Shady dealings, art of communication vivify ‘Vinyl’

BOBBY Cannavale plays a drug-using record executive.

A music executive happily walks away from tons of debris, after narrowly escaping certain death in a collapsed condemned building, with a renewed sense of purpose—it’s an incredible turning point in the life of record company boss, Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale), who has been dealing with various soul-crushing problems only days before.

In the new HBO series, “Vinyl” (Mondays, 10 a.m. and 10 p.m.), Richie and a few others’ stories are intertwined, presenting a clear picture of the hazy music scene in the early 1970s. It’s mostly an unfettered era of sex, drugs, rock and roll—and, in just as copious amounts, drama and ambition.

Cocreated by rock star Mick Jagger, filmmaker Martin Scorsese, writer Rich Cohen and producer Terence Winter, the series delves into an industry’s dirty, salacious secrets, while depicting universal desires and intriguing backstories.

In the first episode, those elements are encapsulated in the life of Richie, a former bartender who shifted careers until he eventually became president of a problematic company years later.

Labyrinthine

Directed by Scorsese, the pilot episode is a long, nearly two-hour journey into Richie’s labyrinthine career and, ultimately, how he got his groove back.

Poised to sell the company that’s experiencing difficult times, he figures in an incident as an accessory to a grisly crime. While defending himself from a brutal colleague, the latter is killed by another violent contact.

The boozing, cocaine-snorting Richie is married to a domesticated ex-party fixture (Olivia Wilde), Devon, who also gets to share her involving story with similarly long flashbacks, but as ruminative daydreams, in the second episode.

In one such scenario, she is joined in the car by Karen Carpenter, played by Natalie Prass, who lip-syncs to Aimee Mann’s distinctly calming cover of “Yesterday Once More.”

But it’s still about Richie’s complicated life, mostly. Surviving that collapsed building gives the record exec a second chance to restructure his company and go on a tighter, more focused direction—in his drug-addled state, he’s still quite the motivator to his befuddled A&R (artist and repertoire) staff, tasking them with looking for worthy artists: “It’s all about the songs—can you hum it? Will you remember it tomorrow? Does it make you want to call the radio station and ask who the band they just played was? Think back to the first time you heard a song that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, made you want to dance, or f**k, or go out and kick somebody’s a**!”

Its gritty encounters and drawn-out struggles are sometimes challenging to watch, but “Vinyl” commits to uncovering sides to the art of communication, apart from expounding on the shady dealings of its less-than-upstanding characters.