Larry Mestel
After graduating from University of Massachusetts Amherst and spending time at music industry giants Island and Arista, Larry opened Primary Wave in 2006, and today manages some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry.
Larry Mestel'84
I graduated with an accounting degree, and I started at Arthur Young right out of school. I spent three or four years at Arthur Young, and then I had an opportunity to go and run Island Records, and I've been in the music business ever since. I had always wanted to be a full-time entrepreneur. I decided in 2006 if I'm ever going to do it, I was going to do it then. But to start Primary Wave, we knew that the best way to get credibility and respectability was to buy something that was credible and respectable. There isn't much more credibility in music than Nirvana and specifically Kurt Cobain, who wrote almost all the songs. Courtney Love was in a position where she wanted to sell a chunk of his catalog, and we were in the right place at the right time and knew the right people. We grew to be one of the 10 largest music publishers in America in the span of two years. What we try to do is break not only new artists, but we try to rebreak and redevelop artists that had been stars in the past, icons and legends. And one of the very first artists we signed was an artist named Cee Lo Green. He is just an amazing creative force, and so a number of years ago, I convinced him to come on as our chief creative officer. It's really great to be able to give him a call and say, "hey, what do you think?" The Isenberg School of Management really prepared me for my business career. Yeah, the relationships that I built at the school really helped prepare me for the relationships that I needed to build in the music business. It's hard to imagine that there's a better place to go to school than the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, especially the Isenberg School of Management. My name is Larry Mestel. I'm the founder of Primary Wave. I stand for loyalty among my team, and I stand for UMass.