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A Guide to Guy Oseary, Varietys 2022 Music Mogul of the Year

Guy Oseary’s universe thrums with activity as a cross section of talent traverses music, film, TV, art and tech. It’s why Variety has named him 2022’s Music Mogul of the Year.

Today, Oseary’s resume includes management of the megastar who put him on the map, Madonna, as well as U2 and the Red Hot Chili Peppers; digital investments with longtime part­ner Ashton Kutcher (including early bets on Spotify, Airbnb and Nest, among others); and the Web3 venture Bored Ape Yacht Club, signing BAYC creator Yuga Labs as a management client and, in short order, becoming a partner.

“Guy’s superpower is that he always knows what’s going to be happening next year,” says longtime friend Chris Rock. “He’s like a human time machine.”

How did a kid who hustled his way into Beverly Hills High School end up a major player on entertainment’s world stage? Tactically, with some pivotal moments — and a little luck — along the way.

  • 1989

    Early business ventures for Oseary included selling fake IDs to kids at Beverly Hills High School. At 17, he launched Wise Guy Prods. and signed his first management clients, Ice-T’s DJ Evil-E and his brother Hen-Gee. When they joined the rapper on the inaugural Lollapalooza tour, Oseary went along, leaving behind a brief stint at Cal State Northridge. “Jane’s Addiction was my favorite band, so I’d watch them every night,” says Oseary.

  • 1992

    Oseary made the most of his high school connections, despite living outside of the Beverly Hills jurisdiction, and it was through classmates that he met Freddy DeMann, Madonna’s manager and the cofounder of Maverick Records. Starting out as an A&R scout, Oseary was unsuccessful signing Hole or Rage Against the Machine to the label, but struck gold in 1994 with Candlebox, and 1995 with Alanis Morissette (pictured here with Oseary and Alicia Silverstone), whose “Jagged Little Pill” would go on to be the best-selling album of 1996.

  • 1997

    “I started doing soundtracks for a lot of my friends,” says Oseary of Maverick’s impressive ‘90s run. From Adam Sandler’s “Wedding Singer” series to “Jackie Brown” from Quentin Tarantino to “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” (featuring the power pop gem “BBC” written with Matthew Sweet and Susanne Hoffs), Oseary still marvels, “Usually you need a wealth of repertoire to get a soundtrack. We didn’t have any of that.”

  • 2000

    Oseary combines two of his lifelong passions — music and Judaism — authoring the book “Jews Who Rock,” featuring a foreword by Ben Stiller, an afterword by Perry Farrell and the lyrics to Adam Sandler’s “Chanukah Song.” “I don’t want to have where I was born be a deciding factor on whether you like the people I work with or want to support them,” says the Israeli-American. “But talk to me. We don’t have to agree. I am happy to learn. And happy to help.”

  • 2005

    After Madonna split from DeMann, Oseary remembers the mental accounting he made while still an employee at Maverick. “I was very young, she was the biggest star on the planet, and Freddy was the guy who brought me in, so thought, I can’t raise my hand for this.” But his involvement in Madonna’s creative endeavors made him the right guy for the management job. “She gave me a shot. My first album was ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor,’ which ended up one of the biggest albums of that year.”

  • 2007

    A 360 partnership between Madonna and Live Nation — for a reported $120 million — was a historic first, says CEO Michael Rapino (pictured here, left, with Oseary and Ashton Kutcher). “It was absolutely pioneering to look at all of an artist’s rights and leverage them for a long-term deal,” he says.

  • 2007

    Oseary noticed the changing dynamics around marketing music and artists. “I spent a lot of time studying Prince’s moves,” says Oseary. “When he gave his album out with the Sunday Mail in the U.K., then he offered an album because you bought a ticket to the concert, he was killed for these things. But he ended up selling 40 nights at the London O2. That one move got people excited. You’ve got to push some buttons once in a while.”

  • 2008

    Oseary’s first at-bat as Oscars afterparty host coincided with a fruitful period of movie credits. He began his run as an executive producer of the five films in the “Twilight” series, starting with the original in 2008. That year, he also appeared as an actor in the Adam Sandler comedy “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” and later had a role in “Charlie’s Angels” 1 and 2, via his friendship with director McGee. “It wasn’t because of my acting chops,” he cracks.

    As for the party, “it takes a lot of planning,” he says. “It’s important to me to give people a chance to relax in my home. And I don’t like to leave my house much.”

  • 2010

    Oseary partners with Ashton Kutcher on their first digital investment venture, A-Grade Investments. “When we find extraordinary people that are running extraordinary companies, then we look at the economic criteria and decide whether to pull the trigger,” Kutcher says. Five years later, the two launched the Sound Ventures fund with investments that have included AirBNB, Spotify, Warby Parker and Uber.

    Adds Oseary: “Ashton loves building and finding great founders to help with their vision, which is kind of what I’ve been doing with music.”

  • 2013

    “I loved them since I was a kid,” says Oseary of Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr., otherwise known as U2. “Now I’m just the lucky guy that gets to be part of it. It’s a great responsibility to have a band say, ‘We believe in you.’” Oseary was hand-picked as the band’s new manager after longtime U2 steward Paul McGuinness retired.

  • 2014

    Touted on the cover of Billboard as a management consortium that would “shake up the industry,” Rapino says the Maverick management venture that Oseary led for about five years was “a good interim test and an idea” that “helped elevate Guy’s place in music and solidify his next chapter as a strong, credible manager.”

  • 2015

    “I trusted him right away,” says Amy Schumer of first meeting Oseary while opening for Madonna. “I was, like, this person is special and I would be lucky to have his attention.” Although their management relationship was brief, the comedian says she considers Oseary a mentor. “He’s changed my life, helping guide me with business decisions and as a friend.”

  • 2016

    A 2016 boardroom meeting of the Maverick Management collective, posted on social media, drew heat for picturing all male participants (among them: Oseary, Cortez Bryant, Shawn Gee, Gee Roberson, Scott Rodger, Larry Rudolph, Wassim “Sal” Slaiby, Clarence Spalding and Greg Thompson). Today, Oseary’s team includes Madonna co-manager Sara Zambreno, U2 day-to-day manager Jennifer Pitcher, director of production and operations Nadine King, and associate Kelly McNamara; Red Hot Chili Peppers day-to-day Elana Radin; and executive assistants Tara Ahmadi and Rachel Gordh. At Sound Ventures, Effie Epstein is a managing partner and Maaria Bajwa serves as head of Blockchain Investments; at SoundWaves, Katherine Keating is managing partner.

  • 2017

    “It was surreal,” says Anthony Kiedis of holding the chuppah (alongside Kutcher, Chris Rock and Owen Wilson) at Oseary’s 2017 marriage ceremony. “We were at the feet of the great statue of Jesus [in Rio], and this spectacular fog had surrounded the mountain, so you could not see the view. But every now and then, little windows would open up and you could peek down to the sea. It seemed like we were in this little private magical moment on earth.”

  • 2018-19

    Oseary has sprung to action more than once in the wake of tragedies. In 2018, he helped raise money for Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue following the shooting that killed 11 congregants — to drive the point home, he accompanied his public plea with a photo of himself visiting Auschwitz tearfully holding an Israeli flag outside a former prisoner housing unit. A year later, Oseary launched a GoFundMe for victims of the 2019 terror attack on a ChristChurch New Zealand mosque, where 51 died. Between Chris Rock, Ben Stiller, Madonna and others, $150,000 was donated.

  • 2021

    Oseary teamed with Snoop Dogg for a “Shark Tank”-like pitch competition. He considers the rap icon to be the sharpest person in entertainment when it comes to seeing the potential of NFTs. Says Snoop: “For the first time, my fans can make money off of me and what I do now. Flip, resell, build. The Blockchain and metaverse will go mainstream before you know it and I want my own people to be first in line.”

  • 2021

    “We were rough in the way a punk band would be,” says Gordon Goner, a cofounder of Yuga Labs, home to the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which Oseary identified as a potentially valuable NFT brand. “We were not coming into this with any business experience whatsoever, and here was this extraordinary manager who also had tech sensibility. It was a perfect fit.”

  • 2022

    Oseary spent his 16th birthday at a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Hollywood, where John Frusciante played with the band for the first time. The guitarist returned to the fold this year, with Oseary guiding the guys — Kiedis, Flea, Frusciante and Chad Smith — through two new albums and a stadium tour. Says Kiedis: “Guy hasn’t lost any of his enthusiasm, which is rare and remarkable. And for someone who’s achieved so much and helped so many people, he hasn’t become an arrogant punk.”

  • 2022

    Oseary’s NFT portfolio includes World of Women, a series of NFT collectibles founded by artist Yam Karkai. The art world, Oseary challenges, has not historically been inclusive of women but he hopes to make some inroads. “Rattle off your top 20 artists, let me know when you get to a woman,” he says. “All of this [NFT] money that’s coming in, less than 2% goes to women.”

  • 2022

    Who’s playing that girl? Julia Garner has been offered the role of Madonna in the biopic that will be cowritten and directed by superstar. “We had read so many scripts by other people trying to do a Madonna film that the idea of her telling her own story gives me a lot of relief,” says Oseary. “So many have tried to tell it for her. I read one of the scripts that was floating around and it was just terrible. I’m here to support.”

    Adds Madonna: “No one’s going to tell my story but me, because only I know it.”

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