ATLANTIC CROSSING: Can Danny Goldberg, best known...

ATLANTIC CROSSING: Can Danny Goldberg, best known for managing such mainstream artists as Bonnie Raitt and Belinda Carlisle, turn staid Atlantic Records into a cutting-edge showcase?

That’s what Atlantic chief Doug Morris hopes: Morris has hired Goldberg as Atlantic’s senior vice president, West Coast, with the responsibility of bringing the venerable company up to speed with new music.

That may sound odd to those who associate Goldberg with Raitt, the biggest star in his Gold Mountain management firm’s stable, and with his own Gold Mountain Records label, which concentrated on such old folkies as Joan Baez and Judy Collins with little commercial success.

But a few years ago Goldberg saw Gold Mountain falling out of step with the music world and took action to change that. Now the management company boasts such hip roster entries as Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Hole and the Beastie Boys.

It’s the same transformation Morris hopes Goldberg, 41, will work at Atlantic. “He brings us instant credibility,” Morris says. “He will help us in an area that we have been weak: new music.”

Atlantic has already made some steps to build its “alternative” roster, signing such young artists as singer-songwriter Tori Amos and the band King’s X. Atlantic is also distributing the new Interscope label (which has the prized Primus and recently signed hot New York band Helmet and Chicago industrialists My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult).

“I think there’s a generational turning of the page,” Goldberg says of his new role. “Young record buyers want something that doesn’t feel like what their five-year-older brothers want. That’s very exciting.”