Greil Marcus | |
|---|---|
 Marcus at Festival SOS 4.8 in Murcia, 2014 | |
| Born | June 19, 1945 San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Author, critic, journalist |
| Known for | Rock critic for Rolling Stone , Creem , the Village Voice , and Pitchfork |
| Spouse | Jenny Marcus (m. 1966) |
Greil Marcus (born June 19, 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics.
Marcus was born Greil Gerstley in San Francisco, California, the only son of Greil Gerstley and Eleanor Gerstley (née Hyman). [2] His father, a naval officer, died in December 1944, when a Philippine typhoon sank the USS Hull, on which he was serving as second-in-command. [2] Admiral William Halsey had ordered the U.S. Third Fleet to sail into Typhoon Cobra "to see what they were made of," [3] and, despite the crew's urging, Gerstley refused to disobey the order, arguing that there had never been a mutiny in the history of the U.S. Navy and that "somebody had to die". The incident inspired the novel The Caine Mutiny . [2] Eleanor Gerstley was three months pregnant when her husband died. In 1948, she married Gerald Marcus, who adopted her son and gave the boy his surname. [3] Greil Marcus has several half-siblings. [4]
His wife is Jennelle Marcus (née Berstein). [2]
Marcus earned an undergraduate degree in American studies from the University of California, Berkeley, where he also undertook graduate studies in political science. [5] He often cited as a major influence a Berkeley political science professor, Michael Rogin, of whom he said: "That course had more to do with putting me on the path I've followed ever since, for good or ill, than anything else." [6]
He has been a rock critic and columnist for Rolling Stone (where he was the first reviews editor) and other publications, including Creem , the Village Voice , Artforum , and Pitchfork . From 1983 to 1989, he was on the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle. [5] Since 1966 he has been married to Jenny Marcus, with whom he has two daughters. [1] Marcus' daughter Emily died on January 31, 2023 of cancer. [7]
His book Mystery Train (published in 1975 and in its sixth revised and updated edition in 2015) is notable for placing rock and roll in the context of American cultural archetypes, from Moby-Dick to The Great Gatsby to Stagger Lee. Marcus's "recognition of the unities in the American imagination that already exist" inspired countless rock journalists. [8] On August 30, 2011, Time magazine published a list of its selection of the 100 best nonfiction books since 1923, when the magazine was first published; Mystery Train was on the list, one of only five books dealing with culture and the only one on the subject of American music. Writing for The New York Times , Dwight Garner said, "Mystery Train is among the few works of criticism that can move me to something close to tears. It reverberated in my young mind like the E major chord that ends the Beatles' "A Day in the Life." [9]
His next book, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989), stretched his trademark riffing across a century of Western civilization. Positing punk rock as a transhistorical cultural phenomenon, Marcus examined philosophical connections between subjects as diverse as medieval heretics, Dada, the Situationists, and the Sex Pistols.
Marcus published Dead Elvis , a collection of writings about Elvis Presley, in 1991, and Ranters and Crowd Pleasers (reissued as In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music), an examination of post-punk political pop, in 1993.
Using bootleg recordings of Bob Dylan as a starting point, he dissected the American subconscious in Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, published in 1997. [10]
He writes the column "Elephant Dancing" for Interview and "Real Life Rock Top Ten" [11] for The Believer . He occasionally teaches graduate courses in American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, [5] and teaches a lecture class, "The Old Weird America: Music as Democratic Speech – From the Commonplace Song to Bob Dylan", at the New School. [12] During the fall of 2008, he held the Winton Chair in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, where he taught and lectured on the history of American pop culture. [13]
His book When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison was published in March 2010. [14] It focuses on "Marcus's quest to understand Van Morrison's particular genius through the extraordinary and unclassifiable moments in his long career". [15] [16] The title is derived from Morrison's 1997 song "Rough God Goes Riding".
He subsequently published book, Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968–2010 (2010) and The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years (2011).
The Los Angeles Review of Books in 2012 published a 20,000-word interview with Marcus about his life. [17] A collection of his interviews, edited by Joe Bonomo, was published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2012.
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Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist and critic. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines and was also a performing musician. The music critic Jim DeRogatis called him "America's greatest rock critic".
Sir George Ivan MorrisonOBE is a singer-songwriter and musician from Northern Ireland whose recording career spans seven decades.
"Like a Rolling Stone" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on July 20, 1965, by Columbia Records. Its confrontational lyrics originated in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhausted from a grueling tour of England. Dylan distilled this draft into four verses and a chorus. "Like a Rolling Stone" was recorded a few weeks later as part of the sessions for the forthcoming album Highway 61 Revisited.
Before the Flood is a live album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and The Band, released on June 20, 1974, on Asylum Records in the United States and Island Records in the United Kingdom. It was Dylan's first live album, although live recordings of earlier performances would later be released. It is the 15th album by Dylan and the seventh by the Band, and documents their joint 1974 American tour. It peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, reached No. 8 on the popular album chart in the UK, and has been certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Mojo is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom, initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title that would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music. The magazine was designed to appeal to the 30 to 45-plus age group, or the baby boomer generation. Mojo was first published on 15 October 1993. In keeping with its classic rock aesthetic, the first issue had Bob Dylan and John Lennon as its first cover stars. Noted for its in-depth coverage of both popular and cult acts, it acted as the inspiration for Blender and Uncut. Many noted music critics have written for it, including Charles Shaar Murray, Greil Marcus, Nick Kent, David Fricke, Jon Savage and Mick Wall. The launch editor of Mojo was Paul Du Noyer and his successors have included Mat Snow, Paul Trynka, Pat Gilbert and Phil Alexander. The current editor is John Mulvey.
Dave Marsh is an American music critic and radio talk show host. He was an early editor of Creem magazine, has written for various publications such as Newsday, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone, and has published numerous books about music and musicians, mostly focused on rock music. He is also a committee member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Healing Game is the twenty-sixth studio album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison, released in 1997 by Polydor. It reached the Top Ten in four countries, and the Top Twenty in three more. Following two overtly jazz albums, it saw Morrison adding blues and a pop sensibility. It is the only album recorded after 1980 which Rolling Stone judged to be among his ten best, calling it "a clear highlight of his mid-period discography".
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter. Often considered to be one of the greatest songwriters in history, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his 60-year career. He rose to prominence in the 1960s, when songs such as "The Times They Are a-Changin'" (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements. Initially modeling his style on Woody Guthrie's folk songs, Robert Johnson's blues and what he called the "architectural forms" of Hank Williams's country songs, Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it "with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry". His lyrics incorporated political, social and philosophical influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the burgeoning counterculture.
The Basement Tapes is the sixteenth album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and his second with the Band. It was released on June 26, 1975, by Columbia Records. Two-thirds of the album's 24 tracks feature Dylan on lead vocals backed by the Band, and were recorded in 1967, eight years before the album's release, in the lapse between the release of Blonde on Blonde and the subsequent recording and release of John Wesley Harding, during sessions that began at Dylan's house in Woodstock, New York, then moved to the basement of Big Pink. While most of these had appeared on bootleg albums, The Basement Tapes marked their first official release. The remaining eight songs, all previously unavailable, feature the Band without Dylan and were recorded between 1967 and 1975.
Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (1997) is a book by music critic Greil Marcus about the creation and cultural importance of The Basement Tapes, a series of recordings made by Bob Dylan in 1967 in collaboration with the Hawks, who would subsequently become known as the Band. (ISBN 0-8050-5842-7)
Michael Gray is a British author who has written extensively about Bob Dylan and popular music.
"Tears of Rage" is a song with lyrics written by Bob Dylan and music by Richard Manuel. Dylan and the Band first recorded the song in 1967, but it was not released until 1975 on The Basement Tapes album. In 1968, the Band recorded it for their debut album Music from Big Pink.
"Too Much of Nothing" is a song written by Bob Dylan in 1967, first released by him on the album The Basement Tapes (1975).
"Rough God Goes Riding" is the opening song on the album, The Healing Game by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. The song reached No. 168 on the UK charts. One of the B-sides of the single, the alternative version of "The Healing Game", appears on all three editions of Morrison's 2007 compilation album Still on Top - The Greatest Hits. The other B-side "At the End of the Day" was released as a bonus track on the 2008 reissue of The Healing Game.
This is a list of books published by and about Bob Dylan.
Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes is an album produced by T Bone Burnett featuring a collective of musicians recording under the moniker The New Basement Tapes—Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James and Marcus Mumford.
Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'N' Roll Music is a non-fiction book written in 1975 by Greil Marcus. It features critical essays centered around artists such as Elvis Presley, Sly Stone, Robert Johnson, and Randy Newman.
Critic's Choice: Top 200 Albums is a musical reference book compiled by American-British journalist and broadcaster Paul Gambaccini. It was first published in the United Kingdom by Omnibus Press in January 1978, and then by Quick Fox in the US. The book comprises an annotated and illustrated list of the best albums in popular music, as selected from top-ten lists provided by its 47 contributors. As a multi-contributor work seeking to critique rock and pop albums, Critic's Choice preceded The Rolling Stone Record Guide and the Greil Marcus-edited Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island, both published in 1979. It was followed by several other books that classified the best pop recordings.
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