This infamous book has enjoyed a lively underground reputation since its first publication in 1970. Richard Meltzer (a.k.a. R. Meltzer) took his training as a young philosopher and applied it with unalloyed enthusiasm to the lyrics, sound, and culture of rock and roll. Never before had anyone noticed the relationship between the philosophy of Heidegger and a tune by Little Anthony and the Imperials, heard the cries of agony in the Shangri Las' "Remember (Walkin' in the Sand)," or transcribed every "papa-ooma-mow-mow" in the Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird."From Dionne Warwick to Plato, Jim...
This infamous book has enjoyed a lively underground reputation since its first publication in 1970. Richard Meltzer (a.k.a. R. Meltzer) took his train...
In 1978, Greil Marcus asked twenty writers on rock-including Dave Marsh, Lester Bangs, Nick Tosches, Ellen Willis, and Robert Christgau-a question: What one rock-and-roll album would you take to a desert island? The resulting essays were collected in Stranded, twenty passionate declarations to such albums as The Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet, the Ramones' Rocket to Russia, Something Else by the Kinks, and more. Universally revered as the ur-text of rock journalism, Stranded is an indispensable classic.
In 1978, Greil Marcus asked twenty writers on rock-including Dave Marsh, Lester Bangs, Nick Tosches, Ellen Willis, and Robert Christgau-a question: Wh...
In June of 1992, when all the polls showed that Bill Clinton didn't have a chance, he took his saxophone onto the Arsenio Hall show, put on dark glasses, and blew "Heartbreak Hotel." Greil Marcus, one of America's most imaginative and insightful popular culture critics, was the first to name this as the moment that turned Clinton's campaign around--and to make sense of why. Double Trouble draws on articles Marcus published from 1992 to 2000 to explore the remarkable and illuminating kinship between Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley--and, moreover, to explore how culture is made and...
In June of 1992, when all the polls showed that Bill Clinton didn't have a chance, he took his saxophone onto the Arsenio Hall show, put on dark gl...
A London Times Literary Supplement Best Book of the Year
In this exhilarating and kaleidoscopic investigation of American identity, Greil Marcus traces the nation's fable of self invention from its earliest Puritan beginnings to its successive retellings in the work of diverse contemporary artists. Marcus considers the birth of America as a New Jerusalem, a place of promises so vast that they could only be betrayed--and how from...
Praised by Robbie Robertson of The Band as "a classic & a ticket to ride," The Rose & the Briar assembles an astonishing group of writers and artists: Paul Muldoon, Stanley Crouch, R. Crumb, Jon Langford of the Mekons, Sharyn McCrumb, Luc Sante, Joyce Carol Oates, Dave Marsh, and more than a dozen other novelists, essayists, performers, and critics; to explore the ineffable power of the American ballad. From "Barbara Allen" through "The Wreck of the Old 97" to contemporary ballads by Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, The Rose & the Briar is, as Geoffrey O'Brien hailed in the Los Angeles Times...
Praised by Robbie Robertson of The Band as "a classic & a ticket to ride," The Rose & the Briar assembles an astonishing group of writers and artists:...
Politics has taken a cultural turn in America, and the arts are at the center of today's culture wars. In this book, some of our most prominent cultural critics explore the relationships between culture and politics as played out in the world of novels, television, museums, and even fashion. The authors John Simon, Greil Marcus, Arthur C. Danto, and other well-known commentators from across the political spectrum examine the arts in their relation to democracy and consider whether and how they serve one another. The authors consider such topics as high and popular culture in democratic...
Politics has taken a cultural turn in America, and the arts are at the center of today's culture wars. In this book, some of our most prominent cultur...
Greil Marcus saw Bob Dylan for the first time in a New Jersey field in 1963. He didn't know the name of the scruffy singer who had a bit part in a Joan Baez concert, but he knew his performance was unique. So began a dedicated and enduring relationship between America's finest critic of popular music "simply peerless," in Nick Hornby's words, "not only as a rock writer but as a cultural historian" and Bob Dylan, who in 2016 won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In Like A Rolling Stone Marcus locates Dylan's six-minute masterwork in its richest, fullest context, capturing the heady...
Greil Marcus saw Bob Dylan for the first time in a New Jersey field in 1963. He didn't know the name of the scruffy singer who had a bit part in a Joa...
Was punk just another moment in music history, a flash in time when a group of young rebels exploded in a fury of raw sound, outrageous styles, and in-your-face attitude? Greil Marcus, author of the renowned Lipstick Traces, delves into the after-life of punk as a much richer phenomenon--a form of artistic and social rebellion that continually erupts into popular culture.
In more than seventy short pieces written over fifteen years, he traces the uncompromising strands of punk from Johnny Rotten to Elvis Costello, Sonic Youth, even Bruce Springsteen. Marcus's unparalleled...
Was punk just another moment in music history, a flash in time when a group of young rebels exploded in a fury of raw sound, outrageous styles, and...
This book is a quest to understand Van Morrison's particular genius through a close look at the most extraordinary and unclassifiable moments in his long career, beginning in 1965 and continuing in full force to this day: sometimes entire songs, sometimes single words or even the guttural spaces between words that become musical events in themselves.
This book is a quest to understand Van Morrison's particular genius through a close look at the most extraordinary and unclassifiable moments in his l...
A Special Edition with a New Introduction and an Updated Discography
This is Greil Marcus's acclaimed book on the secret music made by Bob Dylan and the Band in 1967, which introduced a phrase that has become part of the culture: "the old, weird America." It is this country that the book maps--the "playground of God, Satan, tricksters, Puritans, confidence men, illuminati, braggarts, preachers, anonymous poets of all stripes" (Luc Sante, New York magazine). In honor of Dylan's seventieth birthday, this special edition includes a new introduction, an updated discography, and a...
A Special Edition with a New Introduction and an Updated Discography
This is Greil Marcus's acclaimed book on the secret music made by Bob Dy...
