"Ultimately, none of us has more than the love we share." --Todd Barkan, Keystone Korner

That sentence from a jazz club owner in San Francisco almost 50 years ago might seem like a strange way to open a story about a record company executive, but considering that this executive is Mo Ostin, and there has never been anyone like him in the music business, makes it fit. He started his career working for Norman Granz's jazz label Clef Records in the 1950s as the company's controller. Then Clef became Verve, and Ostin got deeper into the record business, so when Frank Sinatra came calling to find someone to run the label he was starting, Reprise Records, Mo Ostin got the nod and a new history was getting ready to be born. It would take a few more years for Reprise to find its way onto the Warner Bros. Pictures lot, but it's almost like it was destined to happen. And right there from the start was just the person needed to ride the twisty turns of the music business in Los Angeles. Not New York, but Los Angeles. Things were going to change in how things were done in that world, and it didn't take long to figure out who was going to turn the knobs making the change.

Mo Ostin's road to the top of the music mountain is one built with incredible knowledge, endless business savvy but, in the end, it was fueled by the love he had for others, those who worked with him and those artists he brought to the labels he ran, which included Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, Bonnie Raitt and hundreds of others. It is an intriguing story of both how the record business is a peculiar animal, but more importantly, it is the tale of how a human being can do the right thing simply because it's the right thing, and have it become gloriously successful.

Neil Young started making music with Mo Ostin at Reprise Records in 1968, from Buffalo Springfield, and except for a brief hiatus to Geffen Records in the 1980s (which, interestingly, was distributed by Reprise/Warner Bros. then), Young is still there. It's called loyalty, and it became a benchmark of how Ostin viewed the world and those he chose to share it with.

Ostin ruled the musical kingdom of Reprise/Warner Bros. Records not by what he said, but who he was. A strong but somewhat quiet person of such inner strength that all he had to do to silence a room full of amped-up record executives was a soft tapping of his pencil on the huge mahogany conference room table. Immediate quiet followed, as everyone in the large room realized their magnanimous leader wanted attention. There was something in that tapping that was louder than a shout. It was the force of a man who had changed their world,

There are many legends in the music business, from crazed club owners to semi-psychotic studio producers, from deranged talent scouts to shark-smart attorneys. After over a century of musicians and singers sharing their endless talent with adoring audiences, so many of their stories have been told. Sometimes with truth and other times with massive exaggeration. Somehow, in the inner sanctum of all that has been accomplished there lives someone who has had more commercial success with less public awareness than almost any other executive. That would be Mo Ostin. And that was the way he wanted it. There is a good chance even now, at 94 years old, Ostin would not desire his tale of professional accomplishments to be spotlighted. But for all those who worked with him at Reprise/Warner Bros. Records in the 1960s into the '90s, there exists such an outpouring of feeling and pride of all that was accomplished during his run it's impossible to hold it all in. It's almost like a secret handshake among employees who were there during "the Mo years." Those three words are always enough to say it all.

My own introduction into working 3300 Warner Boulevard in Burbank came April 7, 1986. I had been at Slash Records for two years, and since Warner Bros. distributed our releases had various telephone conversations with my label mates there. But I'd never been to the Warner Bros. Records building. Nicknamed the Ski Lodge, when I drove by it once it looked exactly like that, made from beautiful brown natural wood, with plenty of glass windows and the feel of something standing in the mountains of Colorado.

One day I had a meeting with publicity head Bob Merlis, and as I sat in his office Mo Ostin walked in, holding a new copy of Slash Records' The Del Fuegos second album. Of course, I knew who Ostin was. How could you not in the record business? He showed Bob the album, which featured almost a full blank white cover, with a tiny postage stamp-size photo in the center of all that whiteness, and in small letters was the band's name and LP title BOSTON, MASS. at the very top, scrunched in so it was barely visible. Mo asked Bob why the lettering and photo was so small. Of course, Bob had never seen it, and Mo turned to me, who he'd never met and had no idea who I was and asked what I thought. Being that the album came out on the label I worked for, Slash, I took a wild guess and said, "It looks like the graphic artist was trying to be different." Of course, I didn't have a clue why the cover looked like that. Mo could likely tell I didn't, but kindly said, "Well, it's different all right. I just don't know if anyone can read it." Bingo! When Mo walked out of Bob's office, he gave me the thumbs up. I felt like I'd just aced the SAT.

I'd been buying records on Reprise/Warner Bros. for 20 years by 1985, starting with Trini Lopez and Kinks albums, right into Van Morrison, the Grateful Dead and, yes, The Fugs. The albums always felt like they were different, released by a company that not only cared about the music, but also in how it was presented. Clearly, someone at the top was calling the shots, giving their employees the freedom to be creative, and letting the graphics and marketing match the excitement of the music itself. Mo Ostin and Joe Smith were the label chiefs then, and had fashioned a gang of music-loving hipsters and heavyweights to make sure that building a record label came natural to them. It was no put-on, and had the aura of a place where people didn't just work, they lived. Creative Services chief Stan Cornyn was writing full-page ads in the new Rolling Stone magazine that offered contests for a free date with the Grateful Dead's Pigpen, or small bags of Topanga Canyon dirt with the Neil Young album. No one did that then, and no one's done it since. It really did appear to the outside world that the inmates had taken over the asylum, but wasn't that what rock & roll was supposed to be about? Insurrection, change, mind expansion, liberty: all those things. Anything less than would be a fraud. Right?

Mo Ostin had grokked that the only way for a company to be creative was to get creative with who worked there. He found a small but mighty crew of true believers like him, and then gave them an open mandate on how to proceed. And he always made sure that the men and women responsible for signing artists to the label were able to do so because they believed in the music they brought in. Sure, there were bottom lines to worry about and, before long, massive profits to shoot for. But that was never the most important criteria in building an artist roster. It was about how timeless was the music, and what did it stand for? When Ostin signed Jimi Hendrix to an American record deal in 1967, no one had accomplished what Hendrix had: to re-wire the public's consciousness to accept a new way how the electric guitar sounded. Breaking new ground became the daily manifesto in the talent department. From the best music everything else would follow. Starting inhis earlier days working for Frank Sinatra at Reprise Records in the pre-Warner Bros. era, Mo Ostin had learned that greatness comes from greatness. There were no shortcuts that lasted, not in the long run.

In those beginning days in the early 1960s, Reprise/Warner Bros. might have stumbled somewhat trying to determine their place in the quickly changing musical landscape, but once they found their legs there would be no stopping them. The label roared through the 1970s and into the '80s like a jacked-up jet airplane, setting sales records at the same time they made sure the new music bearing the Reprise and Warner Bros. logos could be trusted. Maybe not every album was for everybody, but there were no trickinations in the music being offered. On every level, it was the real deal. When Mo Ostin became the Chairman in the 1970s, he took over a company that was the envy of the record business. After my one interaction with him, I knew I had to get to his company. This was where the music world truly turned. With new sub-labels like Sire, Paisley Park and others joining the fray, the sky was the limit.

Through lucky fate, I got into those doors at 3300 Warner Boulevard. I will never forget that April day in 1986. It was a beautiful spring morning when I entered the building. And in an instant I knew I had found a home. Like any first day at a job I was slightly nervous, but I loved music more than anything, so how could I go wrong in a building full of music-lovers? I would be a writer in the Creative Services department, and really wasn't sure exactly what that was, but also knew sometimes you have to jump off the bridge to get wet. I was ready to jump. I had a wonderful boss named Pete Johnson, and he liked the way I wrote. I figured I would learn what needed to be done and do it. My first day at Warner Bros. I got to sit in a room with 30 co-workers and Steve Winwood and listen to Winwood's new album BACK IN THE HIGH LIFE. Talk about hitting the jackpot. And then I was assigned the luxurious task of interviewing Winwood about the album for a story in the label's in-house monthly magazine Words and Music. Jackpot delivered.

I would often see Mo Ostin walking the halls with a quiet grace that made everything in the world feel like it was in the right place. One day walking behind him I noticed he had missed a belt loop, and funnily realized: Yes, we're all human. For some reason it was a warm and comforting thought. And all the people at the company I started interacting with were such giving professionals that some days I could not believe I was actually being paid to work there. It was like a dream that had come true. After a few months at the company the phone rang in my small office, and when I answered the person said, "Hi Bill, this is Mo. Did you call?" I told him it must be an error; I hadn't called. Mo laughed and said, "No problem. Must be a mistake. But if you need anything, let me know." Amazing. That one small instance set the tone for the next eight years when Mo Ostin remained in charge before leaving in 1994 to form Dreamworks Records. He thought I'd called, and he called me right back. That doesn't happen much in the music business, not with the chairman and a new employee who he didn't really know. What I learned, though, was that in Mo's world everybody counts. That's the rule: everybody.

After two years in Creative Services, I did my best with some success and some stumbles, knowing I needed to get into the publicity department. It's what I had done at Slash, and I was sure at Warner Bros. it was also my calling. I asked Bob Merlis if he ever had an opening in publicity to please consider me. Wonders of wonders, in 1988 that happened and I made the move. And it's the best move I ever made. Soon I got to see how the company really functioned on all levels, and why it was so successful. I was now part of a team instead of mostly working on my typewriter alone, and things for me kicked into fourth gear for the next 18 years. I'd sit in meetings when new albums would be listened to and plans would be made how to promote them. The excitement levels in those rooms ran on high octane, and the music being shared was rarely short of thrilling. When Mo was in the meeting everything stayed on that level, but when he wasn't it still remained there. He wanted honesty and authenticity out of his co-workers. No one was trying to shine on their own. I learned the Reprise/Warner Bros. community was a family affair. We did our best because that was what Mo expected of us. Some companies are full of people afraid of their boss, who would run company built on fear of being criticized or fired. At Warner Bros. Records we loved Mo, and wanted to share that love with him by doing our very best. It is the difference between night and day, dark and light. Like the quote at the start of this story, none of us has more than the love we share. Mo Ostin taught us that.

Bill Bentley