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Creator / Geffen Records

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Geffen Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group and one of UMG's flagship labels, alongside Interscope Records and A&M Records. It was founded by David Geffen in 1980, who had previously run Elektra Records and founded Asylum Records. Fired from his position at Warner Bros. Pictures in 1978, and locked in a 5-year contract with them, he convinced Warner to let him start the label. Geffen's first signee was Donna Summer, whose album The Wanderer was Geffen's first release. Later John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy sold millions after Lennon's murder, giving Geffen their first number one album and single.

From the outset, Geffen gained a reputation as both a major pop label and a home for more left-of-center acts, and further built upon this foundation throughout the '80s by signing not only rising and established stars like Elton John, Kylie Minogue, and Don Henley, but also more esoteric names like Peter Gabriel, Kitarō, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young (the last two of whom ultimately returned to their original label, Reprise Records, when it relaunched in 1987). Geffen recorded the original cast album of Dreamgirls and also created the show's logo and poster art; the show's title was suggested by David Geffen himself. By the end of the decade the label became most famous for being a rock label by signing acts such as Guns N' Roses, Whitesnake and Aerosmith (in time for the latter's comeback era). They were also the first Western label to sign a Japanese metal band, with EZO joining Geffen's roster in 1987. This led to Geffen founding DGC Records (it stands for David Geffen Company) to hold their more experimental rock groups, just in time for Alternative Rock to emerge; DGC's best-known acts were Nirvana, Sonic Youth and Weezer. Before that, Geffen had signed a U.S.-only deal with the beloved British cult band XTC.

Geffen went through a handful of distributors over the years. While it was distributed by Warner (Bros.) Records worldwide upon its founding, the label switched to CBS Records outside of North America from 1982 to 1985, after which it reverted back to Warner. After Geffen's contract with Warner ended in 1990, the label was sold to MCA worldwide. An unusual artifact of this era was that the label kept the Warner "banner" CD label design of the pre-MCA era on its future repressings of Warner-era albums with any mention of Warner removed rather than just using a new label design. David Geffen, made a billionaire from stock and Panasonic's brief acquisition of Universal, decided to step down from his position in 1995 to focus on DreamWorks SKG. During this time, Geffen was one of the world's strongest independently-managed labels.

With Universal's 1999 acquisition of PolyGram, which led to a reorganization of all the labels owned by each company (including those that were independently-operated), Geffen was merged with A&M Records to form Interscope Records (interestingly, Interscope would later acquire DreamWorks Records, who had been handling Geffen's distribution as a subsidiary up to that point). Geffen still operates as a separate entity, though much smaller to suit Interscope's needs. Since Geffen still had steady business, the Universal Music Group decided to fold MCA Records' artists into Geffen, diversifying their roster (Mary J. Blige, blink-182, Common, and even the legendary Chess Records catalog). Around the same time, DreamWorks Records also folded, with the majority of its signees being moved to Geffen. Needless to say, the roster had moved from pop-rock to everything. Geffen decided to go with this, signing the likes of Ashlee Simpson and Snoop Dogg.

With all this new-found diversity, Geffen found themselves standing on the same level as Interscope. Many industry insiders thought Geffen would go back to independence within UMG. Yet by 2007 Interscope had absorbed Geffen even more.

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