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Company Founder Biographies: Founder bios of some of the most successful people in business today. |  |
David Geffen Bio, Founder of Geffen Records
From WMA, Geffen went on to work as a manager for a number of musicians, including the group Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and the artists Jackson Browne and Laura Nyro. When he had difficulty finding a deal for Browne, he founded his own record label, Asylum Records, in 1970 -- and had such success (signing deals with Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, and the Eagles) that in 1972, Warner Communications acquired the label and merged it with Elektra to become Elektra/Asylum Records, with Geffen staying on for three years. The Asylum acquisition provided him with contacts at Warner, and he moved unto film, becoming a Vice Chairman at the Warner film studio. Despite only being in his thirties, he retired briefly because of a mistaken diagnosis that led him to believe he wouldn't live much longer -- when this proved to be false, he made his comeback by founding Geffen Records in 1980. The label was a quick success, though it was given a regretful boost when John Lennon was killed shortly after Geffen released his final album, Double Fantasy. Over the next decade, Geffen signed Aerosmith, Peter Gabriel, Sonic Youth, and Guns n Roses, before selling the label to MCA in 1990. In the 90s, Geffen returned to film; his Geffen Film Company had produced Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, the Tom Cruise sex comedy Risky Business, and the 80s remake of Little Shop of Horrors, and in 1994, he co-founded DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, who had presided over the revival of the Disney animated feature in the late 80s. |
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