BEFORE the music business was all about YouTube stars and digital downloads, it was a mad rock 'n' roll circus where sex and drugs were part of the act for the larger-than-life musicians on stage and the sleazy record label execs working behind the scene.

Just ask The Rolling Stones' frontman Mick Jagger, who is the executive producer of HBO's latest original series Vinyl. Together with Martin Scorsese, who directed the two-hour pilot, and screenwriter Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire), the show mixes facts with fiction and is an intriguing warts-and-all expose of the industry in New York during the 1970s.

The debauchery is seen through the eyes of Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale), the desperate president of a record company who has seen better days. In the frantic opening episode, he is trying to sell his business to the Germans but keeps getting sidetracked by a couple of things.