Helter Skelter Publishing

Hit Men portrays the enormous ambition and fierce power struggles at the heart of the US record industry. It chronicles the evolution of America’s biggest record labels from the Tin Pan Alley era through the disco explosion of the 70s on to the corporate consolidation and massive sales of the 1980s. Dannen untangles the complex relationships among a remarkable cast of characters, the many brilliant, self-invented hustlers with streetfighter morays who preside over a glitzy, sometimes shady, multibillion-dollar empire. It is compulsory reading for anyone interested in entertainment, business, or rock and roll.

Dannen’s expose of the American record industry lays bare a story of egomania, incompetence, and corruption which would shock Imperial Rome. It comes as a shock to realise that since rock music began in the US in the 1950s it has always been manipulated by crooks, sometimes by very big crooks, indeed, like the Mafia. Financial Times