Paperback Row

This article originally appeared in The New York Times on August 5, 2009

BUMPING INTO GENIUSES: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business, by Danny Goldberg. (Gotham, $15.) Goldberg, a music industry lifer and rabid fan, looks back on his career in this “engaging, droll and . . . demystifying look at the evolution of the rock trade from Woodstock to grunge,” our reviewer, Jody Rosen, said. “The greatest rock artist” he worked with, according to Goldberg, was Kurt Cobain of Nirvana. Another fan, Elliot Tiber, owned a Catskills motel with his parents. When, in the summer of 1969, he learned that some concert promoters had lost their venue, he put them in touch with his neighbor, Max Yasgur, helped them secure permits and housed them at the motel. TAKING WOODSTOCK (Square One, $15.95), written with Tom Monte, tells the story.