by Fred Goodman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1997
Goodman travels to Oz and dares to pull back the curtain—he finds both snake oil and genius.
Rock music has grown from social pariah to powerful engine of industry. This is an intelligent, honest look at the intersection of rock and business.
Goodman, a music and entertainment reporter with credits from Rolling Stone and the New York Times, doesn't blow the lid off the big-money machinations behind the music of rebellion—he lifts the cover and carefully reveals the personalities and motivations of the industry giants behind rock's superstars. As he covers diverse careers and the business of many record companies, Goodman masterfully conveys an incestuous industry of tightly held power. David Geffen—record industry kingpin and all-around media maven—is a featured player, along with Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Springsteen's manager and producer, John Landau, also figures prominently. The author, though critical of greedy scheming by management, pays respect to those managers, producers, and record executives who made fortunes for themselves and, sometimes, their clients. Springsteen's pages detail his rocky relationship with opportunistic manager Mike Appel and the influential, dominating influence of producer/manager Landau. The book is full of numbers—millions of dollars trade hands according to negotiated percentages. And Goodman makes it all fascinating. It's the focus on the business side that makes the lengthy book cohere. Some rock fans will undoubtedly have a hard time with this story of money changers in the temple. But a character such as Geffen, as Goodman paints him, is to be both despised and admired. Among other exploits, he stole visionary rocker Neil Young from RCA with an offer of $3 million less and a guarantee of artistic freedom, but later sued Young, unsuccessfully, for breach of contract, for failing to make "commercial'' records.
Goodman travels to Oz and dares to pull back the curtain—he finds both snake oil and genius.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8129-2113-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1996
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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