The essence of a changing time: how The Collection of Jerry Moss reflects the ethos of A&M Records

‘You can’t force people to do a certain kind of music,’ Jerry Moss told the New York Times in 2010. ‘They make their best music when they are doing what they want to do, not what we want them to do.’ As the co-founder of A&M Records, Moss pioneered a new way of running a record label, prioritising the artist. It brought some of the century’s best artists to their roster — such as Carole King, Joe Cocker, The Police, Janet Jackson, and Peter Frampton — but it also showed what was possible when you encourage artists to let their creativity shine.

Born in the Bronx in 1935, Moss obtained a degree in English at Brooklyn College, before serving in the United States Army, and then pursuing his passion of music promotion. In 1962, at the age of 27, he teamed up with the musician Herb Alpert to found A&M Records. From the outset, they sought to put the artists first, allowing their creativity to flourish. Echoing his approach to music, Moss was also a dedicated collector of art, who acquired works for the love of it. He and his wife, Tina, were passionate patrons of the arts, who donated $25 million to the Los Angeles Music Center in 2020, to fund free concerts.

This November Christie’s is proud to present the collection of Jerry Moss. Like the talent on A&M’s roster, these works reflect the breadth and depth of the 20th century art. Including artists like Tamara de Lempicka, whose portraits adhere to a style unlike any other, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, who looked to art history, and made it his own, the collection was organised in the same forward-thinking and ground-breaking way as A&M itself.

When Moss acquired Lempicka’s Kizette en rose II (c. 1928-1930), in 1982, he bought what he loved. Born in Warsaw in 1898, Lempicka is best known for her Art Deco portraits that combine Neo-Classical and Cubist aesthetics. It is a personal work of the artist’s only daughter, its warmth standing out in her oeuvre. When Moss purchased this work, Lempicka had died just two years prior and, though she wasn’t unknown, her market was nowhere near the heights that it has reached today.

Moss trusted his instincts in art, just as he did in the beginnings of A&M. Their first single, The Lonely Bull (El Toro Solo), was the product of Alpert’s, who was inspired by Chet Baker’s guitar recordings. Experimenting with a similar overdubbing in his garage, Alpert recorded the song — which would peak at #6 on the U.S. Billboard Top 100 — and stumbled upon what would become his Tijuana Brass Band’s characteristic sound.

It was the first step towards making A&M the largest independent record label in the world. Over three decades, Moss and Alpert’s vision of what a label could be never wavered: ‘You have to be lucky enough to find geniuses, welcome them and get out of their way.’ Moss once said.

‘A&M became this place that was like a family,’ says Margot Rosenberg, Deputy Chairman at Christie’s New York. ‘Musicians saw this, heard what was coming out of their studios, and wanted to sign with them because they knew they could be creative — they could be themselves.’

In his art collection, Moss sought works that made this same personal connection, and that portrayed a sense of introspection. Whether it was a rare portrait of a loved one, or a cathartic rendering in dramatic colours, this theme of representing the artist at home spans his entire collection.

Frida Kahlo’s Portrait of Christina, My Sister (1928), is a testament to this. It is one of the artist’s only portraits of her sister.

‘Kahlo’s portrait of her sister relates and in some ways is the pendant to her first self-portrait,’ says Max Carter, Vice Chairman of Christie’s 20th and 21st Century Art. ‘As with other works in the collection, Mr. Moss was farsighted in perceiving its extraordinary rarity and importance.'

This idea responded in Moss’s approach to A&M. When finding artists, they were as interested in the cultural mainstays, like Janet Jackson, as they were in discovering burgeoning and unproven acts, like The Carpenters.

After the success of Herb Alpert’s debut, A&M began building their roster and, with numerous top 100 albums to their name, they moved into the legendary Charlie Chaplin studios in Los Angeles in 1966. That same year they signed Sergio Mendes & The Brasil 66, whose Mas Que Nada became the first Portuguese-language song to break into the Billboard Top 100. It was much of the same for the next two years, with Wes Montgomery breaking into the top 100, while Alpert and Mendes established themselves as some of the biggest artists in the world.

In June 1968, Moss attended the Monterrey Pop festival, which contributed to a dramatic impact on the direction of the label. He watched as artists like Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat, The Who and Jimi Hendrix performed a new and radical form of rock to adoring crowds.

Moss and Alpert established an A&M office in the UK, and before the year ended, they had signed Joe Cocker, who would represent them with a ground-breaking performance at Woodstock in 1969. They also picked up most of the art department of the Monterrey festival and pioneered album designs that extended beyond marketing tactics and responded visually to the music.

By the end of the decade, A&M’s roster included cultural mainstays like Humble Pie, Cat Stevens, Liza Minelli, Quincy Jones and Melvin van Peebles.

A&M artists’ unforgettable live performances were what really made them stand out. These concerts were not like the comparatively tame parlour show depicted in Thomas Hart Benton’s Evening Concert (c. 1952-1963) but the sound of the new era: rock n’ roll. It was an apt transition for the label who had made a name for themselves as a different kind of record company. At the height of the Civil Rights Era, they hired Harold Childs, one of the first Black executives in the business.

‘If there was ever the perfect label for a musician at that time, it was A&M,’ said Peter Frampton, guitarist for Humble Pie. ‘They wanted the artists to become themselves.’

The 1970s would produce more musical innovations in rock n’ roll: Peter Frampton, becoming a solo act, began to run his guitar through a talk-box after being inspired by the pedal steel musician Pete Drake. Cat Stevens and Joe Cocker were playing sold-out international tours. The Carpenters, fronted by singer and drummer Karen Carpenter, kicked off the decade with two Grammys.

The 1960s and 70s were an era of immense change in all areas of culture. Musically, Woodstock had established rock as the sound of a new generation. In art, exhibitions like Picasso’s landmark 1970 show in Avignon broke boundaries in both subject matter and form. Works like Nu couché (1968), a portrait of the artist’s second wife Jacqueline, were made during this period. Composed in muted blue hues, the subdued palette starkly contrasts its intimate, almost private perspective. For Moss, its relationship to Picasso’s personal life likely stood out, but the way in which the artist balanced these calming tonal choices against an explicitly erotic tone was important as well.

At the end of the decade, A&M embraced another shifting tide with the advent of punk rock. In 1978 they signed The Police, fronted by Sting. They then signed The Go-Go’s, an all-girl punk group who, while on tour as the opening act for The Police, surpassed them on Billboard to go #1. Both bands were among the earliest acts on MTV. The Police went on to have one of the century's most popular songs, Every Breath You Take, which was #1 on Billboard for more than two months.

Though The Police stopped recording in the mid-1980s, Sting went on to launch his solo career at A&M. He became a star for them, and Moss held special affection both for the band and Sting himself. Moss named his Kentucky Derby-winning thoroughbred, Giacomo, after Sting's son, and his Breeder's Cup-winning Zenyatta was named after The Police's 1980 album Zenyatta Mondata, which sold over three million copies.

The 80s also brought Janet Jackson, The Brothers Johnson, Al Green, Raffi, Barry White, and Suzanne Vega — artists who voiced a new generation and saw A&M as a place where they could do something different and make music the way they wanted it to sound.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, like these pioneers in music, embodied this notion of the artist’s decision and personal style being paramount. Rendered in oil stick and acrylic, this Untitled depicts a Black woman against a fiery background.

It was painted in 1985, a year which marked a high point for A&M. They recorded the charity single We Are the World by the supergroup U.S.A. for Africa to raise money for hunger relief in Africa. Led by Quincy Jones, the group included Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson and Bruce Springsteen, among many others.

By the late 1980s, Moss and Alpert had built an independent label into a recording and publishing empire that they went on to sell for a combined $900 million. They would stay on with the label as its executives for the next few years before eventually parting ways with it. Moss continued to be a visible patron of the arts throughout his life and, in recognition for the work that A&M did, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame alongside Alpert in 2006.

‘Art was always something personal to Jerry and related to love, beauty, or how an experience of something had touched him,’ says his wife, Tina. ‘The interest that he took in the artist and respect for their artistic creativity was at the heart of who he was and what he collected.’

His art collection is an extension of how he thought about running a record label: as a labour of love. He acquired artists who were independent and boundary-breaking. In music as in art and life: creative freedom came first.