"It may be the most sophisticated political thriller ever made in Hollywood," film critic Pauline Kael wrote of John Frankenheimer's terrifying 1962 political thriller about an American serviceman bra
In 1975, Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train changed the way readers thought about rock ’n’ roll and continues to be sought out today by music fans and anyone interested in pop culture. Looking at recordings
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 an
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
Listening to Van Morrison represents Greil Marcus's quest to trace Morrison's particular genius through seminal moments in his long career, beginning in 1965, breaking open in 1968 with the incomparab
This book is about a single, serpentine fact: late in 1976 a record called 'Anarchy in the UK' was issued in London, and this event launched a transformation of pop music all over the world.
Marcus's Rolling Stone piece on Dylan's album Self Portrait - often referred to as the most famous record review ever written - began with 'What is this shit?' and led to his departure from the maga
A Special Edition with a New Introduction and an Updated DiscographyThis 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
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 fu
Van Morrison remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of modern popular music. When "Astral Weeks" was re-released as a live album in 2009 it reached the top of the Billboard ch
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: th
America is a nation whose sense of righteousness goes hand in hand with paranoia. Greil Marcus explores the influence of culture and politics on the American psyche - and the idealism, horror, eloquen
In 1965, one song defined a generation caught the questing spirit of the era and changed the rules of the possible in popular music for all time. This book captures the heady atmosphere of the recordi
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 u
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
"How much history can be communicated by pressure on a guitar string?" Robert Palmer wondered in Deep Blues. Greil Marcus answers here: more than we will ever know. It is the history in the riff, in t
