In 1965, Bob Dylan's watershed electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival launched a musical revolution: rock musicuntil then a pop, essentially trivial, medium - was transformed overnight into the personal art form of a generation in search of authenticity and values, a generation that swore itself forever different. Thirty years later, rock music is the backbone of a $20 billion global business, its celebrity performers key assets for multinational entertainment firms like Time Warner and Sony.

Rock and roll was supposed to change the world. How did the world change rock and roll? The Mansion on the Hill is the story of that seduction, a social and cultural history unlike any other book on rock or the entertainment business.

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The Mansion on the Hill - a song title used successively by Hank Williams, Bruce Springsteen, and Neil Young to suggest very different things - chronicles the contradictions and ambiguities of a generation that spurned and sought success with equal passion. Fred Goodman, a music critic and entertainment-industry reporter for the past fifteen years, masterfully explores the gray gulf between populism and popularity.

Both an indictment of misspent passion and a hopeful search for those who have risen but remained true, The Mansion on the Hill measures a generation against the yardstick of its own aspirations and dreams.