Asylum Records
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Asylum Records | |
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| Parent company | Warner Music Group |
| Founded | 1971 |
| Founder(s) | David Geffen |
| Distributing label | Warner Bros. and Atlantic Records (In the US) WEA (Outside the US) |
| Genre(s) | HipHop, Rock |
| Country of origin | US |
| Official Website | http://www.asylumrecords.com/ |
Asylum Records is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group, which currently is geared primarily in hip-hop music.
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[edit] Company history
[edit] Formation
Asylum was founded in 1971 by David Geffen, who had previously worked as an agent at the William Morris agency, and operated as a folk/rock label. After Geffen failed to get a recording contract for Jackson Browne, his client at the time, Geffen founded Asylum specifically to sign him. Asylum's early releases were distributed by Atlantic Records. The same year, Asylum went on to sign John David Souther, Judee Sill, Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell and Glenn Frey (who Geffen encouraged to form The Eagles, with Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, and Randy Meisner.) The biggest coup for Asylum was signing Bob Dylan, who had been signed to Columbia Records but after a falling out with the company was shopping around for a new label. Dylan recorded two albums, Planet Waves and the live Before the Flood, for Asylum before returning to Columbia. Columbia reissued Dylan's two Asylum albums in 1981.
[edit] The Elektra merger
In 1972, Asylum merged with Elektra Records to become Elektra/Asylum Records. David Geffen remained in charge of the company until 1975, when he resigned as director and retired, due to a cancer scare. Among its subsequent signings was Warren Zevon, who released a series of stellar LPs for the label; his self-titled 1976 label debut has been called the best California rock album of the decade.
By the early 1980s—though technically still billed as "Elektra/Asylum Records"—Elektra and Asylum began to split off with the former becoming more dominant and the latter acting as more of an extension. By the middle of the decade, the company was unofficially calling itself Elektra Records, and in 1989 it was renamed Elektra Entertainment. Asylum, meanwhile, broke off into a subsidiary label underneath and subsequently became less active in its own right.
[edit] Country format
Asylum was reformatted into a semi-successful country music label, still operated by Elektra, in 1992. Under the new format, Asylum scored hits by such acts as: Emmylou Harris, Kevin Sharp, Bryan White, and Lila McCann. They also recorded many critically acclaimed albums by Bob Woodruff (musician), JD Myers, Jamie Hartford, Thrasher-Shiver, Guy Clark and The Cox Family that never reached mainstream country audiences due to a lack of promotion. As the 1990s progressed, due to poor management the company eventually went into hibernation like many imprints under the Warner Communications banner.
[edit] Relaunch
After being dormant for several years, Asylum Records was revived as an urban music-based label in 2004, independently managed through Warner Music Group. Some of its releases are distributed in conjunction with Warner Bros. Records and others through Atlantic Records. In 2006, WMG shifted Asylum to operate under their newly created Independent Label Group, which also comprises Cordless Recordings and East West Records
[edit] Sevendust Signing
On December 6th, 2006, Asylum Records announced the signing of Atlanta, Georgia's own metal giants Sevendust, the first non-hip-hop artist to be signed to the newly reconfigured label. Sevendust's Asylum debut (their sixth full-length album overall), entitled Alpha was released on March 6th, 2007, selling around 42,000 albums in its first week. Although Asylum has signed them, they have not given any notice of it anywhere.
