Greg, thanks for the heads-up in Taplin’s book. I finished it over the weekend. Terrific. Must-read for rock and roll fans. Well written and thought-provoking.
I read that one, too. Right before Taplin’s. (Perhaps it was on. your recommendation, too; I don’t recall exactly.) I enjoyed Taplin’s first-hand account more. Brownstein’s “theory” of 1974 as the center of the cultural universe is entertaining and thought-provoking. Taplin’s weaving of his political opinions into the last part of the book was excellent, particularly this: “The line from the rise of Mike Milken to the rise of Donald Trump takes a few twists and turns, but it never breaks. In 1982, Trump tried to get financing from Milken for his move into Atlantic City, coming to Los Angeles with Drexel’s casino consultant Daniel Lee to “kiss the ring” of the junk bond king at 6 a.m. Although they never made a deal, Milken would go on to aid Trump’s career in ways neither man could have imagined back then. Milken had two important clients in the media business: Rupert Murdoch and Lowry Mays, a conservative Texan who owned a small radio company called Clear Channel. Mays and Milken used Reagan-era media deregulation and Drexel junk bonds to buy up thirteen hundred radio stations and essentially invent rightwing talk radio. Clear Channel created and distributed both the Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity radio shows. Murdoch’s sole U.S. media property when he met Mike Milken was the New York Post. The whole rise of Fox News and right-wing TV was funded with Drexel junk bonds. It would be a mistake to underestimate the influence of Mike Milken in the 1980s. Some have compared it to the dominance of J. P. Morgan’s economic philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century. Milken found an ally in Newt Gingrich and the New Right, and much of the intellectual justification for Ronald Reagan’s strenuous efforts to deregulate most of American business came out of their mid-1970s funding of the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (along with some help from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page). But it was Milken’s cash that financed much of the lobbying for deregulation. By the time Milken was indicted in 1989 on ninety-eight counts of racketeering and securities fraud, he had transformed the landscape of American business. And even though he was sent to prison (for a short two years in “Club Fed”) and paid a massive fine, he emerged from jail in 1993 with at least $ 2 billion in his bank account, and his beliefs in debt and deregulation were unchanged. It would take another fifteen years to prove that his prescription for the American economy was poisonous. One of the most significant acts of Republican deregulation was to eliminate the “fairness doctrine” of the United States Federal Communications Commission. Even though the Supreme Court in 1969 had upheld the FCC’s right to enforce the law, which required broadcasters to provide time for opposing viewpoints on controversial issues, Reagan’s FCC eliminated this policy in 1987, a move that made possible the rise of the rightwing media empire, funded by Milken. The control of talk radio and Fox News led to another kind of loss in the years after the contested election of 2000. Essentially a vast swath of the public airwaves became a propaganda apparatus for the ruling Republican Party. At the time all of this was going on, I was among those who had no foresight into the long-term implications of these political and economic transformations. The mergers and acquisitions business is as Darwinian in practice as it is often depicted in theory. We could not see that the ways in which Milken had transformed the media landscape would lead to the election of Donald Trump, who could control a 24/ 7 propaganda machine fronted by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. But of course Donald Trump understood how important Milken was and gave him a federal pardon in 2020.”
— The Magic Years: Scenes from a Rock-and-Roll Life by Jonathan Taplin
Greg, thanks for the heads-up in Taplin’s book. I finished it over the weekend. Terrific. Must-read for rock and roll fans. Well written and thought-provoking.
I'd recommend Brownstein's book as well--different tone (not a memoir) and California centric but first-class "scholar" of the era.
I read that one, too. Right before Taplin’s. (Perhaps it was on. your recommendation, too; I don’t recall exactly.) I enjoyed Taplin’s first-hand account more. Brownstein’s “theory” of 1974 as the center of the cultural universe is entertaining and thought-provoking. Taplin’s weaving of his political opinions into the last part of the book was excellent, particularly this: “The line from the rise of Mike Milken to the rise of Donald Trump takes a few twists and turns, but it never breaks. In 1982, Trump tried to get financing from Milken for his move into Atlantic City, coming to Los Angeles with Drexel’s casino consultant Daniel Lee to “kiss the ring” of the junk bond king at 6 a.m. Although they never made a deal, Milken would go on to aid Trump’s career in ways neither man could have imagined back then. Milken had two important clients in the media business: Rupert Murdoch and Lowry Mays, a conservative Texan who owned a small radio company called Clear Channel. Mays and Milken used Reagan-era media deregulation and Drexel junk bonds to buy up thirteen hundred radio stations and essentially invent rightwing talk radio. Clear Channel created and distributed both the Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity radio shows. Murdoch’s sole U.S. media property when he met Mike Milken was the New York Post. The whole rise of Fox News and right-wing TV was funded with Drexel junk bonds. It would be a mistake to underestimate the influence of Mike Milken in the 1980s. Some have compared it to the dominance of J. P. Morgan’s economic philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century. Milken found an ally in Newt Gingrich and the New Right, and much of the intellectual justification for Ronald Reagan’s strenuous efforts to deregulate most of American business came out of their mid-1970s funding of the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (along with some help from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page). But it was Milken’s cash that financed much of the lobbying for deregulation. By the time Milken was indicted in 1989 on ninety-eight counts of racketeering and securities fraud, he had transformed the landscape of American business. And even though he was sent to prison (for a short two years in “Club Fed”) and paid a massive fine, he emerged from jail in 1993 with at least $ 2 billion in his bank account, and his beliefs in debt and deregulation were unchanged. It would take another fifteen years to prove that his prescription for the American economy was poisonous. One of the most significant acts of Republican deregulation was to eliminate the “fairness doctrine” of the United States Federal Communications Commission. Even though the Supreme Court in 1969 had upheld the FCC’s right to enforce the law, which required broadcasters to provide time for opposing viewpoints on controversial issues, Reagan’s FCC eliminated this policy in 1987, a move that made possible the rise of the rightwing media empire, funded by Milken. The control of talk radio and Fox News led to another kind of loss in the years after the contested election of 2000. Essentially a vast swath of the public airwaves became a propaganda apparatus for the ruling Republican Party. At the time all of this was going on, I was among those who had no foresight into the long-term implications of these political and economic transformations. The mergers and acquisitions business is as Darwinian in practice as it is often depicted in theory. We could not see that the ways in which Milken had transformed the media landscape would lead to the election of Donald Trump, who could control a 24/ 7 propaganda machine fronted by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. But of course Donald Trump understood how important Milken was and gave him a federal pardon in 2020.”
— The Magic Years: Scenes from a Rock-and-Roll Life by Jonathan Taplin