Geffen Records Vinyl, CDs & Cassettes

David Geffen founded his label in 1980 with a three-person operation on the Sunset Strip and a roster that opened with John Lennon and Donna Summer, which tells you something about the ambition from day one. He had already built Asylum Records into one of the most artist-friendly labels of the 1970s, and he brought that same instinct to Geffen, signing established names who wanted a home where they'd be treated as the main event.

The Eighties catalog is a cross-section of the era's biggest rock and pop. Guns N' Roses built their legend here. Aerosmith made their commercial comeback on Geffen. Cher. Peter Gabriel. Elton John. Don Henley. Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, both Asylum veterans who followed Geffen to his new home. Whitesnake. Enya. Asia. The label had a gift for signing artists who were either at their peak or on the verge of something larger.

When Geffen launched the DGC subsidiary in 1990 to handle more adventurous rock, the timing was impeccable. Nirvana landed there. So did Sonic Youth and Weezer. The alternative rock moment of the early Nineties ran through Geffen's operation as much as any label in the country.

Now part of Universal Music Group's Interscope umbrella, the Geffen catalog carries four-plus decades of records that defined the sound of American rock at several different turning points. If you grew up with rock radio in the Eighties or alternative radio in the Nineties, a lot of what you remember is in this collection.