FROM MILLIONS TO BILLIONS : ROCK 'N' ROLL'S TRANSFORMATION INTO A CASH COW.

Byline: Dan Delucca Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Title: ``The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen and the Head-on Collision of Rock and Commerce''

Author: Fred Goodman

Data: $31 pages, Times Books; $25

Our rating: Three Stars

In ``The Mansion on the Hill,'' Fred Goodman shows how rock 'n' roll transformed the music industry from a comparatively modest $500 million business in 1962 to the $20 billion global moneymaking enterprise it is today.

Along the way, he argues, the music has been altered - mostly for the worse.

The rock 'n' roll Goodman remembers as he was coming of age in the 1960s presented adolescent baby boomers with a ``secret language'' they could use to understand the world and to dream of remaking it into a different, and perhaps even better place.

But ``The Mansion on the Hill'' isn't the story of the triumph of rock 'n' roll idealism. Quite the opposite. It's a saga of lost innocence: how the counterculture gave way to the culture of business. Or, as the longtime music biz reporter and critic puts it: ``The question - at least to someone my age - is no longer `Will rock and roll change the world?' but `How did the world change rock and roll?' ''

Goodman tells the tale through the prism of the careers of classic rockers Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen and that of music business mogul David Geffen.

The book's central parable is the rise of Geffen from entertainment industry wanna-be in the mail room of the William Morris Agency to exalted status as billionaire mogul, philanthropist and partner in DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

It's an ascendancy that Goodman portrays as representative of the victory of commerce over art. Indeed, Geffen's entrance into the Los Angeles music scene as a manager of singer-songwriters Laura Nyro and Jackson Browne is described by Paul Rothchild of Elektra Records as ``the beginning of the end of the love groove in American music. ... It used to be, `Let's make music, money is a by-product.' Then it becomes, `Let's make money, music is a by-product.' ''

The book's subtitle - ``Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen and the Head-on Collision of Rock and Commerce'' - is a trifle misleading. Goodman focuses more on the doings of the idolmakers who transformed the music than the musicians, particularly in the cases of Springsteen and Dylan.

For the most part, that's a good thing, because the wheelers and dealers in ``Mansion'' (which takes its name from a song title used by Hank Williams, Springsteen and Young) are a fascinating lot.

Along with Geffen, the book's other bad guy is the equally ambitious Jon Landau, who was Rolling Stone's top rock critic as an undergraduate at Brandeis in the mid-'60s, and later became Springsteen's producer, manager and guru.

The hero of ``Mansion'' is Neil Young, the artist whose combination of enduring relevance, penchant for unpredictable creative about-faces, and generation-spanning influence Goodman calls ``my idea of success.''

Among others Goodman introduces are Albert Grossman, Dylan's manager, whose farsightedness paved the way for more cynical visionaries such as Geffen; Ray Riepen, the Boston club, radio station and alternative-newspaper owner described as the ``first underground mogul''; Frank Barsalona, the talent agent who became a ``rock and roll kingmaker''; and Dee Anthony, the colorful manager whose three rules of success were 1) Get the money, 2) Remember to get the money, and 3) Don't forget to always remember to get the money.

The maneuverings of the mahoffs, as Goodman describes them, impacted on the careers of many a rocker and singer-songwriter, from Boston heroes Barry and the Remains and the J. Geils Band to revolutionary Detroit garage band the MC5 to Geffen's biggest sellers, the Eagles, who ``took their business as serious as they took their music, and ... were the only clients whose greed and ambition matched (Geffen's) own.''

Goodman tells many a juicy anecdote, from Dylan's strange encounter with movie director Otto Preminger to the on-the-record insults former Columbia Records chief Walter Yetnikoff hurled at Geffen. But ``Mansion on the Hill'' is a largely level-headed book that doesn't aim to be as incendiary as recent music business exposes such as Frederic Dannen's ``Hit Men'' or Bruce Haring's ``Off the Charts.''

Goodman can go overboard in his lionization of Young, whose every folly is forgiven as a display of his ``courage to fail.''

He also underestimates Springsteen - and his role in his own success - by painting Landau as a control-freak manipulator pulling strings a la Col. Tom Parker. But Goodman gives Springsteen hagiographer Dave Marsh a long-overdue comeuppance by quoting an observer who describes him as an ``insecure sycophant.'' And Goodman's description of Springsteen's transformation from an artist who held that ``the pressures of the business are powerless in the face of what is real'' into a carefully stage-managed multimillionaire hero of the working class is a valuable corrective to the usual Springsteen mythology.

But Goodman errs when describing Springsteen's ``Born in the U.S.A.''-era interest in the plight of Vietnam veterans as the ``sudden'' cynically charitable act of a budding superstar; Springsteen performed benefits for veterans as early as 1981.

Likewise, Goodman gets it wrong when he dismisses Springsteen's ``The River'' as ``mind numbingly redundant'' and ``Nebraska'' as being made up of ``borrowed ingredients.'' Goodman's emphasis on behind-the-scenes machinations obscures his feel for the music.

``The Mansion on the Hill'' occasionally bogs down in financial detail. Goodman would have come up with a more accurate portrayal of how the business affects the music if he had paid more attention to any of the post-'60s musical insurgencies - from punk to grunge - that were fueled in part by a need to revolt against the music business and were able to create a ``secret language'' of their own.

But by following the careers of Dylan, Young, Springsteen and their peers, Goodman is able to track the lofty dreams of the first generation to grow up on rock 'n' roll to their often-sorry consumer capitalist conclusions.

He has written a well-reported page-turner that profiles many of the more enthralling figures who impacted on - and benefited handsomely from - the runaway growth industry of rock 'n' roll.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--2) The influences of big money on the careers of Bruce Springsteen, left, and Bob Dylan are explored in Fred Goodman's ``The Mansion on the Hill.''