Record Exec Phil Quartararo, Who Helped Break Paula Abdul & The Spice Girls, Dies at 67

Steve Knopper
·3 min read
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Phil Quartararo, the former EMI, Virgin and Warner Bros. record mogul who helped break Paula Abdul, the Spice Girls, Linkin Park and numerous other pop megastars, died Wednesday morning in Los Angeles of cancer. He was 67.

“I loved helping an artist’s dream come true,” Quartararo told an interviewer in 2021. “I cannot press upon you the satisfaction of doing that.”

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Known as “Phil Q,” the gregarious, Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Quartararo was a ubiquitous figure in the record industry, helping to break U2 on pop radio in the mid-’80s as senior vp of promotion at Island Records, engineering the Spice Girls’ marketing plan in the ’90s as CEO/president of Virgin Records America, and working over the years with Madonna, Coldplay, The Smashing Pumpkins, Faith Hill and Green Day. “Phil believed in me like no other,” Paula Abdul said in a statement. “His ceaseless support for me during my time at Virgin was unparalleled. I will miss him.”

Quartararo also helped launch Styx at A&M in the ’70s. “Phil Q was instrumental in Styx’s rise to classic rock stardom, and to multiplatinum sales status on more than a few of our LPs. We remain ever grateful to him for always showing up, supporting and believing in us. God bless Phil Q,” said Styx’s James Young, Tommy Shaw and Chuck Panozzo in a statement.

In the early 2000s, when Napster, MP3s and digital piracy threatened to destroy the business, Quartararo was one of the executives in Steve Jobs’ office when the late Apple CEO promised to shift the business from $10 CDs to 99-cent downloads. “At the end of the day, 99 cents for a track is better than nothing for a track,” Quartararo would say.

Virgin Records’ founder, Richard Branson, recruited Quartararo to help launch his American label in 1986, and over the years Quartararo rose to president and CEO. In 1997, according to The New York Times, Quartararo helped “turn Virgin into EMI’s crown jewel,” generating most of the parent label’s $5.9 billion in yearly sales.

Quartararo left Virgin that year to become president of Warner Bros. Records, where he worked with Madonna, Linkin Park, Josh Groban, Cher and Wilco, among others. In 2005, he made his way back to EMI, Virgin’s owner, as an executive, helping to shift the label’s focus from physical sales and distribution to marketing and launching Coldplay, Norah Jones, Keith Urban and others.

After leaving EMI in 2005, Quartararo became an entrepreneur and consultant, working with music-distribution startups, streaming services and talent managers and managed acts such as Japanese composer Yoshiki and metal band X Japan. He also ran Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation Records from 2016-2019. “Phil approached everything with a kind heart and a light spirit and sense of humor,” says Taylor Jones, a co-owner of music-focused multimedia company The Hello Group, where Quartararo was president and chairman. “He was incredibly stress-resistant. His values have been instilled in the very core and ethos of our company.”

Adds Evan Lamberg, president of Universal Music Publishing North America: “Phil Q was arguably the ‘’Mayor of Goodwill’ in our industry for decades. There is no one that he touched that was not better for having known him.”

In 2013, Quartararo told Billboard he didn’t miss major labels, but “I miss dealing with the artists. I miss sharing with young people, teaching them the music business. That’s the part I loved the most. I don’t miss the big company, per se. Because the big company is cumbersome and unfortunately can’t move as quickly as the consumer or artists need to move. It’s not as nimble as it used to be.”

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