Mo Ostin

Induction Year: 2003

Induction Category: Non-Performer

Mo Ostin (born March 27, 1927)

For three decades, Mo Ostin helped steer the Warner-Reprise record labels through a remarkable period of commercial prosperity and musical excellence. During his tenure, which stretched from 1963 to 1995, Ostin became known within the industry as a business-savvy mogul with an artist-oriented outlook. The operative philosophy at Warner Bros. was to allow talented artists to develop and to keep the more deserving ones on the roster without obsessing over the bottom line. Under Ostin’s leadership, Warner Bros. and its affiliated labels, including Reprise Records, launched or furthered the careers of such visionary artists as , , , , , , , Randy Newman, , , Ry Cooder, and Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. Some of ’s best work, including his 1986 masterpiece Graceland, came after his move from Columbia to Warner Bros. at Ostin’s instigation.

One of the finest record men of the rock and roll era, Ostin was lured from Verve Records by Frank Sinatra to run his Reprise label. By the late 1960s, Ostin and his fellow executives - including Lenny Waronker, Joe Smith and Stan Cornyn - had turned the Warner Bros. labels into an oasis of artistic risk-taking. It’s been written that “by the early 1970s, Warner Bros. and Reprise had become the unofficial arbiters of musical taste.” An accountant by training, Ostin displayed uncommon empathy for the non-quantifiable artistic temperament. “Warner Bros. Records has never been run from the perspective of financial people or legal people or promotion people,” Ostin said in 1994. “We’ve always been a label solely about artists and music.”

It proved difficult to maintain that outlook as Warner Bros. got absorbed into increasingly larger corporate media conglomerates, from Warner Communications to Time Warner to AOL Time Warner, and Ostin retired as chairman of Warner Bros. Records when his contract expired in January 1995. Upon Ostin’s exodus, fellow executive Joe Smith praised him as “one of the bedrock individuals who invented the ground rules for the music business as we know it.” In the late 1990s, Ostin and former Warner Bros. president Lenny Waronker moved to DreamWorks, where they implemented their strategy of signing artists of merit and patiently building their careers. Some of their early acquisitions at DreamWorks included Elliott Smith and Rufus Wainwright, and Randy Newman reunited with Ostin and Waronker at the label.

TIMELINE

March 27, 1927: Mo Ostin is born in New York City.

1963: Frank Sinatra’s accountant, Mo Ostin, is chosen to run the label Sinatra founded, Reprise Records, after it is sold to the Warners Film Company. He’ll remain at Warner-Reprise for the next 31 years, helping to steer many influential careers in an artist-friendly environment.

1995: Mo Ostin moves from Warner-Elektra-Asylum to DreamWorks Records, where he and former Warner executive Lenny Waronker begin building an impressive new artist roster.

March 10, 2003: Mo Ostin is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the eighteenth annual induction dinner. and are his presenters.