A 50th anniversary edition of the music classic, with fully updated discographies and new introductions from Greil Marcus and Dwight GarnerIn this special 50th anniversary edition of the beloved Plume backlist staple first released in 1975, Mystery Train's complex analysis of the relationship between rock 'n' roll music and America is given new life with updated discographies and new introductions by Greil Marcus and Dwight Garner.Rather than provi...

"No previous writer has so transportingly or authoritatively revealed Mr. Dylan against receding vistas of American music and culture." —Robert Polito, The New York Times Book ReviewGreil Marcus's widely acclaimed book is about the secret music (the so-called "Basement Tapes") made by Bob Dylan and the Band while in seclusion in Woodstock, New York, in 1967 a folksy yet funky, furious yet hilarious music that remains as seductive and baffling today as it w...

Greil Marcus, author of Mystery Train, widely acclaimed as the best book ever written about America as seen through its music, began work on this new book out of a fascination with the Sex Pistols: that scandalous antimusical group, invented in London in 1975 and dead within two years, which sparked the emergence of the culture called punk. “I am an antichrist!” shouted singer Johnny Rotten—where in the world of pop music did that come from? Looking for an answer, with a high sens...

Acclaimed cultural critic Greil Marcus tells the story of Bob Dylan through the lens of seven penetrating songs"Marcus delivers yet another essential work of music journalism."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"Further elevates Marcus to what he has always been: a supreme artist-critic."—Hilton Als"Greil Marcus is already the most important chronicler of Dylan. But here he outdoes himself."—Rachel KushnerAcross seven decades, Bob Dylan has been the first singer of...

The legendary critic and author of Mystery Train "ingeniously retells the tale of rock and roll" ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).Unlike previous versions of rock 'n' roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs and dramatizes how each embodies rock 'n' roll as a thing in itself, in the story it tells, in...

Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan's life in music is revisited by his foremost interpreter -- weaving individual moods and moments into a brilliant history of their changing times.The book begins in Berkeley in 1968, and ends with a piece on Dylan's show at the University of Minnesota -- his very first appearance at his alma mater -- on election night 2008. In between are moments of euphoric discovery: From Marcus's liner notes for the 1967 Basement Tapes (pop music's m...

The first illustrated history of rockabilly music from the 1950s to the twenty-first century.It was the twang heard 'round the world: Rockabilly was born out of country, bluegrass, jazz, and the blues in the 1950s, becoming rock 'n' roll and ruling the world. Here's the story of Elvis Presley's first Sun records that inspired all. And here's Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and many more rockabillies from the gol...

A fan from the moment the Doors' first album took over KMPX, the revolutionary FM rock & roll station in San Francisco, Greil Marcus saw the band many times at the legendary Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom in 1967. Five years later it was all over. Forty years after the singer Jim Morrison was found dead in Paris and the group disbanded, one could drive from here to there, changing from one FM pop station to another, and be all but guaranteed to hear two, three, four Doors song...

"Van Morrison," says Greil Marcus, "remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of modern popular music." When Astral Weeks was released in 1968, it was largely ignored. When it was rereleased as a live album in 2009 it reached the top of the Billboard charts, a first for any Van Morrison recording. The wild swings in the music, mirroring the swings in Morrison's success and in people's appreciation (or lack of it) of his music, make Van Morrison one o...

**From a celebrated critic, a heartfelt and adventurous reflection on the art of writing about art“Essential for fans of Marcus and fruitful reading for anyone reflecting on the mysteries of art.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)**“Writers write. They can’t help it. They can’t not.” In this spirited book, the revered cultural critic Greil Marcus explains his compulsion as a yearning for fun, for play, and, most of all, to discover—to feel the moment when a creation ...

From the author of Mystery Train and Lipstick Traces, an exhilarating and provocative investigation of the tangle of American identity"America is a place and a story, made up of exuberance and suspicion, crime and liberation, lynch mobs and escapes; its greatest testaments are made of portents and warnings, biblical allusions that lose all certainty in the American air." It is this story of self-invention and nationhood that Greil Marcus rediscovers, begin...

For nearly thirty years, Greil Marcus has written a remarkable column called “Real Life Rock Top Ten.” It has been a laboratory where he has fearlessly explored and wittily dissected an enormous variety of cultural artifacts, from songs to books to movies to advertisements. Taken together, his musings, reflections, and sallies amount to a subtle and implicit theory of how cultural objects fall through time and circumstance and often deliver unintended consequences, both in the present an...