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| PartyDoll MEG |
Q &A GREIL MARCUS
Rock ’n’ roll helps critic define culture
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Aaron Beck
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Greil Marcus
In rock ’n’ roll journalism, Mystery Train is his "Elvis book" and Invisible Republic is his "Dylan book."
Greil Marcus — the first reviews editor at Rolling Stone magazine, during the late 1960s — uses two of the most influential voices in popular music as vehicles to explore the vast American culture.
Such is the standard procedure in his writing: In the Interview magazine column "Elephant Dancing," a compendium of pop-culture highlights he called "Real Life Rock Top 10" when he wrote it for Salon.com, Marcus champions everything from IBM commercials to Prince records.
When he was interviewed last week from his home in Berkeley, Calif., the 61-year-old was taking a break from eight or so projects — including the editing of a recent interview with Chan "Cat Power" Marshall; work on the revised edition of Mystery Train; and a four-year undertaking with the Harvard University Press called A New Literary History of America.
This week, during a visit to the Wexner Center for the Arts, Marcus will take off from his latest book, The Shape of Things To Come: Prophecy and the American Voice, to "talk about art and resistance."
Q: I’ve read that you don’t consider yourself a good interviewer. Why?
A: I’ve always found that the best interviews are done by people who are willing to risk making fools of themselves, asking what appear to be stupid questions or antagonistic questions. For me, there was simply too much desire to be liked by whoever I was interviewing. If you want the person to like you, then you’re going to be too soft.
I’ve known interviewers — one who had a horrible stutter, which I think he exaggerated to the point where whoever he was interviewing would just start talking to keep him from stuttering and just unload. What a great tactic that was.
Q: What recent albums have kept your attention?
A: Right now I’m listening to a new album by a band, called Electrelane, called No Shouts, No Calls, coming out in a couple of months. I’ve just loved them from their first record, called Rock It to the Moon. . . . I always feel like I’m going somewhere I haven’t been before when I listen to them.
Q: What do you make of socalled heritage acts — say, the Rolling Stones — trotting out their arena spectacles every few years?
A: It depends. If somebody is old and hasn’t been around for a while or has never gone away but continues to write songs that are striking, that raise new questions, that open up new territories that haven’t been explored before by that person or anybody else — which is what Bob Dylan is doing — that’s fabulous.
If it is simply a kind of pirate’s raid on America — which is what the Rolling Stones have been doing for 20, 30 years, with people very willing to be fleeced — well, they really ought to call their tour "Stand and Deliver."
Thousands upon thousands of people would line up along the highways and eagerly offer their wallets, their jewelry, their clothes — and the Rolling Stones would just load up this pirate ship on wheels and sail it back to wherever their tax haven is.
Q: What do you think about rock music being used in commercials?
A: It doesn’t bother me. It never has, for a whole lot of different reasons. I find it totally fascinating to see what songs used as commercials can stand up to a kind of polite re-contextualization or an impolite rape job and emerge whole.
I think, for example, Bob Dylan’s Victoria’s Secret commercial, with Love Sick, with all these sort of cadaverous, already-dead models standing in gondolas going down the canals of Venice — that commercial didn’t touch that song, which is the most morbid, death-obsessed song on Time Out of Mind used as some kind of erotic object.
But the Beatles’ Revolution, used in the Nike commercial — there was a kind of false righteousness of that song that, when it was turned into a commercial, was instantly exposed. I don’t think that song has ever recovered. Some songs stand up; some songs don’t.
Q: Is there a record you have no qualms about calling perfect from start to finish?
A: The first Rolling Stones album because it was just so audacious. It still is so audacious. It doesn’t matter whether what they’re playing is good or bad. The spirit is there, first moment to last.
Any other album that I’d say "Oh, this is a great record; this is what it’s all about" is definitely going to have one song on it that I hate — like, say, Time Out of Mind and Make You Feel My Love. Oh, please: Where is Engelbert Humperdinck when we need him?
Q: I expected you to name a Dylan album. Does one of his come close?
A: Oh, sure — Highway 61 Revisited. Tombstone Blues doesn’t really have any lift to it, but it’s funny to listen to.
Q: If you could see anyone perform in history, who would it be?
A: I guess I’d like to see Robert Johnson open for Abraham Lincoln.
Q: Today, of course, an entire music-writing etymology exists. What was it like at the forefront of music journalism?
A: You just didn’t have any idea what to do, so you tried everything.
It was tremendous fun for untutored people with no reputations of any kind to write something and see it appear in print and realize how awful it was and try to do better.
I would be struggling with the pieces I was writing for Rolling Stone in 1968 or ’69, and in the mail would be these pieces by somebody called Lester Bangs that were so much better both as writing and as thinking about music, that had so much more passion and fear in it than anything anyone else was doing.
You just said: "God, you really can do anything reviewing a record. There are no limits."
Lester certainly was a liberating force for me, and he still is.
[email protected]
[Edited by PartyDoll MEG] |
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| Gazza |
Nice. Thanks. He's a great writer.
Pity that to Dylan fans, Marcus will best be remembered for his lengthy "What is this shit?" review of 'Self Portrait' which spent several pages attempting to demolish Dylan's reputation and writing him off.
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| Martha |
"They can't take me back, unless I want 'em too!" You tell 'em Bob! LOL
Thanks for the post Sister Meg. You ROCK!
G- I owe you a message.....coming soon! I haven't picked West up yet, plan too on Friday though. ;-)
XXOO,
Martha |
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| PartyDoll MEG |
quote:
Martha wrote:
"They can't take me back, unless I want 'em too!" You tell 'em Bob! LOL
Thanks for the post Sister Meg. You ROCK!
G- I owe you a message.....coming soon! I haven't picked West up yet, plan too on Friday though. ;-)
XXOO,
Martha
Yes, drop me a line, Sway Sister! Seeing Lucinda April 20th... |
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| jb |
Tell him to go see the fucking Police....I love guys who slag the Stones for making millions....it's called supply and demand, and while quite a bit past their prime, they rake in more than anyone ever has or likely ever will.. |
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| Martha |
quote:
PartyDoll MEG wrote:
Yes, drop me a line, Sway Sister! Seeing Lucinda April 20th...
She's not coming to Denver! WAH!!! And she plays Albuquerque tomorrow, the same night EC Bramhall Trucks and Robert Cray grace the Pepsi Can stage.
I haven't gotten "West" yet.....I'll drop you a line soon!
Peace Sway Sister!
love,
Martha |
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| Martha |
quote:
jb wrote:
Tell him to go see the fucking Police....I love guys who slag the Stones for making millions....it's called supply and demand, and while quite a bit past their prime, they rake in more than anyone ever has or likely ever will..
Isn't money a horrible thing to be forced to behold? |
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