Hit Men by Frederic Dannen

This review refers to the 1990 edition with 2010 epilogue.

Hit Men mainly covers the top 40 music industry in the 1980s and the tension between the major record labels, the independent promoters known as “the Network,” and how this shaped radio airplay.   

There is a connection between independent promotion and organized crime and Dannen spends a lot of time looking at the organized crime angle, which makes sense, considering he later wrote Hong Kong Babylon about organized crime and its ties to the film industry. If you are interested in reading about the mafia and their various dealings, you will enjoy these sections of the book. 

While there is a fair amount of Clive Davis and David Geffen throughout the book, Dannen mainly profiles two record executives: Walter Yentikoff and Dick Asher, who both started together at CBS Records. Asher was later fired and eventually landed at Polygram. 

In 1981, Asher, who felt independent promotion was unethical, convinced Yetnikoff to have CBS Records ban independent promotion, using the argument that it had grown so expensive that it was impacting profits. Warner Brothers also agreed. The Network retaliated by stopping the airplay momentum of some of these labels’ acts. Loverboy’s first single “Turn me Loose,” (peak #35) and the Who’s “You Better You Bet” (peak #18) are listed as two songs impacted by this attempt at banning the practice. 

When the 1981 attempt at ending independent promotion failed, the Network increased their costs, and by 1985, even most of the major records companies could not afford it. Only CBS (who spent $12.8 million in 1985, almost 10 percent of their pretax profits) could do so long term. But even if CBS could afford it, it was not helping them make money. But Dannen argues that may not have been CBS Records’s motivation. He cites Irving Azoff from MCA stating that Yentikoff told him that CBS heavily used independent promotion to make “the cost of entry for, shall we say, new upstart labels [too] high to get into the record business” (265).    

In 1986, NBC News ran a report about Joe Isgro (a member of the Network), his ties to the mafia, and the new payola. this led to the major record labels instituting another independent promotion ban. This had some interesting consequences. The Network had to lower their costs and some independent labels were able to then go to the Network with their artists and get hits. One example cited in the book is Profile Records, who used the Network to promote “I Wanna Be a Cowboy” by Boys Don’t Cry (peak #12). Some well-known labels, such as Island and Virgin Records never took part in the ban, and used the Network to promote Robert Palmer, T’Pau, and Cutting Crew among others.  

Some established artists were upset with the independent promotions ban and worked with their managers to get independent promotion. The labels were aware of this. Eventually, the funds for independent promotion became described as an “artist advance” or “tour support” and instead of something that had been a loss for the record companies it became another “recoupable” expense they could claim from the artists’ royalties (292).  

Dannen at one point notes that the average career of a rock/pop artist is five years. He argues that this makes lawyers and managers insecure, and easily exploited by the labels. To quote an anonymous lawyer in the book “[d]o you think lawyers fail to understand that artists come and go, but RCA is forever?” (141) RCA turned out not to be forever.

Dannen explains how at the time this book was written (1990), the standard contract given to new artists had the term “recoupable” – meaning the costs of making the record (studio time, marketing, touring and more) all come out of the artists’ royalties. Artists who are able to sell millions of records can make some money, but for many, the record company sees the money from the hits while the artist is still in debt to them for some time. 

There are a lot of songs out there that deal with record labels as crooks, and I thought I understood why, but this book made them seem even worse.  One of the recoupable costs Dannen cites is manufacturing. Does that mean the actual printing of the LP or cassette? That can’t be what that means, I hope.

The book is well researched and had an epilogue written in 2010 for the later edition, where Dannen notes many things changed, but much has not. It would be interesting to see a 2020 epilogue.  

If you are fascinated by music business history (and I mean business, not music) or anything mafia adjacent, then you will enjoy this book. I wish there had been more about the music itself, and more details about the independent promotion of specific songs. The examples I cited here are only briefly mentioned in the book (in most cases, only the name of the artist, no more detail).  I am glad I read it, but it was not a page turner.