Missed opportunity

I've read several books about the music industry, mostly books about artists or genres but occasionally about a specific label--two memorable ones are The Label: The Story of Columbia Records by Gary Marmorstein and Where Did Our Love Go?: The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George. A new book, Cowboys and Indies by Gareth Murphy, claims in its subtitle to be "the epic history of the record industry" but it falls far short being that--and I wonder if the author realizes the punnish reference in his subtitle, as Epic is a major label, a subsidiary of Columbia and home of Michael Jackson's legacy.

According to his acknowledgments page, Murphy did do some original interviews, but the bulk of the book seems to consist of material from other books, so if, like me, you already have some background, there isn't much new here. He focuses on people and companies about which there is lots of published material (Columbia, Island, Warner/Atlantic, Elektra, Asylum) and virtually ignores other major labels like RCA, Decca/MCA, Stax, and even Reprise which was started by Frank Sinatra and included Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa and Neil Young on its roster. For the most part, the only new material in here that I found interesting was about Herb Alpert's label A&M, and a couple of gossipy tidbits about cocaine use at Casablanca Records--someone should write an entire book about how the record industry went coke-crazy in the 70s.

Murphy at least begins at the beginning, with Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, and he spends a lot of time on the punk years, presenting interesting information on the influential labels Sire and Stiff. But the omissions are numerous, and perhaps the most egregious one is the small amount of space he spends on the Beatles and their twisted record label history in the U.S. before they hit it big on Capitol. I guess this was not a total waste of time--I loved his description of Walter Yetnikoff, head of the CBS Records conglomerate, speaking in "fuck-littered Yiddish,"--but the subtitle makes you expect more than you will get. Disappointing.