Music industry mourns Yetnikoff, larger-than-life head of CBS Records
Grew up in East New York, graduated Brooklyn Tech, Brooklyn College
The music industry this week is mourning Walter Yetnikoff, the rampaging, R-rated head of CBS Records who presided over blockbuster releases by Michael Jackson, Billy Joel and many others, who recently died at age 87.
The stocky, bearded Yetnikoff was a onetime lawyer with a sharp mind, an X-rated vocabulary, a big heart, a tin ear, a roving eye and an extraordinary temper, and above all, a kid from Brooklyn whose hunger for recognition and power drove him to excess in every way.
Yetnikoff, the son of a house painter and a bookkeeper, grew up in East New York to a Jewish family and graduated from Brooklyn Tech and Brooklyn College, where he made Phi Beta Kappa. In 1953, he entered Columbia Law School and became editor of the law review.