Don Grierson was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England and grew up in the small town of Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia. Grierson was born to Monica Linden, a novelist and Leslie, a department store manager. After the war years, Grierson, his parents and younger brother immigrated to Australia, where he attended a public school until he was 16 years old. After leaving school, Grierson held several local job positions that would eventually lead to his main career. He attended a small radio school in Sydney, Australia for six months. Grierson befriended the DJ of his hometown radio station and was later hired as a junior announcer and DJ there. During Grierson's four year employment at the station, he created and held the Music Director position to emphasize the importance of music in his community. Grierson also worked with a local band, The Saints, in his extra time, acting as manager, driver and roadie. The band's gigs mainly consisted of small events that were similar to community dances.
Entering The Music Business
Originally a disc jockey at the age of 18, Grierson began his US music industry career by doing record promotions for various labels, including Capitol, Apple, Chess/Checker/Cadet and MGM records. Once Grierson, a fanatic lover of all types of music and particularly actual record labels, moved to the United States, he found a job at a one-stop record store where he was exposed to many artists and labels that he had been distanced from. A year later, Grierson obtained his first promotion opportunity at independent record distributor, Record Merchandising, where he covered Southern California for two years. After six months in the U.S. Marine Reserves, Grierson was hired and spent four years as the West Coast Promotion Manager for Capitol Records.
As the West Coast promotions manager for Capitol Records, Grierson had the opportunity to work on the promotion of the Beatles' releases in the United States. Grierson was instrumental in the promotion of all of the Beatles' albums and singles from 1966 to 1969 and helped contribute to the band's success. On 31 October 1968 Grierson received the Golden Apple Award for his outstanding promotion of the initial launch of four simultaneous Apple Records singles. Known as "Our First Four", the singles were the Beatles' "Hey Jude", Mary Hopkin's "Those Were the Days", Jackie Lomax's "Sour Milk Sea" and the Black Dyke Mills Band's "Thingummybob". The award was presented personally by George Harrison and was the only Golden Apple Award ever presented by Apple Records.
In 1993, Grierson co-founded Drive Entertainment, “a company with emphasis on classic artists and niche market catalog exploitation.” The company re-packaged, re-mastered and created liner notes for more than 140 albums by artists such as Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Coleman Hawkins, and Charlie Parker.
Grierson Consulting
In 1998, Grierson re-entered the mainstream music business to run his own independent consultant company, working both in the United States and overseas. Grierson has worked with many up and coming artists including Tara Macri, Michael Sullivan, Danielle Taylor, Amy Sky, Molly Gutman and many others. Grierson recently finished executive producing an album with former American Idol contestant Jon Peter Lewis as well as executive producing a major album project for Vietnamese superstar, Yenn. He consulted with developing artists managers and small labels. Grierson also worked as a music supervisor for independent films, wsa on the board of advisors for MusicBizPro, India and Artistsintersect.com. His consulting work was also profiled in the book "Making Your Mark In Music/ Stage Performance Secrets written by Anika Paris. Grierson was a long time voting member of NARAS/The Grammys.
Author
Grierson is also the co-author of the book “,” with veteran music journalist Dan Kimpel. The book was published by Cengage Learning in March 2009. It features interviews with artists, managers and executives who discuss how to make an impact in today’s music business. The book provides an examination of the new methods by which recording artists are discovered, developed, and nurtured in the modern music industry.
Educating A New Generation
Grierson was an instructor at the Musicians Institute's College of Contemporary Music in Los Angeles, California.