Customer Reviews

A&R: A Novel

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Being a huge fan of music and interested in the backroom dealings of the industry, I just had to read this book. After reading almost the whole thing in one sitting, it didn't disappoint.

A&R is an intriguing novel of power-struggle and greed set against the backdrop of the cut-throat music industry. Not the usual story of up-and-coming bands getting taken advantage of by their record companies, but one of how record execs themselves fall prey to one another.

Jim Cantone lands a once in a lifetime job as head of A&R at a major record label. Instead of just discovering and nuturing new talent, Jim quickly learns that alliances and loyalty play a bigger role in surviving. Having to deal with back-stabbing, conniving co-workers and attorneys to "out of touch" CEOs, Cantone himself starts to lose his own sense of self.

With tales of how bands are used as pawns between record execs to the manipulation of musicians' careers just to feed egos, Flanagan writes with the conviction of an industry insider. Although the theme of the book is music and its business, anyone interested in an entertaining and captivating story should check this out. Musical interest is helpful but not a pre-requisite.

I've known Biill Flanagan over the years as a fellow traveler in music (we've written for a lot of the same magazines -- Musician, Rolling Stone, The NY Times, et al). I've always found him to be perceptive and clear-eyed about the music business while remaining a devoted fan of music, rarely cynical and unusually supportive, and those qualities serve him well in this novel. He's an engaging storyteller, and packs enough real adventure into the work--squalls at sea, a kidnapping, some street fights--to make me think that he could turn out some fine novels that have nothing to do with the music industry. But here he has great fun skewering the pretensions of the business while maintaining a genuine affection for his characters. Well done.

A & R is a blast to read. It breaks no new literary ground, but keeps you interested from beginning to end. I've long been fascinated by the entertainment industry (both in fiction and non-fiction form). I had never been much interested in the music industry, but Entertainment Weekly recommended the book and who I am to disagree? More seriously, this comic look at life in the big corporate world of music is really interesting. I'm guessing that Wild Bill is based on Clive Davis or someone like him. Jim, our hero, is a sympathic guy and we pull for him. We also pull for Wild Bill and some of the music acts. The characters are not all that well drawn, but enough so that you are interested. As many satricial novels, that is beyond the point. Flangan casts a critical eye at an ever changing industry and tells a fun story along the way. It won't win any big awards, but is a good read for those who like the entertainment industry.

Flanagan, a big-shot with VH-1, knows the music biz...So it is only fitting that he has created a very life-like scenario. Enter Jim Cantone, a music-biz "suit" trying to hold onto to his youth while making the world safer with good music. Trials and tribulations apart, we meet music mogul "Wild" Bill Degaul, who shares Jim's passion for good music. If you have ever been in a band or in the business, you know the characters Flanagan has created. His writing is great and the story-line doesn't conveniently collapse at the conclusion. Superb dialogue, scenes and characters make this one a keeper!

I guess I'm one of those guys who knows a guy. I am a musician and have friends on both sides of the business (the artists and the labels) and have seen this book played out in reality several times. Flanagan is so dead on accurate with his hilarious portrait of the business he knows best. While this book has no shortage of satire, there is also a subtle plea for those who hold the pursestrings to remember the music.

This book is not high-level literature, nor does it give some sort of salient "sneak peek" at what really goes on behind the scenes in the music industry, but it is a good read. Well-paced, appropriately developed plotlines and subplots make for an entertaining romp through a somewhat fantastical rendition of the music business. The characters, particularly the main character, are likeable and flawed, and all-in-all it's a good book. It won't make you any smarter, but it will entertain you for a couple of hours.

i bought this book for a friend of mine in the music indsutry when it came out just because it had interesting musician reviews on the back. i picked it up a few days later and started reading it. i thought it was a great story, very entertaining especially to someone like myself that knows nothing of the inner workings or of the music industry. but once i picked it up i couldnt stop reading it. i even held off giving it to my friend a day so i could finish it.

It's funny that there's no cussing in this "behind the scenes" novel. It took me a while to realize it, but I can't REALLY believe in characters like a back-stabbing corporate honcho who wheels and deals while saying things like "what the frig does that mean?" Of course, profanity isn't absolutely necessary -- Tom Wolfe can generate a hard-boiled feel without 4-letter words. (Or with! Come on, it's a rock and roll book.) The lack of profanity is merely an indicator -- the tone and subject matter are a little out of alignment. An amusing (cute?) but whitewashed presentation of a harsh reality.

A tragi-comedic parable about a well-intentioned, bright-eyed boy scout of a music man who gets lured from his comfortable job at a prestigious independent label (roughly modeled on late-'70s Island?), into a corporate position as the number four man at a mega-label (Sony, perhaps?). Disillusionment and moral compromise ensues. Everything starts off just fine, with our hero club-hopping in an effort to sign his favorite band. Flanagan's real-life experience (as VP of VH-1) lends the right feel to the subterranean backbiting between rival record label execs, and the routine backslapping and insincere ego-stroking that are the industry's life blood are deftly drawn. The book stumbles, though, as Flanagan forces his characters out of New York and into an overdrawn, Hunter S. Thompson-ish romp in Brazil, which ends in tears and provides a flimsy pretext for one character to pursue a corporate coup. Frankly, I would have found it more interesting if he had kept things on a more realistic level, and relied on the petty personality wars of the entertainment industry to propel events... I'm sure there would be enough unbelievable material right there, and it would have been ultimately more rewarding for the reader. All-in-all, though, the book is fine, and for plebes like me who are eager for a glimpse into the world of corporate culture-making this may be an instructive foray. Speaking through his characters, Flanagan gets off a few understated broadsides at the sad state of post-'60s corporate culture-making, and the way in which record producing has become strictly a joylessly cynical, money-making proposition. So is there a happy ending? Hey - read it and find out!

Let's face it, the music industry can be viewed as cash cow that relies on the passion of the masses to fill the pockets of the few. Flanagan paints an accurate picture of music business back biting ,creating strong characters to illustrate how easily dreams can be lost on the road to success. I suspect much of his own experience went into writing this entertaining and engaging book, it's great fun working out who might be the inspiration for some of the darker characters, I'm sure they know who they are! Well worth the shipping cost to the UK.