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Out of Control: Pop Music in the 70s and 80s
Hardcover
Biographies GeneralMusiciansMusic Business
Publisher Price: $49.95
Publisher: Farr Publishing
Published: Sep 25 2026
Pages: 234
Weight: 1.06
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
John Farr helped sell the records that defined the 1970s and 1980s. He also made the choices that sent him to federal prison.
Farr entered the record business in the early 1970s and worked his way through retail, record-label promotion, distribution, sales, and management. His career took him to PolyGram, CBS Records, Target, and Commtron and brought him into contact with Eric Clapton, the Bee Gees, Journey, Linda Ronstadt, Willie Nelson, Meat Loaf, Heart, Chicago, Michael Jackson, and dozens of other artists.
He was there for the backstage celebrity encounters, record-label politics, private parties, retail battles, massive successes, and expensive failures that audiences never saw. His work brought gold and platinum records, commemorative plaques, and industry recognition. Mayor Coleman Young presented him with the Spirit of Detroit Award for his community involvement. After Target sold more than one million copies of Michael Jackson's Thriller, Farr received a platinum record directly from Jackson.
His success did not last. Decisions made during his years at Target led to a federal conviction, the loss of his career and reputation, and a sentence at the federal prison camp in Duluth. Farr tells that part of his story as plainly as he tells the stories behind the records.
Through the investigation, trial, imprisonment, and difficult years that followed, Christy remained beside him.Their relationship carries the memoir beyond the music business and into the life Farr had to rebuild after his release.
Filled with nearly two hundred restored photographs, rare personal images, gold and platinum records, awards, and firsthand stories from inside the music and retail industries, Out of Control follows Farr from a restless Minnesota childhood through corporate success, federal prison, love, loss, faith, and second chances.
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