Shine on you musical diamond... Ahmet Ertegun. Photograph: Jim Cooper/AP
Ahmet Ertegun was the music industry blueprint for somebody who cares about music and artists. He was rich, and a great business guy, but from the Stones to Led Zeppelin he took chance after chance and it paid off. The people who run the music business now are bean counters. There are very few people in the higher regions of the business who are there for the music, but Ahmet Ertegun was one of them.
I met Ahmet once in 1997. He came to my office in London and tried to buy Oasis from me. He also - bizarrely - tried to buy the Teletubbies for the States from me until I directed him to the BBC. He must have been about 73 that point but the man could still smell a hit.
I loved Ahmet, he was a legend, an absolute diamond human and musical genius. He knew every genre of music back to front. The time I met him he told me so many great stories. Obviously I said, "Ahmet, you should write a book", and he replied, "Alan, it would get me killed." He lived a life and then some.
Atlantic is the blueprint for every great indie label there has ever been - even if they don't know it. Ahmet invented the first one in 1947. He'll always shine on through the music he released, and he'll be remembered by music fans with gratitude and love.
