The decision to drop out of college hardly seems like the first step toward becoming a big success in business.

But for Ron Bellanti, ditching his books and class schedules for a life on the road with rock band Van Halen was the beginning of his now-successful career in music management and marketing.

It's been more than 20 years since Andover resident Bellanti ditched Northern Essex Community College after his freshman year and became a rock 'n' roll roadie.

Now the owner of his own record company, Illumina Records in Beverly, Bellanti saw the full range of human emotion and behavior while on the road, working at more than 3,000 concerts by his estimation.

But it was one event in 1989 that changed his path.

It was that year that Bellanti witnessed a drunken-driving fatality, and had a teenage girl die in his arms in the parking lot of a concert. The girl was thrown from a pickup truck driven by her friends, who had been drinking. Even though it was 18 years ago, the image of her death will always stay in his mind's eye, he said.

"I've had a career of highlights, and that was a lowlight," he said. "That made me decide to do something different."

Bellanti -- whose father was a state trooper -- knew that not everyone had a strong anti-drunken driving voice at home like he did.

So with music business booming, he created the Ground Control program, the largest drunken-driving prevention campaign on the Internet, which uses rock music to present the message that "not driving drunk is cool," said Bellanti.

"Ground Control is designed to put it in the front of their head that drunk driving is bad," said the 45-year-old.

A Lawrence native, Bellanti has lived in Andover for three years.

"It's worth millions, the feeling you get when a parent says my child's (drunken driving) death was not in vain," said Bellanti. "There's no amount of money that can compare. It makes you feel like your life's got some purpose to it. It's a great job to come to every day."

Ground Control spreads an anti-drunken driving message through MySpace.com, which teens visit to hear the rock bands on the Illumina label. They also periodically produce regional compilation CDs, bringing together rock bands from a specific city and dedicating the album to a teen victim of a drunken-driving fatality.

"We use the No. 1 social tool for kids. Everybody has a MySpace page," he said. "We create a virtual marketing technique, and in the middle of it is our drunk driving message."

Through Ground Control's "Arrive Alive" events at high schools, Bellanti puts together a schoolwide assembly, where students hear from parents of children killed by drunken drivers; law enforcement; nurses; firefighters; or inmates that are doing time for drunken-driving accidents. Another version of Arrive Alive arranges rock bands to play at high schools, pausing between songs to talk about not driving drunk.

"The kids are never disrespectful (in Ground Control assemblies). When you bring a parent of a dead kid in, you could hear a pin drop," he said. "It's less of a speech and more of an interview."

Ground Control receives corporate sponsorship. Before Bellanti had contact with bands through Illumina, he partnered with radio stations for Ground Control events.

Illumina Records -- which he runs with his business partner Andrew Swaine, an entertainment photographer -- finds unsigned bands through the Internet and MySpace.com and promotes them, producing albums apart from the corporate record labels that have long ruled the industry.

"Huge record labels are dinosaurs. The day of the recording studio is over; all you need is a laptop to record yourself now. The genie's out of the bottle," said Bellanti. "You can make your own CD, and not be reliant on radio stations. You no longer need to bow before the god of commercial radio. Now a band from Andover can be heard instantly all over the country (through the Internet)."

Illumina operates out of three offices in downtown Beverly, with a staff of young, Web-savvy people that spend their days looking for and contacting new bands online. Besides scores of laptops and computer equipment, the laid-back office has posters of Illumina bands and characters from the television show "South Park" on the walls.

"These kids ride skateboards to work," said Bellanti with a smile, motioning to his staff, most wearing blue jeans and sitting at a laptop, some with headphones, listening to rock music.

He decided to start Illumina Records two years ago, after learning to use computers and the Internet from friends. Before that, he was completely "computer illiterate," he said. Now, he works "like 90 hours a week," between Illumina and Ground Control, he said with a smile.

Looking back, Bellanti said that if he could give himself advice as he was making the decision to quit college, he'd say, "Do something you love, and the rest will take care of itself. In the end, try and leave the world a better place."