Mission: World Domination
In their office, guitars were casually lying around, and Neil Young’s piano sat in the corner. At any given moment, you could find Crosby or David Blue there, according to Henry Diltz, a photographer of the scene. Geffen basically lived in that studio. He was also too impatient to deal with all the on-the-road craziness, so he left Roberts to handle it.
Cher, David Geffen, Steve Rubell, and Yves St Laurent attending a perfume launch in 1978. Photo by Ron Galella / Ron Galella Collection / Getty Images
Meanwhile, Geffen was concentrating on his next phase: launching his own label. But he and Roberts had one mission together, and that was world domination. Their strategy was to create a protected circle of significant artists. “Geffen-Roberts definitely changed the tone of things,” says John York of The Byrds. “It created this whole stratum of stardom that was complete nonsense but was a great way to market the music.”