This is story of how several clever people took the talent-driven music of the mid to late sixties and gradually turned this into a money-driven enterprise where all the artist needed to do was keep the gullible public into believing that "it's all about the music, man!"

The book covers some of the major players like Bruce Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, and record mogul David Geffen, along with the artists they were involved with like Dylan, Neil Young, the Eagles, and plenty more. The book shows how the industry evolved from Warner Brothers execs (in WB blazers) signing the Grateful Dead (and being scared to death of being given LSD) - to the CBS policy of the mid-eighties of taking acts that the company wanted to succeed and have them make a few low-selling albums and play live gigs so they would have more credibility with record buyers.

The execs were every bit as exotic as the artists they represented, and thought nothing about double-dipping their clients' earnings even though they were already assured of millions. I was astounded to learn that at the height of the Eagles' success they went out on tour and got NINETY-SEVEN AND A HALF PERCENT of the receipts, leaving the venue with just two and half percent.

Essential reading for anyone interested in the music industry, especially people trying to break into the scene. Check your integrity at the door, because it will just be an impediment otherwise.

8 of 8 found the following review helpful:


Very well written, if depressing  Sep 05, 1999
You don't have to be a raving fire 'n brimstone type to lament the passing of the "good old days" of rock. You just have to switch on your radio now and hear songs that were once anthems being used to hawk jeans, beer, bank cards, etc. and if that doesn't make you even a little indignant, you're either too young to remember or too embalmed to give a damn. Fred Goodman's book is a good accounting of some of the other nails in rock's coffin, the forces of the entertainment business who saw gold in them thar hills. Yeah, I know, I know---how foolish, how naive to think that rock could be anything BUT a commodity, as with any other form of popular entertainment. Perhaps so, but naivete is what started rock off in the first place, the idea that boundaries were made to be broken and that not all rebels join the herd in the end. I'm still playing my Dylan albums, though, and if the lustre has worn off the man's image somewhat as time has gone by, it doesn't change the fact that Dylan---and Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen and Joni Mitchell and even Glenn Frey and Don Henley---still made a large body of music that mattered then and matters now. But the old image of rock as "music of the people" or whatever, that's gone the way of all flesh.

8 of 8 found the following review helpful:


Engrossing, yet frustrating  Jul 07, 1998
I found Goodman's book eminently readable, and at times difficult to put down...yet, when I took a step back at the end, there was less there than it seemed. One big problem...from reading the Notes, it becomes clear that none of the "main" characters in this book...that is, Geffen, Landau, Springsteen, Dylan, Grossman, or Young, actually spoke to Goodman. Which means that our insights into them are being filtered, not only by Goodman, but by the people Goodman did talk to...many of whom carry some grudges. Yes, it's likely that these grudges are well earned, and believe me, I have no sympathy for Jon Landau or David Geffen, and yes, there is a printed trail that follows them, but the book suffers from the absence of their voices is a problem. In the case of Springsteen, it's less than fair (and I'm not a fan). Goodman also jumps around too much, and leaves several threads dangling...the LA performers all disappear as soon as they split with Geffen. And, he buries one of the most compelling stories in the book...the meteoric rise and fall of Peter Frampton.

7 of 7 found the following review helpful:


The sharks enter the lagoon  Mar 25, 2008 By John L Murphy "Fionnchú"
The year of Springsteen's commercial peak, 1985, Dylan's quoted by Goodman: "If you want to defeat your enemy, sing his song." (351-2) This narrative history by Goodman does not, as some previous readers appear to have expected, give you in-depth studies of the music or the lives of Springsteen, Dylan, Neil Young, although these three singers share the subtitle with Geffen. It's about the business, not the music itself.

Instead, this study focuses on such men as the managers and handlers who prospered along with their clients: Dylan's Albert Grossman, Springsteen's Jon Landau, Dee Anthony with Peter Frampton and Humble Pie, Irv Azoff vs. Geffen with the Eagles, and of course Geffen himself as the main character throughout, morphing from agent and advisor to owner of a label with Young and the Eagles and CSNY & Joni Mitchell and Nirvana and dozens of other artists. I found many of the blow-by-blow deal making accounts necessary but rather dull. It's difficult, on the other hand, to provide a thorough treatment of the business that makes music without such details. So, some readers may be engrossed by the complex litigation around Mike Appel vs. Springsteen and Landau, or how Grossman played off the industry differently than Geffen. The author shows his talent in charting the rise of the capitalist behemoth that crushed the fragile naivete of the counterculture. "The shark entered the lagoon"-- as Ned Doheny puts it. Geffen comes to L.A. as the 1970s begin, and the business overtakes the music.

The Eagles and then the Boss, in different poses and for different reasons, appear to be the prime motivators here for getting from coffeehouses and bars to arenas and mansions in Malibu or Beverly Hills. Fitting too that first Dylan left for SoCal and later Springsteen, and how this happened while the songwriters attempted to keep their bohemian aura or streetwise cred proves certainly an instructive tale for any rock fan or ambitious musician. The anecdote of how the Grateful Dead backed down from their expletive that they had insisted be an album title--once they found from WB's Joe Smith that it would not be stocked at Sears-- turns into a marvelous fable about the purported hippie self-righteousness vs. their desire to cash in on their attitude against the Man.

In such comparisons between the late-60s folk-rock Boston clubs that spawned Elektra and Asylum Records and the CBS-Warner battles that characterized the mid-80s stadium sellout scene, Goodman indeed displays his strengths. John Sinclair had been always a footnote to me, but his story, and that of Landau and Lennon and the MC5 became a welcome look into the clash of ideals and the marketplace. The role of not only Landau but Dave Marsh and others at Rolling Stone, however, could have been expanded even more at the cutting of some financial detail, for it made me wonder what Goodman, credited on the dust jacket as a "former Rolling Stone editor," might have been holding back from what needed to be more fully told-- perhaps he's saving it for another book?

Also, to my disappointment, a tale not told fully here as also skimped on in later books. (I have also reviewed on Amazon and my blog Michael Walker's "Laurel Canyon" and Barney Hoskyns' "Hotel California" about this same period; the lapse also enters Hoskyns' earlier history of L.A. pop music, "Waiting for the Sun") Goodman should have covered more into the 1970s the ethos, half-cynical, half-affectionate, that Stan Cornyn appears from Goodman's account to have pioneered at WB Records. I still recall the clever marketing ads to get you to buy "Schlagers"!" and other WB-label cheapo compilations on the inner sleeves of that label's releases in the early '70s.

However, Goodman-- whether discussing the savvy of Geffen, the drive of the Eagles, the abandonment of Sinclair, the reasons why Jackson Browne made his management choices or how payola did and did not differ from an Atlantic A&R rep with a few joints for the d.j.'s he visited with new records-- remains scrupulously fair to all involved. He balances damning recollections of those betrayed with other quotes or editorial insights into why the decisions to move from clubs to arenas had to be made, partially to offset the enormous expenses such lesser entities as Humble Pie had generated on tour and in excess.

Goodman's own bias--one understandable and well-supported with much primary evidence-- against those who manipulated the artists or their earlier supporters when times were rough, or his own explanation of why Landau sought to make rock music criticism more serious, plays well into the trajectory he marks of the shift to the mansion on the hill from "But the Man Can't Bust Our Music." His deadpan recital of such infamous Columbia ads in 1968 issues of RS I found hilarious. The move from sincere folkies at the Boston Tea Party to cocaine cowboys at Doug Weston's Troubadour to the pandering of "Born in the U.S.A" may after a few hundred examples turn rather obvious. Still, it's a tale well worth telling. This book should be rewarding reading for those as interested in the "starmaking machinery behind the popular songs" (Mitchell's lyric in "A Free Man in Paris" about Geffen is oddly missing from the narrative) as hearing the songs themselves.

7 of 7 found the following review helpful:


My Mansion is Bigger Than Your Mansion  Feb 22, 2006 By Lilting Banshee
If you have ever winced at the rapid co-opting of 60's and early 70's rock music by big business and/or mercenary musicians, if you have ever gritted your teeth at paying $15+ for a CD and then wondered who gets your money, if you ever hoped that there was once something culturally meaningful in the rock scene and wondered what happened, then this book will provide many answers. Two things made this book difficult for me: 1) Goodman lays out details and names names with such frequency I could have used a glossary listing of the major players cynically manipulating the burgeoning cultural shifts of the "summer of love" from radio to underground newspapers to rock venues 2) the machinations of many of the artists and most of their managers illustrate such a sad, greedy side of humanity. Everyone who gets rich--really, really, really rich--does it by successfully, often ruthlessly, exploiting consumer willingness to pay for rock and roll product. The organist of Springsteen's E Street band, Danny Federici, sums up one of their mega-tours this way: "We started out as a band, which turned into a super, giant corporate money-making machine." And that about sums up the last 40 years of rock and roll. My advice: read this book, then seek out all of the really great musicians (and CD labels) out there who haven't been sucked up into mega-marketing campaigns, corporate sponsored tours, and manufacturing soundtracks for multinational companies.

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