The experience of hearing his own work on the radio delighted him, but Morris struggled to replicate this success. Songwriting was a competitive discipline, and Morris wasn’t seeing a lot of interest in his work. In 1967, he was further discouraged by Berns’ untimely death from a heart attack, at the age of just 38. Seeking a change in direction, he began transitioning to his first role in management. Though he continued to offer in-studio guidance, and still occasionally received producer credits, from this point forward he was a businessman.
In 1970 he set off on his own, founding his boutique independent label, Big Tree Records, with a $50,000 investment. Over the next few years, the label scored a few minor hits, most notably Brownsville Station’s “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room,” which Morris also produced. Like many of Big Tree’s songs, the tune was commercially viable but artistically insipid. Still, sales were sales, and in time he earned the attention of major players, particularly Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records, who agreed to a distribution deal with Big Tree in 1974, and bought the label outright in 1978.
Ertegun was a legend. The high-living son of Turkey’s ambassador to the United States, he had made his career by wandering into the juke joints of black America and capitalizing on the rhythm and blues sound, signing Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin. As hard rock replaced R&B, Ertegun followed, assembling the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young supergroup and signing Led Zeppelin off the strength of their demo tape. Ertegun then sold Atlantic to Warner Music Group, netting himself an enormous fortune while retaining creative control. In the early 1970s he completed the classic rock trifecta, awarding the Rolling Stones their own custom label and one of the largest distribution contracts in history. They paid him back with Exile on Main Street. Still looking for fresh talent, Ertegun thought he saw it in Morris, in spite of Big Tree’s humble roster.
Morris was put in charge of ATCO, Atlantic’s custom records division, where he oversaw both Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song imprint and Rolling Stones Records. While the talent on the roster was exceptional, both bands had already peaked creatively, and here again Morris oversaw a series of bland commercial hits. Still, he was charming and he earned the label money, and in time Ertegun came to love him like a son. In 1980, Morris was promoted to president of Atlantic Records, and his office was placed next to Ertegun’s own. After a year of successful service, Ertegun gave him a bonus of a million dollars.
Meanwhile, the music industry was going corporate. The counterculture ethos of the ’60s and ’70s was being superseded by a more commercial attitude, and “selling out” was no longer an unforgivable sin. The debut of MTV in 1981 marked the end of album-oriented rock and the resurgence of single-oriented pop. The cultural changes extended to management. Cash transactions in brown paper bags were replaced by independently audited financial statements, and the industry’s long-standing ties to organized crime were finally cleaned up.
Morris adapted well to this new environment, shaving off his beard and donning a sport coat and tie. Ertegun, a creature from an earlier time, did not. In 1989, Warner Communications announced it was merging with Time, Inc. to create the country’s largest diversified entertainment conglomerate. In advance of the merger, Ertegun had been asked to present his strategic plan for the Atlantic imprint to the suits at Warner at an early morning meeting. Morris showed up on time, then waited along with the other executives in the conference room for his boss to arrive. Twenty minutes later, Ertegun walked in, drunk, at the tail end of an all-night bender, his shirt covered in spilled wine. “Here’s our plan,” he said. “We’re going to make more hits.” Then he walked out.
By 1990 it was clear that Ertegun’s time had passed. Atlantic Records was a legendary imprint—entire books had been written about it—but the 1980s had not been kind to the label, and at the end of the decade its roster looked like a paleontology exhibit. The $300 million in revenue Atlantic generated in 1989 represented little more than a tenth of the overall Warner Music empire, and much of those sales came from upgrading the classic rock leftovers to compact disc. Behind Ertegun’s back, Time Warner executives proposed removing him and putting Morris in charge. Loyal to his mentor, Morris brought the idea to Ertegun directly. To his surprise, Ertegun approved it, with the caveat that the two would serve as co-CEOs. Under this compromise, Morris would run Atlantic’s day-to-day affairs, with Ertegun serving as a figurehead.
By this time Morris was 51 years old. He was successful by conventional standards, and Ertegun had paid him well. But it was also fair to say that, after thirty years in the music business, Morris hadn’t really left a mark. His songwriting career was a footnote and his boutique label had never produced a truly memorable hit. He’d overseen some big names at Atlantic, but only at the trailing end of their careers. He’d managed to squeeze a single great album out of Stevie Nicks before she’d succumbed to a vicious cocaine addiction; he’d overseen the last two Led Zeppelin albums, widely regarded to be their worst. Ertegun’s shadow was long, and Morris had spent most of his career standing in it. He was well liked, but not necessarily well respected, and his appointment was regarded with skepticism.
Within five years he was the most powerful music executive in North America. Ertegun’s apprentice proved to be a risk taker, an indefatigable corporate climber, a man who had spent his life waiting for this opportunity. He transformed Atlantic, investing aggressively in new, unproven talent, even running a loss at the label in 1991, the first in its history. But his bets all paid off, and by 1994 he had tripled Atlantic’s revenues. He moved toward neglected arenas, like bubblegum rap and mainstream country, scoring hits with Gerardo’s “Rico Suave” and John Michael Montgomery’s “I Swear,” among other masterpieces. He developed a pugnacious, confrontational management style, lobbying for larger budgets and greater personal compensation. He frequently butted heads with his overseers, and when they opposed him, he engineered their removal. Toward the end of 1994, with Ertegun’s assistance, he masterminded a daring corporate insurrection inside Time Warner, one that ended with his promotion to his current position, the top slot in North America, where he oversaw nearly a quarter of the national market for recorded music, amounting to nearly $2 billion in revenue, and where all of the company’s U.S. labels—Warner Brothers, Atlantic, Elektra—answered to him.
Those who joined Morris on his rapid rise to the top spoke of his warmth, his openness, and his extraordinary charisma. Others, more distant, were critical, and complained of his inconsistency, his stubbornness, and his world-consuming ego. Only those closest to him knew of his best asset: the careful, analytical approach he took to solving problems. This aspect of his personality was well hidden. He seemed like a Long Island schmoozer who led with his heart. He was actually an Ivy League graduate with an excellent head for figures. His business decisions were balanced and deliberate, and though he loved music passionately, when he talked of investing in new acts he used the measured language of a scientist. An associate who spent years observing Morris came finally to understand that this was deliberate, and that being underestimated was a way to maintain power. “Morris was like an old country lawyer,” he would later say. “You think people are getting one over on him, but he was always thinking three steps ahead.”