Book Review: The Mansion on the Hill

The Mansion On The Hill
Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen and the Head-On Collision of Rock and Commerce
by Fred Goodman
Paperback
432 pages
Random House
9780224050623
1997

This book was recommended to me by Jeff at Larry Edmunds Bookstore in Los Angeles. This is the premier bookstore for hard-to-find books on the movie industry.

I thought I was reading a book that chronicled the history and musicians who lived Laurel Canyon. However, as I started reading, I discovered the book was really about the birth of the commercial music industry. I was more surprised that it started not 45 minutes from where I live!

The year was 1962 and a record distributor salesman named Paul Rothchild walked into Club 47 on Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Club 47 started the careers of such famous musicians as Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt, and Joni Mitchell. Even Bob Dylan played unofficially between sets. Rothchild ended up producing and recording the Charles River Valley Boys, one of the club's acts. After selling all 1000 copies of the record, Rothchild began recording and producing more of the clubs acts. Around this time, folk music was starting to go electric, much to the horror of the purists. By 1965, acts were now being paid for playing at the club, an unheard notion in the folk community. Because of this, the club could no afford to have patrons just sitting around, not generating revenue to pay for the musical acts. The time honored activity of spending hours just sitting in a club, talking to your friends, and listening to some music was now over.

It was an unlikely lawyer from Missouri, Ray Riepen, who realized Boston was just the city to start experimenting with rock-and-roll on the radio. He researched failing radio stations and set his sights on WBCN. The station was desperate for money, they sold airtime to pay the bills. He used the purchased time to play rock music from 10pm to 5am and thus was the beginning of the new WBCN, the station I listened to years unaware of its provenance. The new format was a smash and within a few months, all of the music spun was rock-and-roll. The station also reported on non-mainstream news stories and was legendary in introducing The Clash, The Police, The Cars, 'Til Tuesday, The Ramones, and U2 to the world.

The Los Angeles rock-and-roll scene was still in its infancy in 1964. Within 2 years rock-and-roll would explode and cement Los Angeles as the epicenter of not only the music industry, but the movie industry as well. There was a wave of new bands who were starting to become popular, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Sonny & Cher, and The Doors. Paul Rothchild saw the parallels between what happened in Boston and what was about to happen in Los Angeles. Record labels in New York began paying attention and started opening up new offices to capitalize on the new action.

This book delves into the early history of the business and its evolution. The requisite shady characters and unscrupulous agents looking to make a quick buck off unsuspecting bands make several appearances. The shift from the East to West coast in well documented as the business started to look for more and relevant talent. One could submit without the record companies, most bands would have suffered in local obscurity as opposed to basking in international fame.