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’s 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #266204 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781592403707
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

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. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Record label exec, publicist, and journalist Goldberg has interacted with many of the most successful pop acts of the last 40 years. Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, Bonnie Raitt, and the Allman Brothers have all benefited from Goldberg’s acumen, and, among others, they populate his anecdote-laden memoir. He spins page after page of mots, many of them bon, and delivers insights like the observation that, before his suicide, Kurt Cobain frequently seemed listless and very stoned. Who knew? Well, for one, Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, also a client of Goldberg’s and also limned here. Many of Goldberg’s anecdotes seem fresh, and he tells them well. He spotlights some previously underreported aspects of the music biz, revealing, for instance, that Howard Bloom, his successor as editor of Circus, originally an “awkward schmoozer at best,” persevered to eventually have a roster of clients that included Prince and Michael Jackson back when having those two was a positive commercial situation. Great behind-the-scenes stuff told literately and with a minimum of pretension, this is both entertaining and cautionary reading. --Mike Tribby

Review
"A behemoth in the rock 'n' roll industry."
-Vanity Fair

"Goldberg tells of his adventures in the music business with insight, humor and compassion."
-The Seattle Times

"An insightful behind-the-scenes view of the music industry from 1969 through 2004...Reading Bumping Into Geniuses is like having a laminated backstage pass to the music business, intertwined with a juicy slice of countercultural history."
-Paul Krassner, Los Angeles Times

"There's no doubt [Goldberg] loves the music business - lives, eats and breathes it. His new book Bumping Into Geniuses is one of the best on the subject."
-San Antonio Express-News

"Danny Goldberg chronicles the phases of his career - rock journalist, record- company president, manager to musicians ranging from Kurt Cobain to Warren Zevon - with the sort of candor few record-biz execs would attempt....Admirably blunt, but also spiked with tart humor."
-Entertainment Weekly

"[A] 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...There is an elegiac quality to Bumping Into Geniuses." -The New York Times Book Review

"Bumping Into Geniuses is such an important text for 2008...Goldberg's book presents a time when popular music really mattered, when the authentic fed the commercial and the commercial widened the scope of the authentic."
-Milwaukee Express News

"Goldberg summons up some fascinating anecdotes as he writes about these performers with much honesty and compassion, bringing it all back home."
-Publishers Weekly

"A good taste of life in the music biz...It's not only the tales themselves that make Bumping Into Geniuses a great read; it's how Goldberg tells the stories. You really get the feeling that he loved every moment. He appears to have learned as much from his minor setbacks as he did from his major successes."
-The Jewish Journal

"For readers wanting a look behind the curtain, Goldberg offers valuable personal experience that only the music industry's elite are equipped to share."
-The Hartford Courant

"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."
-Vintage Guitar

"Goldberg is an industry icon... In Bumping Into Geniuses, [he] explains how the essence of music changed from being about the artistry to being about the business, but he also shares -- to the best of his recollections -- insider stories about Jimmy Page's drug haze, the irritation of the Eagles' management when the band received bad reviews and how Stevie Nicks came up with the name for her hit "Edge of Seventeen." ...Goldberg's affection for music, as a fan, is also always palpable."
-Richmond Times Dispatch

"Early in Bumping into Geniuses, a young Danny Goldberg disqualifies himself as a music journalist on the grounds that he loves rock n roll far too much to be anything like objective. That was probably true then and it's probably true now...but that doesn't mean that he can't write. This book renews my faith in the music, confirms my suspicion of the business, and answers a lot questions that I've always meant to ask Danny myself."
-Steve Earle

"Since I first met Danny Goldberg in 1970, he has had an honest relationship with the music business. He believes in the transcendent beauty and power of rock and roll and at the same time has a unique perspective on the business which has presented and preserved it. Danny writes about rock and roll with his characteristic mix of intelligence, reverence and humor."
-Patti Smith

"In chronicling his remarkable rise from rock writer to record-company chief, working with acts ranging from Led Zeppelin to Nirvana, Danny Goldberg demonstrates that there's more to the music business than just business."
-Kurt Loder, MTV

Customer Reviews

Not very musical, but interesting look at a business.
This memoir begins in the blooming 1968 era rock scene, when rock and roll was becoming "rock" and it was beginning to be taken seriously as an art form. I think Mr. Goldberg's memoir is most successful in capturing the energy of that often chronicled era, though it gets short treatment in favor of the more detailed description of his activities in the more cynical New York rock scene of the early 1970's.

Another strong part:his status as a publicist for Led Zeppelin in the mid-70's allows a fascinating inside view of them. They were most exciting and innovative musicians, and he clearly was a fan of their music; but, as he confirms, they were also savages. In fact, at times some of them were real monsters. That was interesting reading. But this is one of the few instances in the book where he even attemptd to capture the raw excitement of the music. This excitement is,after all, the real reason why it was so popular a genre, and why it affords great business opportunities that Danny Goldberg discusses at sometimes tedious length. .

Indeed, the middle section of the book almost led me to discard it. It is clear he was bored by the most of the late '70's and 1980's music, and so the book gets boring. I got through this section, but it wasn't easy. You see, in this section Danny actually has praise for the music of Kiss, who he publicized. If Mr. Goldberg is a music fan first, as he claims, then how could he miss just how utterly lacking in musical talent-as distinct from promotional talent- those folks were? (inside comment: a longtime musician friend with 5 Grammies and 11 Emmies to his credit once told me that circa 1980, Simmons would say at industry events "I can't believe they pay us to play this s..t!") And while Mr. Goldberg's apparently active role in the "revival" of Bonnie Raitt's career in 1989 is most admirable, he barely even mentions the tremendous musicianship (her ripping slide guitar) that Bonnie is so famous for.

But the later section on Kurt Cobain contains a rare inside insight into the his deep depressions and legitimate gifts for both music and promotion. Goldberg's inside status allows him to effectively dismiss as tabloid junk the "Courtney killed Kurt" consipiracy theory.

The best part of the book is the last part, and worth waiting for. His time in the early 2000's as the head of a smaller recording label which signed the (more) mature Warren Zevon offers a unique vantage point on the last years of Zevon's fine career and the poignancy of his last months. Zevon was a genius who staged a grand exit, and Mr. Goldberg effectively describes the final chronology. This part captures the rock fan in Mr. Goldberg, and is worth the price of admission.

In all, I think this book contains too much music business insight- which may be of interest to a few in his business- but not to most of us. And yet not quite enough about the interesting art form which makes the money-making possible.

It's Only Rock'n Roll (But Here's Why We Like It)
There are at least three reasons why only Danny Goldberg could have written this book about the rock music business of the last four or so decades. First, he's held a front row seat and worn more hats--reporter, publicist, manager, record company executive and political activist---during all of those years than just about anyone else around. His astute insights coming out each of these chapters of his career are in abundant evidence here. Secondly, he has by any calculation "bumped" into more than his fair share of geniuses. The details in this book reveal that more than hard work, good luck, timing, etc. were at play. He has not just a great nose and ear but a keen eye for talent. Finally, only Goldberg could have written a book like this because he's more than just another savvy businessman and promoter with a success story to tell. He's also a clearly gifted observer and writer, who retained a measure of the idealism that first attracted him to the record business and an all-too-rare ability to still distinguish between all of the hype and reality. The end result is a book that actually delivers on what the dust jacket promises--"There is more to this story than Goldberg's career. It's a revealing look at the music industry itself: a business that is neither the romantic vehicle for self-expression that its most naive fans imagine, nor the purely crass money machine depicted by its most cynical critics. It is complex and chaotic--a mixture of art and commerce, idealism and selfishness--and sometimes, rock's most gifted musicians were able to transcend it all. Despite the drugs, lies, and shallow quests for fame and money that stalked the rock industry, it managed to produce the music that Goldberg and countless fans love."

An uneven and ultimately disappointing "insider" tale
I am a fan of learning the background and history of "classic" music and the artists that created them. The underbelly of the music industry often times combines all the elements that would be considered outlandish fiction, but with some insight into the creative process. With this in mind, I was interested in Danny Goldberg's reflections on his life in the music business.

Mr. Goldberg starts off with a quick run-through of his early life, and cataloging his musical tastes in the way most do to try to establish their bona fides with critics. Music is such a subjective thing that I tend to dismiss this tactic. But from there he documents his foray into the lower rungs of the music industry and his rise through various positions over the years. Therein lies my first criticism of this book.

Perhaps is was a fault of the writing itself, or perhaps it it trying to be humble (overly so), but I could never get a real handle on just how influential Mr. Goldberg was in these artists' careers. One almost gets the sense that he was "bumping into geniuses", but did so with no skills or abilities. With a few exceptions, he almost comes off as nothing more than a hanger-on, or - as a few reviewers have pointed out - an enabler of drug use and self-destruction (in the case of Nirvana).

My second criticism comes in Mr. Goldberg's narratives about his interactions with specific artists. He does fairly well in providing interesting details about Stevie Nicks, Warren Zevon, and - to some extent - Nirvana and Bonnie Raitt. But largely the interactions feel hollow, and there is no sense that we learned anything new or unique. Again, it almost stokes the feeling of being baffled that he ever got this far.

These criticisms are unfortunate, because in radio interviews I heard during the publicity tour for this book, Mr. Goldberg seemed to have a lot of engaging and insightful stories to tell. They are actually what prompted me into purchasing "Bumping Into Geniuses". But in the end, I am disappointed that I took the time to read this, and felt that I would have been better served to skip it altogether. I would encourage readers to stay away; there have been better accounts of the music industry and musicians.