Eddie Rosenblatt Dies: Geffen Records President During Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana Era Was 89

Eddie Rosenblatt, president of Geffen Records during its days as one of the hottest record labels in the music business, died Tuesday at a hospital in Santa Barbara of pneumonia at 89.

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Rosenblatt led Geffen in the 1980s and 1990s, helming a roster that included Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana, Whitesnake, Peter Gabriel, Sonic Youth and XTC.

Rosenblatt was born in 1934 in Queens, New York. After serving in the U.S. Army and dabbling in the Macy’s management-training program, he moved to Cleveland to work at Cosnat Distributing.

From there, he moved on to Main Line Distribution, then joined A&M Records in 1967 and then Warner Bros. Records in 1971, where he helped run the company’s distribution arm, WEA.

Rosenblatt’s work at Warner Bros. included working with Joni Mitchell, who was managed by David Geffen, and led Geffen to hire him as president of his newly founded namesake label in 1980.

The Geffen label had early hits with albums by Asia, Sammy Hagar, Quarterflash and others, and signed Peter Gabriel, Don Henley, and Neil Young. From there, it built momentum in the mid-1980s with Whitesnake and Guns N’ Roses, and on its DGC offshoot, with alternative artists Sonic Youth, Weezer, Hole, Beck and Nirvana.

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Geffen sold the label to MCA in 1990, but Rosenblatt stayed on and continued its success throughout most of the 1990s. David Geffen left the company in 1995 to launch DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, and named Rosenblatt his successor.

The Geffen label later was absorbed by Interscope, and Rosenblatt retired.

Survivors include children Michael (a longtime Warner Bros. Records executive), Steven, Peter, and Gretchen, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild. His wife of 68 years, Bobbi, died in 2023.

In lieu of flowers, gifts in memory of Rosenblatt can be made to the Sansum Clinic, a nonprofit outpatient health care organization.

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