Customer Reviews

Mystery Train

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Founding rolling stone writer Greil Marcus is what you'd describe, were you English and of a certain age, as an "Anorak". He's an obsessive, passionate, academic lover of rock 'n' roll in all its many forms. Here he sketches out a book structured in a loose fashion like the bible, in that it has an "old testament" surveying two of rock's 'ancestors' and a "new testament" on five of their 'inheritors'. It's a book about rock 'n' roll. In short, Marcus waxes long and with great hyperbole on things which most grown ups in this day and age find rather trifling.

Well, I don't, and I think this is a fantastic book. It's subjects are eclectic as can be: Robert Johnson is a reasonable enough choice for "ancestor of the rock 'n' roll tradition" but it would be a brave man who would pick one-man band "Harmonica Frank" Floyd, from Toccopola Mississippi, as the other. But Marcus does, and creates a fascinating case for his inclusion.

The threads he picks up of rock iconography are incredible - the myth of Stagger Lee, blended into the history of Sly Stone was something I'd never heard of, but it prompted me to head off in that direction and see what I could find. Likewise the short chapter on Robert Johnson.

In a lot of ways, that's the beauty of this book: For all its obsession-shot prose, it functions as a bunch of references; directions which the reader can follow up at leisure, and Marcus's effervescent writing style functions like a firm push between the shoulder blades. The bibliography is almost as long as the text, and it's well worth the read.

There are some who find Marcus' style too garish, and there is a view that he is too much of a boffin - an anorak, if you will - for his own good. I don't agree with that - Marcus is self-aware enough to see the funny side of himself and his subject matter, and he is always so enthusiastic that it isn't fair to say he misses the point, or the energy, of what he's writing about.

Marcus' later work, especially on punk rock, is well worth investigating too. Don't believe the nay-sayers who don't like his "straying" into punk: "In the Fascist Bathroom", Marcus' anthology of essays on punk rock is one of the funniest, most compelling reads I've had in a long while.

I am a 20yr old English American Studies student, a verified "america-phile" (this is how i've been described by americans in my year abroad at an american university, shocked as they are by my fascination w/ american culture)...this is one of the things that started it all for me. I first became interested in american culture through the music of the country and this book convinced me that american music could be seen "not as youth culture, or counterculture, but simply as American culture." (for me the book's key line, its thesis, the simplist and yet greatest explanation for the worth of studying popular music as you would literature or even film)...yes, i admit, the book is often complex and obscure, imprenatrable (most of it rests on Marcus's own assumptions and overriding optimism for the promise of the American dream), assuming a great deal of knowledge of american history and culture (as i learn more about this country, i find it extraordinarily rewarding to keep re-reading it, to pick up on more of the allusions) and yet it is still possibly the most rewarding and influential (to me anyway) book i have ever read, reminding me time and time again of the social-cultural-human power in american music, rather than simply its commercial power (which a lot of popular music studies, ie media studies, seem to focus on)...and the discography! this is worth the price of purchase alone! its like TS Eliots notes to 'The Waste Land'! So many albums I have bought simply from reading about them here...i recommend that anyone interested in american culture and rock n roll read this! and then peter gularnick's "sweet soul music" etc etc...

Mystery Train is much more than just a very good piece of rock criticism, nor should it be remembered as perhaps the Father of Rock Criticism. This book is astounding because what Marcus is able to do is get inside a piece of music, an artist, a certain place in time, a brief second inside a recording studio or on a movie screen, and not only recall the moment (or what the moment might have resembled) but also manage to make the moment real for the reader. So often, when reading music criticism, one feels a distance between the work of art itself and the criticism in front of you. Seldom is the excitement, passion, or wonderful possibilities of art well discussed and analyzed, because most authors are unable to find that fine balance between salivating fan and distanced critic. In Mystery Train (and in his other books as well), Greil Marcus has found that balance - or, more precisely, he has refused to accept the balance as necessary. Whatever Marcus trains his eye upon becomes fascinating and important because he sees every possibility, every ramifcation, every opportunity to return to the overriding theme, which is America. After reading Mystery Train, I not only wanted to track down those old Harmonica Frank tapes and re-listen to my Robert Johnson record, and scrutinize The Band's "Brown Album"and Sly Stone and Randy Newman and Elvis - I also wanted to go beyond the book, to attempt to apply Marcus' vision to what I saw around me. For some reason, this book reminds me of the works of Thomas Pynchon, but not just because they're both regularly classified as "post-modernists" by critics and profs. Rather, I find that after reading Marcus and Pynchon, I find myself looking at things differently, recognizing possible patterns around me, being amazed at the myriad possibilities and variety of life. Mystery Train is not simply "a book about rock and roll." It is a work which exists on its own, a work which is both dependent upon and an improvement on the works it discusses and analyzes. Certainly, in 50 years, this book will be looked at as one of the finer moments in American criticism.

Many people love this book for "Presleyiad", the lengthy mythic analysis of Presley's career. Others like the Sly Stone chapter, or the riveting section on Robert Johnson. What makes this book special for me, however, is the Randy Newman chapter. Marcus may have been the first critic to propose that Newman was a great American composer and he makes a passionate, convincing case. In recent years Newman may have been embarrassed at being singled out so strongly by Marcus, and Marcus may disparage Newman's most recent work (unjustly, I think.) That doesn't change the landmark character of Marcus' great book. Too bad he went off the deep end with punk and "Lipstick Traces."

The first edition of MYSTERY TRAIN appeared in 1975, and now appears in its 4th Edition. That a study of rock 'n' roll should appear in a 4th edition shows the ongoing appeal of this book, which easily makes any short list of the great books or rock criticism ever written.

Throughout all his work, Greil Marcus has been concerned not merely with rock 'n' roll on its own, divorced from the greater culture, but with the role it plays in the cultural life of America as a whole. For many cultural critics, Elvis was a disruption with what came before. For Marcus, Elvis is a natural outgrowth of primary trends in American life. No section of the book illustrates this as well as the one on Robert Johnson, in which he emerges as the natural heir to the Puritans, because, like them, Johnson takes the Devil seriously. No just in writing about Johnson or Elvis, Marcus seems to believe that there is something uniquely American about rock 'n' roll, as if it were an outgrowth of the American spirit and soul. It is a part of American history in a way that it is not a part of English history, even if many British bands could take up rock 'n' roll and play it as well or better than its American creators.

Marcus never fails to write with great intelligence and insight, and if he sometimes seems to make a point go further than it wants to go, it should be viewed as evidence of his trying to make as much sense out of the subject as he can. Marcus isn't content to write superficial, glib criticism. He wants to go below surfaces to what lies beneath. If he tries to make connections that one might not quite agree are there, I find that preferable to a kind of criticisms that isn't capable of seeing larger connections at all.

This is also in advertently sad book. Most of the figures he wrote about in 1975 were all still alive and were most were still active. Indeed, many of them seemed capable of continuing to produce great music. But none of the major figures discussed in the book are today alive and active in producing rock 'n' roll. Elvis would be dead two years after the publication of the first edition. The Band would disband and key figures in the band would die. Sly Stone would become embroiled in drugs and then disappear from the public eye entirely. Randy Newman would produce a few more albums, but would eventually leave rock to write movie soundtracks like his uncles Alfred, Emil, and Lionel. Marcus wasn't aware that he was writing about the past when he completed the first draft in 1974, but he was.

Still, if one wants highly intelligent, literate, sophisticated rock criticism, a kind of incisive writing that cannot today be found in ROLLING STONE or SPIN or anywhere else, this is the place to go. I actually prefer some of Marcus's other books to this one (in particular, LIPSTICK TRACES), but this remains his best overall book on rock.

According to a rather tired old aphorism, writing about music makes about as much sense as dancing about architecture. Whoever came up with this one probably never considered the possibility that rather than filling page after page with a lot of dull old stuff about how to tune an oboe, whether Brahms is better than Def Leppard, or what Stevie Wonder eats for breakfast, a writer could actually try to replicate the effects of a really exciting song or symphony by just describing what it feels like to listen to. Greil Marcus is the master of this sort of poetic-slash-jounalistic style of writing: reading his careful reconstruction of the effect of tunes like Elvis' "Baby Let's Play House," The Band's "King Harvest" and Randy Newman's "Wedding in Cherokee County" sent me immediately off to my closetful of old L.P.s and (gasp!) 8-tracks to dig for treasures.

The book was originally published in 1973, which turns out to be pretty significant - in an era full of uncertainty and pessimism about America's future, Marcus was able to listen to a few dozen three-minute songs by performers as diverse as Sly Stone, Robbie Robertson and the King Himself (amongst many others) and hear echoes of Jefferson, Melville and Mark Twain. Aside from the fact that it makes you want to just get down and boogie, what makes the book so disarming, especially when one reads it with the benefit of 20 years hindsight, is that it was written in a spirit of informed, but also thoroughly uncyinical patriotism. This comes across especially in the book's last chapter, which is called "Presliad." It's easy enough to pound the table and intone at length about the genuis of Edison or the eloquence of Lincoln, but who would've thought that even after all the rotten movies, the drugs and the peanut-buttter sandwitches, someone could still look at old Elvis with an unsentimental eye and find something that was worthy of celebration?

Mystery Train Greil Marcus

Greil Marcus is indisputably rock n'roll's premier cultural historian. The reissue of his powerfully influential Mystery Train, a book that traces rock music to its origins, is a reminder of how this popular expression grew from the social protest of a number of committed American bluesmen.

Finding in the likes of Harmonica Frank and the murdered Robert Johnson, a formative aesthetic that Elvis Presley completed, Marcus looks to blues as the spiritual journeyer interpreting the American Dream. His metaphor for the quester is that of the worried man, the individual disinherited from his roots, and attempting to reshape America through a music created from its myths.

Marcus's study, while it concentrates on specific artists like The Band, Sly Stone, Randy Newman and Elvis Presley, is nonetheless a critique aimed at evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of rock as the natural evolution of the blues. Praising the originality that informs Robert Johnson's songwriting imagery, Marcus is not afraid by way of contrast to point up the solipsism at the heart of so many pedestrian lyrics. `Rock'n'roll', he tells us, `is suffering from that old progressive school fallacy that says if what you write is about your own feelings, no one can criticize it.'

One could argue, according to Marcus's criteria, that Elvis Presley represents the supreme embodiment of the American Dream. Born to poverty and failure, Elvis who exploded out of the South in 1955, was the white personification of black music. Bringing dynamism, complexity and contagious stage presence to a blues he reinvented as rock, Presley by escaping limits succeeded in going mainstream. That he opposed oppression with revolt, and yet subscribed to popular appeal, was a formula that won him unprecedented success. Marcus is Presley's best critic, and as such his writings on Elvis are unforgettable.

Jeremy Reed

Quite simply, this is one of the best books ever written about rock music. I am aware of the criticism a brilliant critic like Greil Marcus arises, but i also know that his writing is not for all tastes. The fact is that Marcus is somebody who truly loves the music he writes about, and is able to place it in the core of the american culture and identity; very few people writing on the subject of rock music can claim the level of understanding the true meaning of the songs from the greatest musicians and bands displayed here, and Marcus unveils many not-so-obvious things that remain hidden from those who don't listen hard enough. A fascinating journey through the american popular culture!!

Marcus's book is sort of like a lecture from a brilliant, eccentric professor, already prone to paranthetical asides and lengthy detours, with one too many drinks in him: occassionally obscure, wordy, quick to assume you've done your homework (the book presumes a working knowledge of popular culture), but always fascinating.

Finally, the book passes the test of all great music writing: you want to listen to the musicians he's talking about RIGHT NOW. The wonderful (and updated) appendix of recommended recordings is alone worth the price of the book.

This book is an amazing look into the history and impact of rock and roll on pop culture. Greil Marcus writes about this artists and songs as a poet who has been deeply affected by this music. The lyrics seem to impact the very roots of his soul and diversly shape his world and view of America. This book is a must for any fan of rock and roll music or anyone interested on the impact rock and roll has had on American culture in general. Highly recommended.