AND IN THIS CORNER: How are key...

AND IN THIS CORNER: How are key industry figures reacting to “Hit Men”?

Allen Grubman: “Generally the book’s chapter on me is accurate. A lot of what he said was true--Raquel Welch did tell me if I didn’t lose weight that the only way I’d make it with women was if I glued an American Express card on my forehead. But there are lots of things in there that aren’t true. My problem is the negative spin he puts on things. He characterizes events to make them seem much seedier than they really were.”

David Geffen: “I haven’t read the book nor do have any interest in reading it. I did not get an early copy of it--my friend Jon Landau did and told me about passages that were either completely untrue or offensive. Those were the passages that were removed from the book.”

Irving Azoff: “I haven’t read the book. And I was not interviewed. I’ve asked all my friends--which some days you can count on one hand--and while they copped to calling me all sorts of awful names, no one could ever remember anyone calling me the ‘poison dwarf.’ ”

Clive Davis said in a statement that he “was sent the first draft pages” of the book and found them so inaccurate that “I sent them to my attorney.” He did not dispute Dannen’s claim that the author made only one minor change--a reference to Davis’ age. Davis said he gave Dannen a list of “at least 20 to 30 names” of prominent record execs to speak with, but “with his premeditated bias solely directed to blasting record industry leaders . . . Dannen chose to speak to four others whom I had either fired or passed over for promotion.”

Joe Isgro, who is cited in the book as one of the key architects of the often unsavory practice of independent promotion: “The author qualifies as the poster boy for the Department of Sanitation.”

A CBS spokesman for Walter Yetnikoff: “We have nothing to say.”