Veteran Music Executive DICK ASHER Dead At 92; Worked With BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, BON JOVI, BOB DYLAN

Dick Asher, a veteran music-business executive who was president of PolyGram and Columbia Records and worked with artists ranging from Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson and Bon Jovi to Bob Dylan, has died, his family confirms to Variety. His son Jeffrey confirmed that Asher died peacefully at home in Boca Raton, Florida on Tuesday (July 23); he was 92.

Renowned for his upstanding business practices over his four-decade career in music — although as a former Marine, his disciplined demeanor was sometimes at odds with the mores of the industry’s most freewheeling era — Asher is best known for his efforts during the 1980s to battle the powerful group of independent promoters, known as “The Network,” that came to dominate radio airplay via payola and other unsavory, at times illegal efforts, as depicted in Frederic Dannen’s 1990 book “Hit Men.”

A native of New York City, Asher was born in 1932 and graduated from Tufts University and Cornell Law School before serving in the Marine Corps. Upon his discharge he took a job as a corporate lawyer, and then joined CBS Records (now Sony Music) in the mid-1960s as VP of business affairs.

During that period, he was one of the very few people to meet with Bob Dylan during the singer’s convalescence from a reportedly near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1966. Asher drove to Woodstock, New York, to negotiate Dylan’s contract renewal and, upon his return to the CBS offices, was met with astonishment by his fellow executives, as the singer had been in near-total seclusion. Asher said he’d asked Dylan what his new music was like and said the singer replied, “It’s a little further on down the road,” presumably referring to the songs from the now-legendary “Basement Tapes” with the Band and his “John Wesley Harding” album. (Years later, Asher would spar with Dylan over the latter’s decision to record Christian-themed music during the late 1970s.)

Read the full report at Variety.