15
JONATHAN STONE, PRESIDENT, WINDSWEPT PACIFIC
ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY
As the son of Country Music Hall of Fame
recording artist/music publisher Cliffie
Stone, you might think that Jonathon Stone had
his career handed to him on a silver
platter, but you would be wrong. At age
seventeen, Stone spent his summer break
from high school hanging out at his father's
music publishing office, getting his first
taste of the business. "That's when I started
understanding what a music publisher
was." After a year attending Los Angeles'
College of the Canyons in the mornings, and
working for an independent record promoter in
the afternoons, Stone was offered a
part-time mail room job at ATV Music (who
handled the Beatles catalog) in 1974.
Seeing it as an avenue into music publishing,
he took the job. Several months later,
when ATV opened a Nashville office, the
20-year-old Stone transferred to take a tape
copy/song plugger job. Over the next four
years, he worked hard to learn the publish-
ing business from the ground up, and eventually
was promoted to professional
manager.
Stone returned to Los Angeles in 1979 and
worked as a professional manager at a
small publishing company for several months
before taking a position at MCA Music
Publishing's recently expanded southern
California office. As manager of creative ser-
vices, he spent the next four years building,
what was essentially a small studio
holding company, into a major contender in the
music publishing world. When
Stone's wife became pregnant with twins and
decided to quit her job, he needed a
larger increase in income than MCA was able to
provide.
"At that point I made what proved to be a
pivotal move in my career. I heard that
Quincy Jones was looking for someone to run his
publishing company and I went
over and met with him and his lawyer." Stone
left MCA in 1985 and went to work for
Jones, running his music publishing company,
doing A&R work for his production
company, and screening material for Michael
Jackson's records.
Jones restructured in 1987, hiring
Warner/Chappell Music to administer his hold-
ings, and Stone briefly went out on his own as
an independent song plugger, doing
consulting work for MCA and Gene Autry Music
Publishing, as well as brokering
publishing and recording deals for independent
songwriters. When Chuck Kaye and
Joel Sill formed Windswept Pacific in 1988,
they hired Stone as general manager.
Promoted through the ranks, Stone was named
president of U.S. operations in 2000.
www.windsweptpacific.com
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