A method that works well enough if, like Ertegun, you manage to bump into Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin. Goldberg — an industry lifer who did time as a rock critic, P.R. flack and personal manager before his stints as president of Atlantic, chairman of Warner Brothers Records and president of Mercury Rec ords — has a less impressive rsum of brushes with greatness. But that hasn’t stopped him from seeing gen iuses everywhere.
Neil Young, Goldberg writes, is “one of the great geniuses.” Patti Smith is an “incandescent … artiste,” a “genius.” Stevie Nicks, whose solo career Goldberg helped propel, is “magnetic … compelling … an autodidactic mystic.” Even the charmless, stolid grunge band Stone Temple Pilots are praised by Goldberg for their “brilliant musical tracks” and the “poetic soul” of the singer Scott Weiland. You can tell Goldberg doesn’t much care for the 1970s rockers Styx when he calls the group’s hit “Come Sail Away” “one of rock’s classic cosmic anthems.” For Goldberg, that’s damning with faint praise.
In other words, Goldberg is a rabid rock fan — and if his fanboyism sometimes gives his prose a purplish tint, it also helps prove his point. “The rock n’ roll business … produced and popularized a lot of music that I love,” he writes. “And it gave me and a lot of my friends a place in the world.” Music executives are often portrayed as exploitative philistines, but Goldberg reminds us that the recording industry was remade in the late 60s and 70s by businessman-hippies seeking not just profit but proximity to artists they admired and a role in the countercultural ferment. It is one of many insights in this surprisingly excellent book, an engaging, droll and — incandescent artistes to the contrary — largely demystifying look at the evolution of the rock trade from Woodstock to grunge.
BUMPING INTO GENIUSES
My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business
By Danny Goldberg
307 pp. Gotham Books. $26
