Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll
Business
By Danny Goldberg
Gotham Books, 2008
For nearly four decades, Danny Goldberg has had a seat in the back
rooms of the music business, where deals are brokered and stars are
made. In his memoir Bumping Into Geniuses, the trajectory of his
own career rides on the coattails of the entire industry. The title and
his tone throughout clarify that even he views it this way: The
geniuses are the geniuses, and he loves their work. His career depends
on bumping into a genius whose music he thinks will sell.
Goldberg began as a music journalist, and in the beginning of the
book, he has enormous respect for critics’ powers to steer opinion and
therefore the industry. At the outset, that’s the career he wanted, but
after a few short years he decided — whether by honest appraisal
of his skills or by rationalization that he loves music too much to be
a critic — that he’d be better off promoting bands instead of
evaluating them.
Of course, that went well for him, and it’s the results — his
management of famous clients — that make his book worth reading.
Goldberg’s outlook shows in his writing: The most engaging parts come
when his career is devoted to a few specific, very famous “geniuses.”
Throughout the story, from his early job promoting Led Zeppelin to his
later work on the final album by the terminally ill Warren Zevon, his
appreciation for creative people and his noble treatment of them shine
through.
These parts read like enthusiastic, name-dropping gossip — not
the malicious kind, or with the implication that his associations raise
him above the rest, but with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of one who, even
after decades, still gets excited. Writing about those periods, he
gives his attention not to his own life but the star’s.
While he was promoting Led Zeppelin, he watched critics dismiss the
band while audiences made them superstars. When House of the
Holy, the band’s landmark fifth album, dropped, Goldberg observes
that most critics had “never written a positive word about the band and
proceeded to run a review that called the album a ‘limp blimp.'” His
solution was to pitch a story about record concert attendance. Because
Zeppelin had sold out a 1973 concert at Tampa Stadium, which was larger
than the Beatles’ sold-out show at Shea Stadium, he pointed out that
the band had “broken the Beatles’ record” for concert attendance. He
knew, of course, that the fact was more a reflection of the stadiums’
size than the bands’ popularity, but in the name of getting a positive
note in Rolling Stone, he was happy to perform such statistical
sleight of hand.
He writes about Stevie Nicks’ influence on Fleetwood Mac, her
subsequent solo success and her new-age quirkiness, like giving golden
moons to beloved members of her entourage or describing them as “very
Rhiannon,” or “not very Rhiannon.” He writes of Kurt Cobain’s control
of Nirvana, from the songs to the production to the album art, but also
his pragmatic acceptance of input from the business side when it came
to recording something that would get radio play. Late in the book, he
writes of working with Zevon and arguing to give him creative control
that he might not have had if the resultant The Wind weren’t
sure to be his last album and a document of a sardonic songwriter’s
outlook in his final years.
There are a few spots where Goldberg explains aspects of his own
evolving career. They are substantially less engaging than the lives
and projects of the geniuses, but they’re probably necessary to keep
the focus on the author. In his book — as in his career —
his real strength has been supporting other people’s projects.
This article appears in Apr 29 – May 5, 2009.