Danny Goldberg

In the wake of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death comes a new perspective on one of the most compelling icons of our time - and the only book written by someone who knew him.

Twenty-five years after his death comes a new perspective on Kurt Cobain, one of the most compelling icons of our timeIn early 1991, top music manager Danny Goldberg agreed to take on Nirvana, a critically acclaimed new band from the underground music scene in Seattle. He had no idea that the band's leader, Kurt Cobain, would become a pop-culture icon with a legacy arguably at the level of that of John Lennon, Michael Jackson, or Elvis Presley. Danny worked with Kurt from 1990 to 1994, the most impactful period of Kurt's life. This key time saw the stratospheric success of Nevermind, which turned Nirvana into the most successful rock band in the world and made punk and grunge household terms; Kurt's meeting and marriage to the brilliant but mercurial Courtney Love and their relationship that became a lightning rod for critics; the birth of their daughter, Frances Bean; and, finally, Kurt's public struggles with addiction, which ended in a devastating suicide that would alter the course of rock history. Throughout, Danny stood by Kurt's side as manager, and close friend. Drawing on Goldberg's own memories of Kurt, files that previously have not been made public, and interviews with, among others, Kurt's close family, friends, and former bandmates, Serving the Servants sheds an entirely new light on these critical years. Casting aside the common obsession with the angst and depression that seemingly drove Kurt, Serving the Servants is an exploration of his brilliance in every aspect of rock and roll, his compassion, his ambition, and the legacy he wrought--one that has lasted decades longer than his career did. Danny Goldberg explores what it is about Kurt Cobain that still resonates today, even with a generation who wasn't alive until after Kurt's death. In the process, he provides a portrait of an icon unlike any that has come before.

Step inside the rock ‘n’ roll world with this all-access pass from the music biz legend who collaborated with Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, Stevie Nicks, Bruce Springsteen, and more. In Bumping into Geniuses, Danny Goldberg chronicles his decades in the rock and roll biz—not only launching legendary acts to greater heights, but becoming friends with many of them. He tells mesmerizing stories of superstars like Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, Bruce Springsteen, Warren Zevon, KISS, Led Zeppelin, and others. There may be no other music genre that has evolved like rock and roll. One man behind the scenes who has been hugely influential in defining it is Danny Goldberg, who started as a journalist in the ’60s but soon pivoted to become the American publicist for Led Zeppelin. He then became the personal manager for artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks, Sonic Youth, the Allman Brothers Band, and Nirvana. More than a series of brilliantly painted rock-star portraits, this updated edition unpacks the last half century of the industry itself: an everchanging business that was complex and chaotic, a mixture of art and commerce, idealism and selfishness. And in the telling, Goldberg reveals how rock’s most gifted and influential musicians were able to release music which endures decades later. Originally published in 2008, the 2026 edition includes a new afterword by Goldberg with updated observations on the music business in the digital era, and rock culture in general as well as new anecdotes about several of the “geniuses” he worked with.

LIBERALS WITH ATTITUDE DOCUMENTS THE SIXTEEN MONTHS IN 1991-92 between the brutal beating of Rodney King by four police officers that was captured on a home video camera and the resignation of LAPD chief Daryl Gates. Gates was reviled by the local Black and civil liberties communities because of the pattern of racism and brutality in the department, and he was uniquely powerful because of the structure of the Los Angeles City Charter and the secret files he kept on local politicians.The effort to get Gates to step down after thirteen years as chief and to amend the City Charter to prevent another unaccountable chief from amassing that much power was led by Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, a former LAPD officer and the first Black mayor of the city. To overcome Gates's entrenched power, Bradley assembled a team that included future US secretary of state Warren Christopher, the local ACLU, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and activists who saw the struggle against Gates as an important chapter in the civil rights movement. Much of the local media, especially the Los Angeles Times, was supportive of Bradley's agenda, as was the burgeoning "gangsta rap" culture of LA, much of which emerged in reaction to the LAPD. Author Danny Goldberg was the chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California during those years and was personally acquainted with the leaders of the fight against Gates. He interviewed several dozen people who are still alive and got access to thousands of pages of documents among the papers of Stanley Sheinbaum, who was married to the heiress of the Warner Bros. film fortune. Sheinbaum was chosen by Mayor Bradley to be the president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, with the specific mission of getting Gates out of office. Goldberg's insider saga demonstrates that cooperation between the political left and center is required to overcome white grievance and unaccountable power.

An intimate, funny, yet tragic portrait of extraordinary esoteric scholar Manly P. Hall and the occult scene of 1980s Los Angeles• Details how the author and her boyfriend developed a close friendship with Manly Hall and how Hall at first mistook her boyfriend as his heir apparent • Explains how Hall adopted the author as his “girl Friday” and personal weirdo screener, giving her access to the inner circles of occult Los Angeles • Richly depicts the characters who worked and gathered at Hall’s Philosophical Research Society, including Hall’s wife, the famed “Mad Marie” In the early 1980s, underground musicians Tamra Lucid and her boyfriend Ronnie Pontiac discovered the book The Secret Teachings of All Ages at the Bodhi Tree bookstore in Los Angeles. Poring over the tome, they were awakened to the esoteric and occult teachings of the world. Tamra and Ronnie were delighted to discover that the book’s author, Manly Palmer Hall (1901-1990), master teacher of Hermetic mysteries and collector of all things mystical, lived in LA and gave lectures every Sunday at his mystery school, the Philosophical Research Society (PRS). After their first tantalizing Sunday lecture, Tamra and Ronnie soon started volunteering at the PRS, beginning a seven-year friendship with Manly P. Hall, who eventually officiated their wedding in his backyard.In this touching, hilarious, and ultimately tragic autobiographical account, Tamra shares an intimate portrait of Hall and the occult world of New Age Los Angeles, including encounters with astrologers, scholars, artists, spiritual seekers, and celebrities such as Jean Houston and Marianne Williamson. Tamra vividly describes how she used her time at the PRS to learn everything she could not only about metaphysics but also about the people who practice it. But when Tamra begs Hall to banish a certain man from the PRS--the same man who inherited Hall’s estate and whom his wife Marie later alleged was Hall’s murderer--Tamra and Ronnie are the ones banished. Tamra’s noir chronicle of an improbable friendship between a twenty-something punk and an eighty-year-old metaphysical scholar reveals Hall not only as an inspiring esoteric thinker but also as a genuinely kind human being who simply wanted to share his quest for inner meaning and rare wisdom with the world.

A deep dive into the role that mass-appeal movies, television, videos, and music played in Donald Trump's failed reelection campaign, including brand-new interviews with some of the major players.The people who produce our popular culture--the performers and makers of TV shows and movies and music and the rest--are nearly all on the political left. (Which drives the right crazy; crazier.) Danny Goldberg--impresario, activist, mensch--knowingly and passionately chronicles how and why more of his fellow culture-makers than ever enlisted in the fight to save American democracy in 2020. Our annus horribilis had a political happy ending, and Bloody Crossroads 2020 is its star-studded souvenir program.--Kurt Andersen, author of Evil Geniuses and FantasylandBloody Crossroads 2020 is a deep dive into the role that mass-appeal movies, television, videos, and music played in America's political culture in the year of Donald Trump's failed reelection campaign. The book also explores the impact of entertainment celebrities in communications, fundraising, and campaigning to support the election of Joe Biden. Although there existed a decades-old tradition of liberal Hollywood, the ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency triggered an unprecedented level of engagement by artists and performers. Within days of the 2016 election, a critical mass of entertainers, from teenagers to the last survivors of the World War II generation--blockbuster movie stars, art-film auteurs, Broadway dramatists, comedians, and musicians from the worlds of classical, country, pop, rock, R&B, and hip-hop--all seemed to have heard the tom-tom beat of resistance at the same moment and amplified a moral alternative to Trumpism. Following the opening chapters that provide context for politically outspoken entertainers since the 1940s, and the reaction of the entertainment community to the first few years of the Trump administration, the bulk of Bloody Crossroads 2020 is a detailed mosaic of the engagement of the entertainment community in the Democratic primaries, the COVID pandemic, the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, the conviction of sexual predator Harvey Weinstein, and the 2020 general election campaign. Exhaustively researched, this volume draws from brand-new interviews with Bruce Springsteen, John Legend, Rosanne Cash, David Simon (The Wire), Adam McKay (The Big Short), Chuck D, David Corn, Eric Alterman, Ann Hornaday, Margery Tabankin (former Streisand Foundation director), Greenpeace executive director Annie Leonard, Mandy Patinkin, Kathryn Grody, Michael O'Keefe, and many more. Bloody Crossroads 2020 also explores the work of late-night comedy hosts such as Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah; musicians, actors, and filmmakers such as Taylor Swift, Cardi B, Alyssa Milano, Mark Ruffalo, Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro, Bette Midler, Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, Ava DuVernay, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Wanda Sykes; as well as commentary from a variety of political and public interest leaders.

'Danny Goldberg is probably one of the purest, most reasonableguides you could ask for to 1967.' Ex-Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham. 'Weaves together rollicking, rousing, wonderfully colourful anddisparate narratives to remind us how the energies and aspirations of thecounterculture were intertwined with protest and reform . mesmerising.' The NationIt wasthe year that saw the release of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts ClubBand, and of debut albums from the Doors, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix andJanis Joplin. The year of the Summer of Love and LSD; the Monterey Pop Festivaland Black Power; Muhammad Ali's conviction for draft avoidance and MartinLuther King Jr's public opposition to war in Vietnam.On its 50th anniversary, music business veteranDanny Goldberg analyses 1967, looking not only at the political influences, butalso the spiritual, musical and psychedelic movements that defined the era,providing a unique perspective on how and why its legacy lives on today.Exhaustively researched and informed byinterviews including Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Gil Scott-Heron, InSearch of the Lost Chord is the synthesis of a fascinating andcomplicated period in our social and countercultural history that was about somuch more than sex, drugs and rock n roll.

In this provocative work, music insider and progressive activist Goldberg shows how today's professional public servants have managed to achieve nothing less than the indefensible, wholesale alienation of an entire generation.

A groundbreaking collection of new pieces examining the effects of George W. Bush's legislative assault on civil liberties following the terrorist bombing of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Foreword by Cornel West, author of Race Matters, with original essays by Michael Moore (Stupid White Men, Downsize This!), Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Tom Hayden (former California senator, author of Irish on the Inside), Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Robert Scheer (L.A. Times columnist), Ira Glasser (former head of the ACLU), Lillian Nakano, political cartoonist Matt Groening, Patti Smith, and many more. Also, firsthand stories from victims of civil-liberty infringement, such as the chief of police in Portland, Oregon, who resisted federal pressure, and Fathi Mustafa, a Palestinian caught in the wave of racial profiling.This debut title from RDV Books is edited by the company's three publishers. Danny Goldberg is Chairman of Artemis Records, an independent company with an artist roster that includes Steve Earle, Rickie Lee Jones, Warren Zevon, Boston, Kittie, and Khia. A longtime political activist, Goldberg is on the Board and Executive Committee of the NYCLU, and is President of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. He has written for The Nation, The American Prospect, Los Angeles Times, and Tikkun, for which he served as co-Publisher along with his father Victor.Victor Goldberg is a longtime activist for civil liberties. He was an executive of the Collins & Aikman Corp. and was President of the Hudson Valley Broadcasting Corporation and is the President of Victor Goldberg Associates. He was co-Publisher of Tikkun and Associate Publisher of The Nation.Robert Greenwald has produced and/or directed more than forty-five television, cable, and theatrical films, including the award-winning NBC-TV movie The Burning Bed, and the recent theatrical film, Steal This Movie, about Abbie Hoffman. Through his newly formed "Public Interest Productions," Greenwald is executive producing Unprecedented—a documentary about the 2000 election. Greenwald is on the Board of Directors of "A Place Called Home," a gang-prevention program in South Central Los Angeles, and of the Venice Community Housing Corporation, which provides low-income housing in Los Angeles. He also works with "Homies Unidos," a gang-violence prevention and intervention program with projects in El Salvador and Los Angeles.