[2008-09-18] Danny Goldberg "Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside The Rock And Roll Business&q

Linda · **Posted:** Wed Aug 27, 2008 3:59 pm

From Publishers Weekly
The title comes from Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun's answer when asked how to make money with music: the way to get rich was to keep walking around until you bumped into a genius, as Goldberg paraphrases. Inside the industry for almost four decades, Goldberg now looks back at those he bumped into during his rise from rock writer to public relations to personal management, plus heading three major record companies (Atlantic, Mercury, Warner Bros.). As he puts it, The idea of this book is to give some impressionistic views, through my eyes, and through the examples of a handful of artists, of the rock and roll business from 1969 through 2004. He began at Billboard, where his rhapsodic review of the Woodstock festival established him as a rock journalist, and his opening chapter covers Paul Williams (Crawdaddy), Gloria Stavers (16 Magazine) and other editors and critics of the 1960s. Doing PR for Led Zeppelin was his introduction to the adrenaline of a big-time rock tour, and his backstage memories of those days are vivid and razor sharp, offering an intimate glimpse into PR strategies and tactics. The parade of personalities runs the gamut from Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Nicks to Kurt Cobain and Warren Zevon. Goldberg summons up some fascinating anecdotes as he writes about these performers with much honesty and compassion, bringing it all back home.

Product Description
A giant of the music industry grants an all-access pass to the world of rock and roll, with mesmerizing stories of thirty-five years spent working with legends from Led Zeppelin, to Stevie Nicks, to Nirvana.

Danny Goldberg has been a hugely influential figure in the world of rock and roll. He did PR for Led Zeppelin; he managed the career of Nirvana; he ran Atlantic Records, Mercury Records, and Warner Bros. Records; he launched Stevie Nicks’ solo career. In Bumping into Geniuses, Goldberg shares his stories about performers who represent a broad and powerful portion of the psychic real estate of the rock and roll kingdom: Patti Smith, Warren Zevon, Bruce Springsteen, KISS, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, Hole, Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, Steve Earle, Led Zeppelin, and more.

But there’s more to this story than just Goldberg’s varied career. It’s also a look at the industry itself: a business that was neither the romantic vehicle for self-expression that its most naive fans imagined, nor the purely crass money machine depicted by its most cynical critics. It was complex and chaotic—a mixture of art and commerce, idealism and selfishness—and sometimes, rock’s most gifted and influential musicians were able to transcend it all.

For anyone interested in the rock and roll industry, or simply the mores and temperaments of the musicians themselves, Bumping into Geniuses is an incredible insider’s tale that only Goldberg could tell.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1592403700/?tag=imwan-20

[2008-09-18] Danny Goldberg "Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside The Rock And Roll Business&q

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