best record company president in the world.”

[Michael Jackson, ‘King of Pop,’ Dies of Apparent Heart Attack in L.A.]

For years, Mr. Yetnikoff reveled in his label’s success.

“It’s my pleasure to give Michael Jackson a big, big check,” he said. “Number one, it shows that we’re successful. Two, whatever he earned, we earned more.”

He also began to act like a rock star himself. He started the day with half a bottle of vodka, didn’t show up at the office until noon, then would sneak out of corporate meetings to snort cocaine in the men’s room.

“I was starting to see myself as a star,” Mr. Yetnikoff said in a revealing 2004 memoir, “Howling at the Moon,” written with David Ritz. “And like most stars, my sense of self was dangerously inflated.”

He berated his co-workers and corporate bosses, including Laurence Tisch of CBS. He was jealous of CBS News anchor Dan Rather because company officials showed more deference to him than they did to Mr. Yetnikoff. Yet, for years, all was forgiven because CBS Records proved immensely profitable under his leadership.

“The great paradox that sat in the center of my life was that the more I misbehaved, the more the company profited,” Mr. Yetnikoff wrote in his memoir. “The insane profitability of my professional life allowed me to lead a personal life equally insane, free of reason or restraint.”

He tried to buy the record division of CBS, but Tisch wouldn’t sell to him. In 1987, Mr. Yetnikoff helped engineer the sale of CBS Records to Sony, netting $20 million for himself as part of the deal.

Over time, however, he had a falling out with many of the musicians whose careers he had nurtured. He had a bitter feud with singer Paul Simon, who left CBS for rival Warner Bros. The dispute began, Mr. Yetnikoff wrote, when Simon wouldn’t share a marijuana joint with him after a concert.

His new bosses at Sony grew impatient with his reckless behavior, and during a visit to Sony corporate headquarters in Tokyo, guards were stationed outside Mr. Yetnikoff’s hotel room to keep him from going out into the night to indulge in drugs.

He entered a rehabilitation program in 1989, but a year later he was dismissed from his job, his fall from grace softened by a payout estimated at $25 million. By then, he had alienated so many people, including Jackson, Springsteen, Streisand and CBS executives, that when he walked out the door, he was accompanied only by silence.

Walter Roy Yetnikoff was born Aug. 11, 1933, in Brooklyn. His father painted buildings for the city government, and his mother was a bookkeeper.

After graduating from Brooklyn College, Mr. Yetnikoff received a law degree from Columbia University in 1956. He served in the Army, then worked for a New York law firm, where he met another young lawyer, Clive Davis.

Davis later moved to the legal department of what was then called Columbia Records, where he was joined in 1961 by Mr. Yetnikoff. Davis rose to be chief executive and was Mr. Yetnikoff’s mentor before being forced out in 1973 for financial improprieties. Two years later, Mr. Yetnikoff took over as CBS Records chief executive.

His marriages to June Horowitz and Cynthia Slamar ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife since 2007, the former Lynda Kady; two sons from his first marriage; a sister; and four grandchildren.

After being fired from CBS, Mr. Yetnikoff tried to start a record label and sought without success to produce a movie. He ended up running a small business that supplied music for independent films.

“People sometimes don’t return my calls,” he said in 2004. “In the old days you were running a huge risk if you didn’t return my calls.”

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