Fredric Dannen

Fredric Dannen is an American journalist and author. He is best known for his landmark book Hit Men: Powerbrokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business (1990), which investigated the behind-the-scenes dealings of the major American record labels in the 1970s and 1980s, focussing on the careers of leading CBS Records executives Walter Yetnikoff and Dick Asher.[1] Hit Men came in second on Billboard Magazine's list of "100 Greatest Music Books of All Time."[2]

More recently, Dannen was the co-author (with Barry Long) of Hong Kong Babylon: An Insider's Guide to the Hollywood of the East, in which Dannen examines the connections between the Hong Kong film industry and Asian organised crime.[3]

Dannen was a contributing editor of Vanity Fair and in 1986 he was co-recipient of the Overseas Press Club's, Morton Frank Award for business reporting from abroad.[4] His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Channels, Barron's and Rolling Stone. The Martin Scorsese-produced movie Revenge of the Green Dragons was based on Frederick Dannen's New Yorker article chronicling Asian-American gang life in Queens, New York.[5]