|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
< BACK TO Radar Reviews Bumping Into Geniuses - Danny Goldberg
During college I worked as a marketing rep for Atlantic when Goldberg ran the label. As mountains of free CDs and promo materials arrived at my house every week I wondered how so many crappy bands get signed, and why a few of them received a giant label push while other bands I considered to be far better were ignored. I imagined Goldberg sitting in his corner office, sweeping views of Rockefeller Center at his back, as he conferred with executives deciding the fate of all these artists. Did he know more about music than anyone else? Did he somehow intuit who could, or should, be a star? Or was he just a guy throwing albums against a wall waiting to see which ones would stick? When Goldberg's new book Bumping Into Geniuses landed on my desk a couple of weeks ago, I tore into it, hoping his "life inside the rock and roll business" might finally offer a peek behind the executive's door. Turns out, it's as lamely unscientific as you expect! There are a great many juicy "I was there" insider anecdotes in the book. We hear about yet more wild antics of John "Bonzo" Bonham, Zeppelin's notorious drummer. We witness Kurt Cobain's ambivalence toward stardom, yet also his keen sense of how to market himself, and more revealing, his desire to do so. Stevie Nicks comes across as a bit of a new-age flake, Springsteen a mensch, and Jackson Brown a rock God to be feared and reviled—lots of go-figures. But the unique element that only someone like Goldberg could have offered—a light on the inner workings of the machine—is largely absent. In a book of nearly 300 pages, he spends just 15 on the era of his remarkable reign at the three major labels. He settles for a summation: "[T]here were lots of great things about running big record companies—the money, the perks, the way almost anyone in the world would take your call, [and] the demystification of the decision making at the top." Um, thanks, but I surmised all that myself before reading your book. I, and probably anyone interested in reading a rock executive's memoir, want to know the details behind that list. How much money were you paid? What crazy perks did you get? What rock star or politician or Hollywood exec who had blown you off years earlier took your call once you held the powerful titles? And, most interesting, at least to me, how were decisions that affected not only musicians, but their fans, and even the culture at large, made at the top? Demystify it for us. Perhaps so few of the above details are given because Goldberg himself wasn't so sure how those decisions were made. Often, he candidly and admirably gives credit to various A&R people and other executives, or sometimes plain luck, for hit albums like the Stone Temple Pilots' breakthrough that took off during his tenures at the helm. Perhaps the most telling section appears at the end of a chapter on Warren Zevon, who was on Artemis, the small label Goldberg started after being ousted from Mercury. Goldberg had a clear affection for Zevon, which only intensified when Zevon, while recording for Artemis, was stricken with cancer. Despite a Herculean effort, and emotional ties, Goldberg admits that he and the label "failed to get [Zevon's album] Life'll Kill Ya the audience it deserved." Without the machine, Goldberg is unable to break a record he cared so deeply about. Goldberg's great talent appears not to have been running record labels but dealing with people. Both genuinely humble and softly manipulative, Goldberg is a master of relationships. And there seems to be no separation between his personal life and his professional ambitions. For every artist, executive, and peripheral character he befriends, represents, or comes into contact with, he has an agenda on how to leverage them into furthering his career or the success of whatever acts he was working for at the time. That a benefit concert he helps produce advances a charitable cause he favors and furthers his business connections with the stars that take part in it is a natural symbiosis for him. Yet this approach to relationships, an automatic intertwining of the personal and the professional, was not always brazen or calculated. It appeared to be, simply, automatic. That his wife just happens to be an entertainment lawyer is perhaps an unfair but funny illustration of this. Unsurprisingly, Goldberg appeared most at ease when good commercial decisions happily coincided with good personal or artistic decisions. And he managed to often glide his life toward this end. When the book reaches the section on Artemis, he mentions how he was then more interested and "in the mood" to work closer with artists, rather than operating from the remove of the executive suite. Perhaps it's true that at that point in his career he relished being able to work more closely with artists again. But, at the same time, it's hard to believe that a man who spent his whole adult life networking and maneuvering himself seeking greater power within the music business didn't also have more regret, embarrassment, even depression, over having lost the prestige and power he had worked for so long to obtain. Here's some more admirable candor: As a manager in 1982 trying to land arena rock band Styx as a client Goldberg recalls, "I cannot deny that my interest was largely fueled by images of the millions of dollars I could make." (Full disclosure: he later discovers to his surprise that he in fact really digs Styx.) One summer during college I interned in the A&R department of a major label. One of the young scouts there was known as a hotshot, a rising star. I thought this was strange because he hadn't signed any successful bands. But I was young and assumed I just didn't know any better. Over the years I followed his career ascent, as he bounced from label to label, moving to higher and higher positions at each one. Yet, during all that time he never signed a hit band. To my knowledge, he never even signed a moderately successful act. Goldberg's book finally makes sense of the phenomenon of this A&R "wunderkind," as he was once called in a trade magazine: Aside from a single digit number of legends, the majority of record executives were successful, more than anything, at selling themselves within the industry, rather than knowing how to spot and sell a hit album. As Geffen president Ed Rosenblatt remarked in 1992 when asked what he was doing to promote the then atmospheric rise of Nirvana's Nevermind: "Get out of the way." Dead, solid perfect, David. You just nailed Goldberg and about 89% of the A&R people I worked with in the record business. At Atlantic the people who signed the real hit acts were the label heads Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, along with house producers like Tommy Dowd, Arif Mardin, Joel Dorn, Jimmy Douglass and a few others. But that label was the exception to the rule. Posted by: sailor on September 18, 2008 2:26 PM @sailor - Agreed, but don't forget Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker from Warner Bros.... these are the folks that nutured and fought for the likes of Neil Young and R.E.M. - they were real "music" guys...not just businessmen. I'll be looking forward to their books ! Posted by: girlyalias99 on September 18, 2008 3:18 PM Dear David, Firstly, thanks very much for the timely review. I'm still a PR guy at heart and appreciate that you spelled my name right and that of the name of my book. I also appreciate some of what you wrote about it and would like to offer the following as a commentary on some of your criticisms. Danny Goldberg Posted by: Gold Village Entertainment on September 23, 2008 9:53 AM I gotta say, reading Danny's response reminds me why he has been so successful. This is obviously an intelligent and thoughtful person. I know Danny, very slightly. An artist I represented was signed to an early label he owned. I fought with him and we didn't exactly bond. But to try to tag him as another jerk off record executive, well thats just plain wrong. This is a guy who has worked throughout his life for music artists, and for social justice (do the research). And I have no doubt he is first and foremost in it for the music. Reavis Daniel Moore, Posted by: Serve Music on October 15, 2008 10:22 AM Advertisement Reavis, In regards to his commitment to "the music", I don't doubt that Goldberg loves music and rockstars. But being a successful music-business-man, as he implicitly and explicitly indicates in his book, often required him to act in the best commercial interest, not necessarily the best "music" interest. (As one would expect an executive to do.) In his comment Goldberg says as much when he writes,: "So the reality of running a label had a lot to do with watching carefully for public reaction and responding to it." Posted by: David Zweig on October 20, 2008 3:09 PM |
 
  
 |
|
 |
|
 | ||||
Back
RADAR REVIEWS: The Duchess