An Interview with A&R Executive and Industry Consultant Peter Lubin: Full Session
Peter Lubin
A longtime veteran of the record business, Peter Lubin got his start as a teenager rubbing elbows with rock journalism legends like Richard Meltzer and Lester Bangs as he ran his own music magazine. He soon entered the major label world, and made his name as an A&R executive to be reckoned with when he signed Peter Gabriel and the Moody Blues to US record deals. Over the course of his career as a label executive with Mercury and later with Elektra, he helped launch the careers of artists like John Mellencamp, The Pixies, Phish, They Might Be Giants, and Def Leppard.
In this interview with Loyola University, New Orleans Professor George Howard, industry veteran Peter Lubin draws on his own career in music journalism, publicity, and A&R, to illustrate some key points that young people who want a career in the music industry need to know. In particular, he discusses the challenge of staying flexible and maintaining portable skills in an industry that rewards specialization, the importance of integrity, honesty and networking in leading to those pivotal moments when you can leap into something exciting and great, and how the profession of A&R has changed over the past twenty years and what those changes imply for the health and outlook of the major-label system.
