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Summary
Summary
One of our finest critics gives us an altogether original history of rock 'n' roll
Unlike all previous versions of rock 'n' roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points that everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs recorded between 1956 and 2008, then proceeds to dramatize how each embodies rock 'n' roll as a thing in itself, in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out--a new language, something new under the sun.
"Transmission" by Joy Division. "All I Could Do Was Cry" by Etta James and then Beyoncé. "To Know Him Is to Love Him," first by the Teddy Bears and almost half a century later by Amy Winehouse. In Marcus's hands these and other songs tell the story of the music, which is, at bottom, the story of the desire for freedom in all its unruly and liberating glory. Slipping the constraints of chronology, Marcus braids together past and present, holding up to the light the ways that these striking songs fall through time and circumstance, gaining momentum and meaning, astonishing us by upending our presumptions and prejudices. This book, by a founder of contemporary rock criticism--and its most gifted and incisive practitioner--is destined to become an enduring classic.
Author Notes
Greil Marcus is the author of "Invisible Republic," "Dead Elvis," "Lipstick Traces," & "Mystery Train." His pieces have appeared in a wide range of publications, including "Artforum," "Interview," "The New Yorker," "The New York Times," & "Esquire." He will be teaching at Princeton & Berkeley in fall 2000.
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Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Starred Review. In his typically provocative and far-reaching style, music critic Marcus (Mystery Train) ingeniously retells the tale of rock and roll as the undulating movement of one song through the decades, speaking anew in different settings; it's a "continuum of associations, a drama of direct and spectral connections between songs and performers."¿ Selecting 10 songs recorded between 1956 and 2008, he ranges gracefully over various performances of the same song, probing deeply into the nuances of each singer's style as well as the ways that the recorded version of the song reflects its time. Thus, for example, Marcus follows the career of Barrett Strong's 1963 Motown hit, "Money (That's What I Want),"¿ and Strong's harsh and violent rendition to The Beatles' 1964 version in which John Lennon is "appalled, hateful, and ravenous all at once, and so powerfully the music seems to fall away from him, letting him claim every molecule in the air."¿ Marcus cannily shifts to a song that deals squarely with the power of money, Tom Gray's "Money Changes Everything,"¿ and traces the ways the power of the song shifts and transforms in Cyndi Lauper's 1983 version (she turns it from a "man's lament into a woman's manifesto"¿); her 2005 version (the "only language it speaks is mourning, pain, desperation, and defeat"¿); and Gray's 2007 version, which dried up quickly. Marcus brilliantly illustrates what many rock music fans suspected all along but what many rock critics have failed to say: rock 'n' roll is a universal language that transcends time and space and reveals all mysteries and truths. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
For veteran rock journalist Marcus (Mystery Train, 1975), the appeal of rock 'n' roll is its unique ability to constantly reinvent itself; how a pop song, which originates as novelty, a disposable art form, can take on a life of its own and generate meaning and significance well beyond its originators' intent. Marcus here examines 10 songs from the Flamin' Groovies' Shake Some Action to Joy Division's Transmission to Barrett Strong's Money (That's What I Want) to Phil Spector and the Teddy Bears' (and, later, Amy Winehouse's) To Know Him Is to Love Him and shows how they came to be, their influences and their impact, using each as a launching pad for his typically idiosyncratic exploration into culture, history, and myth. Rock 'n' roll may be more than anything a continuum of associations, a drama of direct and spectral connections between songs and performers, he writes. Self-consciously pretentious, Marcus allows himself to get carried away in the manner only he can. In an aside, Marcus imagines a scenario where the bluesman Robert Johnson lives to be 101, appearing on NPR's Fresh Air in the 2000s. Marcus' column Real Life Rock Top Ten can be found in the pages of The Believer.--Segedin, Ben Copyright 2014 Booklist
Choice Review
In The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs, longtime rock critic Greil Marcus seeks nothing less than an upending of conventional histories. Rather than looking at traditional chronologies, evolution, and influences, Marcus focuses on blips on the radar: songs that constitute "a field of expression ... a web of affinities." Asserting that traditional rock history is a "constructed story that has been disseminated so comprehensively that people believe it," the author dismantles cultural memory and the commercial history of popular music touted by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He takes idiosyncratic, individual songs--e.g., Flamin' Groovies's "Shake Some Action" (1976), Joy Division's "Transmission" (1979)--and posits them as just that: singular and remote, with little relationship to a historical paradigm. He interrogates these songs, these moments, for their metaphysical potential, with all of the suggestiveness of Cormac McCarthy. Marcus also weaves together disparate insights from the musical and the literary (William Faulkner and cultural critic Leslie Fiedler, the latter a frequent keynote for Marcus). This book offers the freshest of angles across what has become too-familiar terrain: Marcus is unorthodox and wildly associative while remaining readable, insightful, and eloquent. The relationship of this razor-sharp book to conventional history is like that of Sonic Youth feedback to an Eric Clapton solo. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --Erik Hage, SUNY Cobleskill
Kirkus Review
Another allusive, entertaining inquiry by veteran musicologist Marcus (The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years, 2011, etc.).The opening is an accidental tour de force: a list that runs on for a full six pages of the inductees to date into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, one that, though full of lacunae, is still wildly suggestive of just how influential and deep-rooted the sound is in our culture. He takes Neil Youngs observation that rock roll is reckless abandon and runs with it, looking into 10 songs that are particularly emblematic. Even though any other 10, 100 or 1,000 songs might have done just as well, one cannot fault Marcus taste. It is just right, on the reckless abandon front, that his survey should begin with the Flamin Groovies jittery, diamondlike anthem Shake Some Action, released to the world in 1976 and heard, if not widely, by at least the right people. I never heard Youngs words translated with more urgency, with more joy, Marcus avers, than in the goofily named Groovies (a name so stupid it cant transcend its own irony) song. Yet there are other candidates for best paean to reckless abandon, or perhaps best inspirer thereof, including the prolegomenon to all other songs about filthy lucre and lolly, Barrett Strongs Money; the lovely but portentous Buddy Holly ballad Crying, Waiting, Hoping; and the Teddy Bears 1958 hit To Know Him Is to Love Him, which, though tender, became something hauntingly lost in the hands of Amy Winehouse. Its no accident that the originals of many of these tunes lay at the heart of the early Beatles repertoire, nor that Phil Spector played his part in the uproarious proceedings, nor that from every measure of music, thousands of tangled storylines flowmany of which Marcus follows wherever they will lead, to our edification.Essayistic, occasionally disconnected, but Marcus does what he does best: makes us feel smarter about what were putting into our ears. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
While Marcus (The Doors; Lipstick Traces) holds near-unrivalled credentials as a rock and cultural critic, this title overreaches, beginning with the definitive article "the" in the title. The author argues that instead of understanding rock's history as a chronological narrative, we should view it as a series of associations, in which songs take on their own meanings across different periods and performers. This is an unconvincing thesis, but it does allow Marcus to delve into the background of each piece he analyzes, which plays to his strengths as a writer. Chapters on "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" (by Buddy Holly) and "Guitar Drag" (by Christian Marclay) are particularly notable in tracing how the songs have existed within different musical and social contexts. Marcus is erudite but remains accessible, and his selected compositions are available mostly online as accompaniment. Consider this book a qualified success, then, despite the failure of its overall intention. VERDICT Students of rock history and popular music fans in general will come across rewarding material here.-Chris Martin, North Dakota State Univ. Libs., Fargo (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| A New Language | p. 1 |
| Shake Some Action: 1976 | p. 21 |
| Transmission: 2007/1979/2010 | p. 29 |
| In the Still of the Nite: 1956/1959/2010 | p. 55 |
| All I Could Do Was Cry: 2013/1960/2008 | p. 75 |
| Crying, Waiting, Hoping: 1959/1969 | p. 95 |
| Instrumental Break: Another History of Rock 'n' Roll | p. 141 |
| Money (That's What I Want): 1959/1963 and Money Changes Everything: 1978/1983/2008/2005 | p. 165 |
| This Magic Moment: 2007/1959 | p. 195 |
| Guitar Drag: 2006/2000 | p. 215 |
| To Know Him Is to Love Him: 1958/2006 | p. 237 |
| Notes | p. 253 |
| Acknowledgements | p. 289 |
| Index | p. 293 |