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By Brent Hopkins

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

The rock ’n’ roll business presents an odd dichotomy within itself.

On one hand, it’s rock ’n’ roll – big cars, trips to Rio, hit singles and all that glitz you see on “Behind the Music.” In terms of coolness, not much can beat it.

On the other hand, though, it’s business – calculators, obnoxious guys in bad suits and stock market quotes. It’s what your parents tell you to study in college when you’ve taken too many creative writing classes and they’re worried about you getting a real job. In terms of coolness, pretty much everything beats it.

So when you hear the premise of Bill Flanagan’s novel, “A&R,” an informative look at the management side of music, it’s hard to wonder why anyone would bother penning a 342-page missive on the subject. Well, whatever Flanagan’s reasons were for writing about artists and repertoire businessmen, (those guys perpetually looking to shove music into niche markets and make millions), he wrote an incredibly good book.

Given the somewhat dry, superficial nature of the subject, Flanagan does a masterful job of making it a compelling read. The characters have depth, the plot cruises along at a comfortable pace and, heck, the cover art is pretty cool too.

The text centers principally on Jim Cantone, a rising young A&R (artists and repertoire) man struggling to fit into the odd scene of WorldWide Records. He’s the true music junkie, the one who loves bands for their character more than their marketability. Unfortunately, as a businessman, he’s also got to make money with those same bands, which doesn’t always line up with what his emotions would dictate.

Cantone bounces off two main players: Wild Bill DeGaul, the screwball CEO of WorldWide who epitomizes all the gaudy, flashy things you’d expect from a rock executive; and JB Booth, his scheming second-in-command. This triumvirate bounces its way across the globe, desperately trying to keep the WorldWide empire together.

All the scenes with DeGaul on hand are pure pleasure to read. His attempts to live up to his none-too-subtle name can be a little too ridiculous at times – most readers could probably do without learning those pills that “saved my life in Uganda in the seventies. They seal your every orifice with cement.” Most of the time, however, he’s fun to have along for the ride.

Booth presents a more balanced character, and Flanagan deserves a good deal of credit for not making him a totally one-sided jerk. While DeGaul’s underling is an out-and-out conniver, no doubt, the background details that formed him give his character interesting substance. An ex-marine with a shark’s sense for business, he makes a good counterpart for DeGaul’s outlandish personality.

Watching Cantone negotiate his way through the music biz is interesting. While he starts out as a naive farm boy, wearing combat boots and thrift-store fashions to work, he quickly learns how to stomp with the big dogs. Readers may cringe a little when he shucks his boots for loafers without socks, but they’ll enjoy following him through all the twists and turns of getting a band into the Top 40.

Flanagan’s real coup de grace is his ability to make a strange, intricate world into one that the average reader can understand. The complexities of international entertainment aren’t so confusing, after Flanagan works his way through them. For once, you don’t have to be a part of the old boys’ club that is the music industry to figure out how it works.

The scary thing is once you’ve read about 100 pages into it, you start thinking like the businessmen do. You agree with Booth when he lambasts Cantone for trying to make a record that no one will buy, just because it’s got good music. You start thinking about the bottom line, rather than the music, and until the book nears its climax, all the entertainers seem like sniveling punks rather than artists. It’s a little frightening to think that even the most diehard music fans can be converted like this, so maybe Flanagan’s just a little too good as a writer.

This is not to say that “A&R” doesn’t have its faults – Cantone is just too relentlessly nice, throughout (kind of like Clark Kent, only better). And while the overall conclusion of the story is satisfying, its final scene is too much like something out of a children’s movie to blend well with the otherwise serious plot.

Overall, the book is more than worthwhile. Hey, according to the jacket notes, even Lou Reed liked it. And if the dour, sullen guy behind “Heroin” and “Walk on the Wild Side” describes something as “laugh-out-loud funny,” it must be at least mildly entertaining.