Doing Business With ‘Sopranos’

The dysfunctional mob family of the HBO series “The Sopranos” proved a poor fit in the music business in one of the acclaimed show’s story lines.

But in real life “The Sopranos” has now muscled its way into the record world. Prospects for a soundtrack album look like an an offer music executives can’t refuse.

“Most guys in the record business watch the show religiously and just wanted to be a part of it,” says one top major-label executive who was initially in on the feeding frenzy to make a deal for the album, but withdrew as the bidding escalated.

The music placed in the show by creator David Chase has been enticing and mysterious, with odd, often obscure choices always enhancing the edgy mood. With the series just into a ballyhooed rerun airing and with production just beginning on a second season, bidding for an album tied to the tales reached a fever pitch in recent weeks.

The inside track seems to have gone to Sony Music, with the album to be on Playtone Records, Sony’s joint venture with Tom Hanks (it’s the home of soundtracks from his “That Thing You Do” movie and HBO miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon”).

Insiders also say that the Interscope and Maverick labels still seem to be in the mix. Interscope will have some involvement regardless, since the dark, electronic song that sets the show’s tone over the opening credits is “Woke Up This Morning” by the English band A3, which came out on Geffen Records, recently absorbed into the Interscope group. The irony is that the interest in “The Sopranos” came too late to save A3 from being dropped by Interscope as part of roster cuts in the wake of the merger.

A representative of Elemental, A3’s English label, says it’s too early to assess what the exposure will mean in terms of a new U.S. deal. But the group (whose full name is Alabama 3) will soon have new music to offer suitors--it’s currently working on a follow-up to the 1997 U.S. debut “Hot Rocks and Coldharbour,” which contained “Woke Up This Morning.” The band’s mix of English electronica and Southern rock and gospel intrigued critics, but was commercially negligible.

There’s also an enticement from the potential musical presence of Steven Van Zandt, who appears on the show as an actor--though there’s no word whether the E Street Band guitarist, who’s working on a new solo album, will contribute to the soundtrack project. He will be returning for the second season, even though it means flying back and forth to New York from stops on the reunion tour of the E Streeters with Bruce Springsteen.

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PRO BONO: U2 is expecting to finish its next album by the end of this month. But don’t look for the recordings, being produced in Dublin by the band with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois (the team behind “The Unforgettable Fire” and “The Joshua Tree”), to be released before the end of the year, says singer Bono, who describes the album as being stripped back down to the band’s rock roots, in contrast to the recent electronic experiments.

“What we thought we might do is not race with it under our arms into a rehearsal studio and then out on the road,” he told Pop Eye during a break from the sessions. “We may instead actually do what we read other groups do--proper groups--and actually listen to it for a few weeks and then decide, is it missing something or can we make something better? Actually live with it. This has never happened with us.”

Meanwhile, Bono is taking another break this weekend to lead activities in Cologne, Germany, where the Jubilee 2000 campaign is petitioning the G-8--the leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations--to forgive the massive debt owed by Third World countries. Bono has taken a leading role in the effort, having had meetings with a number of politicians and economists, including President Clinton. He’s also been involved with finishing production of “The Million Dollar Hotel,” a film by Wim Wenders from a story written by the singer and starring Mel Gibson.

“I won’t be giving up my day job,” he says. “But when you’re working on a record--a very unpretentious record, which is difficult for us, very bare-boned and raw emotionally--working on debt relief or the movie is such a delight because they’re concrete ideas. And they all feed back into each other.”

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BOOK ‘EM: If stories about organized crime draw music business interest, stories about the music business are drawing Hollywood’s attention, with Martin Scorsese and Cameron Crowe (“Jerry Maguire”), among others, currently developing movies set in the music world.

In that climate, a very hot property among movie producers last week was an as-yet-unpublished novel titled “A&R;” by Bill Flanagan, senior vice president and editorial director at VH1 and former editor of Musician magazine. The book is set in the world of music talent scouts and features characters who in places are clearly modeled after real-life figures.

Flanagan, though flattered by the interest, cautions that what was sent to producers was an early draft and with publication still a year away, it may be revised.