Jay McInerney launched a whole new genre in 1984 with the publication of Bright Lights, Big City. Not so successful was the musical version, with words and music by Scottish rocker Paul Scott Goodman; it disappeared after an off-Broadway run in 1999. Now a new version of the story of the drug-fueled club scene comes to the Prince Music Theater. This version is so radically rewritten that Goodman calls it a world premiere.

The show concentrates on the protagonist, a kid who moves to New York to work on a magazine and gets sucked into a world of alcohol and drugs. The rock score is mostly the same, "but maybe now critics won't dismiss it as a rip-off of Jonathan Larson," says Goodman. "Maybe now it will be allowed to stand on its own." (Goodman was a friend and sometime collaborator of Rent creator Larson, who died in 1996.)

"I moved to New York myself in 1984," says Goodman, "tasted adventure, went to clubs and did drugs, so I understand McInerney's story." Goodman's reworking of Bright Lights had one concert presentation and was recorded on the Sh-K-Boom label. This Prince production is its first staging.

"I saw the show in 1999," says director Stafford Arima, "and the things I remember most are Paul's incredible music and poetry and the story about transformation." Arima, whose staging of Altar Boyz is a New York hit, points out that the protagonist battles drug addiction but "Bright Lights is a universal story because we all have our addictions. Even in the darkest of circumstances you can come out of that darkness and be reborn. It's emotional and theatrical."