Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music PDF
Preview Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music
A PLUME BOOK MYSTERY TRAIN Outstanding Praise for Mystery Train “When Greil Marcus writes about Elvis you feel the relationship between the star and the scribe is elemental; you feel the writer somehow lives inside the performer’s style and catches his breath at a very personal-seeming eruption of meaning in the life and the work.” —Andrew O’Hagan, The New York Review of Books, 2003 “Marcus writes criticism like Dylan writes songs.” —Ron Jacobs, Counterpunch, 2005 “I’ll never forget the seismic shock I experienced reading [Marcus’s] first book, Mystery Train. . . . The book profiles six artists who he believes articulate the inherent contradictions of American culture: between freedom and servitude, tolerance and prejudice, opportunity and repression—in short, the disconnect between reality and certain enduring American myths. Marcus was audacious enough to claim that rock artists can be on equal footing with other great creators, and persuasive enough to make the argument stick.” —Marc Weingarten, author of The Gang That Wouldn’t Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Capote, and the New Journalism Revolution “Mystery Train and Lipstick Traces remain two of the most compelling investigations of music ever published.” —J. Gabriel Boylan, Salon, 2006 “Marcus’s M.O. has always been to begin with a work—film, novel, song, career —and draw circles of reference outward to see where that work touches other works, other careers, other arts; and then how it implicates and is in turn implicated by the politics, crimes, and blunt fact of American life. As the breadth of that referential radius widens, connections snap and abstractions are jolted awake. Pretty soon the work (Bob Dylan’s The Basement Tapes) or career (Elvis Presley) becomes an active nerve center, its far-flung tendrils—factual, poetic, metaphorical—casting up sparks.” —Devin McKinney, American Prospect, 2006 “Through the arts, Marcus writes, ‘you begin to discover what it is you truly love.’ And what you truly love should inspire you to change the world and yourself. That’s what an American cultural critic should do: inspire you to change the world and yourself. Nobody does it better than Greil Marcus.” —Michael S. Roth, San Francisco Chronicle, 2006 “Greil Marcus is one of America’s great listeners. . . . His enormous force as a critic has never been in merely divvying good from bad. It is in telling you why something matters—be it the Declaration of Independence or a Sly and the Family Stone record.” —Hua Hsu, The Village Voice, 2006 ALSO BY GREIL MARCUS Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989) Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession (1991) In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music, 1977–1992 (1993) The Dustbin of History (1995) The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes (1997) Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives (2000) “The Manchurian Candidate” (2002) Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads (2005) The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice (2006) AS EDITOR Stranded (1979) Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, by Lester Bangs (1987) The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad, with Sean Wilentz (2004) Images of America in Rock’n’ Roll Music FIFTH REVISED EDITION GREIL MARCUS To Emily and Cecily and in memory of my dear friend and editor, Bill Whitehead PLUME Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition. First Plume Printing (Fifth Revised Edition), April 2008 Copyright © Greil Marcus, 1975, 1982, 1990, 1997, 2008 All rights reserved REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA CIP data is available. ISBN: 978-1-101-66164-2 Original hardcover design by Nancy Etheredge Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. PUBLISHER’S NOTE The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014. CONTENTS AUTHOR’S NOTE INTRODUCTION TO THE 2008 EDITION PROLOGUE ANCESTORS HARMONICA FRANK, 1951 ROBERT JOHNSON, 1938 INHERITORS THE BAND: Pilgrims’ Progress Crossing the Border/ Stranger Blues/ This Righteous Land/ Even Stranger Blues/ The Weight SLY STONE: The Myth of Staggerlee Staggerlee/ Sly Stone/ Riot/ Sly versus Superfly/ A Quiet Rebellion RANDY NEWMAN: Every Man Is Free Pop/ Newman’s America, 1/ Newman’s America, 2/ Newman’s Failure/ Coda: Newman’s Success ELVIS: Presliad Fanfare/ Hillbilly Music/ Raised Up/ The Rockabilly Moment/ Elvis Moves Out/ The Boy Who Stole the Blues/ The Pink Cadillac/ Elvis at Home/ Mystery Train/ Finale EPILOGUE NOTES AND DISCOGRAPHIES INDEX
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