Jeff Gold (born 1956 in San Mateo, California) is an American record label executive, Grammy award-winning art director, music historian and archivist, and music memorabilia collector-dealer, who was executive vice president/general manager of Warner Bros. Records from 1995-1998.
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Gold was the first employee of Rhino Records,[1] producing the label’s first release, “Go To Rhino Records” by Wildman Fischer.[2]
In 1981 he joined A&M Records, where, as VP/marketing & creative services,[3] he worked with The Police, Janet Jackson, Bryan Adams, Soundgarden, Cat Stevens, and Iggy Pop, and art-directed album covers for Suzanne Vega (winning the 1991 “Best Recording Package” Grammy for her “Days of Open Hand” album[4]), the Neville Brothers, Al Green, and John Hiatt.[5]
In 1990 Gold joined Warner Bros. Records as senior VP/creative services,[6] working with Seal, R.E.M., and the Red Hot Chili Peppers; art directing album covers for Prince, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Squeeze, and New Order;[5] and receiving “Best Recording Package” Grammy nominations for his work on packages for R.E.M., ZZ Top, and Paul Westerberg.[4] He was an executive producer of the album “Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix” and the soundtrack to Howard Stern’s movie “Private Parts.”[5] In 1993, Gold helped Warner Bros. establish the first online presence for a major record label, with dedicated Warner areas on AOL and Compuserve, and later the first website for a record company.[7] Gold was instrumental in music distributor Warner-Elektra-Atlantic's decision to sell CDs without the much maligned “longbox,” leading to an industry-wide phase-out.[8] Gold was promoted to executive vice president/general manager of Warner Bros. in 1995, and left in 1998 in a management shakeup.[9]
Since leaving Warners, Gold has worked as a music historian and archivist on projects for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and the Experience Music Project. He served as a curatorial consultant to museum exhibitions including “Bob Dylan’s American Journey: 1955-1966” and “Beatlemania!”[10] “Regarded as one of the top five collector-dealers in the world,"[11] Gold operates the music memorabilia website Recordmecca[12] and writes about music and memorabilia on Recordmecca's blog. Gold has worked on archival and reissue projects for artists including Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and Gram Parsons.[5] His discovery of previously undocumented live and studio outtake tapes has led to major label releases, including “Bob Dylan In Concert at Brandeis University 1963”[13] and unreleased performances by the Velvet Underground and The Stooges.[5] He has assisted in the research for numerous books, television projects, and museum exhibitions.
His consulting projects have included archiving the papers of legendary music executive Mo Ostin for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and working with A&M Records founders Herb Alpert & Jerry Moss and the University of California, Los Angeles, special collections library to catalog the A&M Records Collection (Gold also co-curated an exhibit of the A&M collection at UCLA’s Research Library).[14] Gold was a featured appraiser on VH1's television show "Rock Collectors”[15] and was profiled in the books "Vinyl Junkies" by Brett Milano[16] and "Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past" by Simon Reynolds.[17]
Gold formerly served as co-chairman of the youth voter registration organization “Rock The Vote,” which presented him (and his wife Jody Uttal) its Founder’s Award in 1997.
Gold appeared in the David Bowie BBC documentary “Cracked Actor,”[18] the Prince BBC Documentary “Prince’s Millions,”[19] and the Rhino Records documentary “Rhino Resurrected."[1]