Eddie Rosenblatt, Longtime Geffen Records President, Dies at 89
Eddie Rosenblatt, who was president of Geffen Records from its inception in 1980 through its glory years of Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana, Don Henley and countless others, died Tuesday at a hospital in Santa Barbara, Variety has confirmed. His son Michael told Hits the cause of death was pneumonia; he was 89.
Under Rosenblatt’s watch, Geffen became the gold-standard label of the music industry throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s, spawning not only dozens of hits by the above acts as well as artists spanning from Whitesnake to Weezer, it also boasted a carefully curated roster that included such deeply credible acts ranging from Peter Gabriel (pictured above, left, with Rosenblatt in 1993) and Sonic Youth to XTC, John Hiatt and the Roots. It also cultivated an enormous number of executives who would become leaders themselves, including such top A&R execs and future label presidents or CEOs Gary Gersh, Tom Zutaut, John Kalodner and Wendy Goldstein.
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Rosenblatt was born in 1934 in Queens, New York and after a stint in the army, followed by Macy’s management-training program, he moved to Cleveland to work at Cosnat Distributing, which was essentially his his introduction into the music business. In 1962 he joined Main Line Distribution, where he built relationships with such industry giants as top A&M execs Gil Friesen and Jerry Moss and Elektra founder Jac Holzman. He joined A&M in 1967 and moved over to Warner in 1971. That label’s legendary combination of commercial success and artistic integrity in many ways was a forerunner for what would be accomplished at Geffen; there, Rosenblatt also gained invaluable experience helping to run the company’s then-new distribution company, WEA.
Rosenblatt’s experience at Warner working with Joni Mitchell, who was managed by David Geffen for several years, led Geffen to hire name him president of his newly founded, eponymous label in 1980. True to form, Geffen launched his label with a splash, signing John Lennon, Elton John and Donna Summer out of the gate, although only Lennon’s album, which was released just before he was murdered in December of 1980, was a major chart success.
The Geffen label scored early-MTV hits with albums by Asia, Sammy Hagar, Quarterflash, and others, and also signed more-established artists like Peter Gabriel, Don Henley and Neil Young (the latter of whom had a legendary legal feud with Geffen). Yet it found blockbuster success in the mid-1980s with hard-rock acts like Whitesnake and Guns N’ Roses, and later, via its DGC offshoot, with alternative artists like Sonic Youth, Weezer, Hole, Beck and especially Nirvana.
Geffen sold the label to MCA in 1990 for some $550 million — scoring a huge windfall when MCA was sold to Japanese tech giant Matsushita shortly afterward — but Rosenblatt continued the label’s massive success throughout most of the 1990s. David Geffen left the company in 1995 to launch DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, and named Rosenblatt his successor at the label. As Hits noted, Rosenblatt’s former boss at Warner, Mo Ostin, said, “If you think of David as the vision behind Geffen Records, then Eddie is the heart. That label is not just profitable, it’s got hipness and heat, and Eddie is the glue that has held it together all these years.”
Despite its decades-long hot streak, the Geffen label was absorbed by Interscope in the consolidation that followed Seagram’s purchase of PolyGram and the consolidation that followed its merger with Universal Music Group, and Rosenblatt left the company and retired from the music business.
Rosenblatt is survived by his four children — Michael, a longtime Warner Bros. Records exec himself; Steven, Peter and Gretchen — six grandchildren and one great-grandchild. His wife of 68 years, Bobbi, died in 2023.
In lieu of flowers, gifts in memory of Rosenblatt can be made to the Sansum Clinic, a nonprofit outpatient healthcare organization, at https://www.sansumclinic.org/donate-now.
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