Howard Bloom
Music publicist turned author of evolution and group behavior books.
Howard Bloom is an American author and former music publicist who represented major acts including Prince, Billy Joel, and Styx. He has written books on human evolution, group behavior, and Islam, as well as an autobiography.
Quick Facts
- Born
- 25 June 1943
- Birthplace
- Buffalo, New York, U.S.
- Occupation
- Author
- Education
- New York University
- Subject
- Sociology, evolutionary psychology
Facts from the source article.
Early life
Bloom, who grew up in a Jewish household in Buffalo, New York, was fascinated by cosmology and microbiology from age ten. At sixteen, he assisted with immune system research at the Roswell Park Memorial Research Cancer Institute. After earning a degree from New York University, he left science at twenty-five to edit the rock magazine Circus, then built one of the music industry's largest public relations firms.
Career
In 1974 Bloom became head of public relations at ABC Records and briefly led Gulf+Western's music publicity department. He founded The Howard Bloom Organization in 1976. In 1980 he advised Prince and his management to pursue rock and new wave audiences, leading to racially mixed performances. He tutored Styx on appealing to mainstream publications like the Wall Street Journal and People, and Columbia Records hired him to make Billy Joel more media friendly. His client list also included Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Talking Heads, Lionel Richie, ZZ Top, Bette Midler, AC/DC, Simon & Garfunkel, John Mellencamp, Earth, Wind & Fire, Kiss, and Bob Marley during his Uprising Tour. A Billy Joel biography called Bloom the public relations spinmeister to have on payroll in the seventies and eighties for authenticating musicians' images. He was described as one of the most successful publicists of his generation, a star maker whose client list was a Who's Who of rock and roll, and who approached PR as an applied science. In 1979 New York Magazine listed him among its Big Dealmakers, noting his brain was a vinyl storage system. Styx manager Derek Sutton called him probably the greatest press agent rock and roll ever knew. In 1986 his firm was reported as one of the most successful independent PR firms in music, with his acts grossing $333 million in 1985.
Personal life
Bloom developed chronic fatigue syndrome in 1988, which left him housebound. The 2007 book Chronic Fatigue Syndrome For Dummies listed him among the ten most famous people with CFS. In 2001 the New York City Clerk's Office refused to issue him a marriage license at his home, though licenses can be arranged for those confined to hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons. After publicity, the city clerk personally visited his home to issue the license; the New York Times noted the regulations likely breached the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Bloom considers himself a non-militant but stone-cold atheist and lives in Brooklyn, New York. In 1986 he joined Music in Action, protesting censorship of rock music advocated by religious fundamentalists like Jimmy Swaggart. An Omni magazine article by Bloom suggesting Islamic cultures treat children harshly, resulting in violent adults, led the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee to organize a sit-in at Omni's New York office. The article was described as not unlike some forms of religious anti-Semitism, and together with comments in The Lucifer Principle, as an example of Orientalist and racist literature. Bloom wrote that Arab pressure groups asked that his work not be published again, threatened a boycott, and called for his punishment in seventeen Islamic countries.
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