The Man Who Was 'So Mean' to Taylor Swift

If you subscribe to the Lefsetz Letter-the email bulletin from music business guru Bob Lefsetz-you will find yourself waiting impatiently, as I do, for its irregular arrival in your inbox.

The newsletter has no publication schedule. It simply shows up, often late at night. Sometimes you get nothing for a week. Sometimes three emails come in a single day. Keep up with it and you'll know everything worth knowing about the multibillion-dollar record and concert industry. Every edition is chewed over by the people who matter in the dream factories of Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard and Nashville's Music Row.

Mr. Lefsetz, 71, isn't the only writer interested in the sweet spot where art and business meet, but few bring such curmudgeonly glee to the task. It's fair to say he isn't for everyone. He's loud. He's the kind of guy who orders the most expensive thing on the menu when someone else is paying. Prickliness is his calling card. His stream-ofconsciousness writing style cribs from the "new journalism" popularized by Tom Wolfe, Hunter S.

Thompson and the celebrated rock writers of the 1960s and '70s. His unedited epistles arrive full of jaggedy insights and contrarian riffs.

That style of journalism isn't so new anymore, and Mr. Lefsetz doesn't have the raw talent of Lester Bangs or the literary aspirations of Nick Tosches, but he's got several things that every writer needs to be successful: a genuine love of his subject, the energy to crank out a seeming infinity of words, and an eager readership. He also has the instincts of an entrepreneur. "I was at a hamburger joint on Pico Boulevard in L.A., and I'm reading Billboard. It was bad.

I'm reading and I go, 'This is terrible. I could do a better job than this.' This is May of '86." The Lefsetz Letter was born.