Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus
Greil Marcusis an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
unique bob sense-of-humor
If Bob Dylan really is an historian in and of himself in his work, in his performances, he is also an historian with a unique sense of humor. There's always been a bit of a stand-up comic in him.
drama early escaping music mystery sang
Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits, ... Mystery Train.
cross draws line
It draws a line in the sand. Once you cross it, you can't go back,
home itself top
It made itself a home on Top 40 radio.
asks courage fear puts works
It works on its own terms. It puts you on the spot. It asks of you the fear and courage that it asks of its subject.
heard meet music nerve people records somebody sound speaking unusual wanna
Records that were the sound of somebody - more often than not, a she - speaking with a voice that had never been heard before. Somebody who'd never had the nerve to speak up before. I felt: 'I wanna meet these people.' Which is unusual for me: I don't usually want to meet the people who are making music that I like. But they sounded interesting.
capacity fan formal fourth great movies
I'm a fan of Oliver Stone. I like his movies, I like his excess, and I think he has a great capacity for empathy and it comes out more powerfully in this movie than in any of his other films, even the formal 'I'm identifying with the underdog' movies like 'Born on the Fourth of July.'
clarity dried failings good hideous ideas moments novelty rock roll taste terrible utter
Rock 'n Roll is a combination of good ideas dried up by fads, terrible junk, hideous failings in taste and judgment, gullibility and manipulation, moments of unbelievable clarity and invention, pleasure, fun, vulgarity, excess, novelty and utter enervation.
head sounds
He sounds like he's been doing it for years. In his head he probably has.
culture dead-ends myth
It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.
trying movement youth
Every youth movement presents itself as a loan to the future, and tries to call in its lien in advance, but when there is no future all loans are canceled.
powerful writing sweat
as I write, Johnny Rotten's first moments in "Anarchy in the U.K."-a rolling earthquake of a laugh, a buried shout, then hoary words somehow stripped of all claptrap and set down in the city streets-I AM AN ANTICHRIST-Remain as powerful as anything I know. Listening to the record today-listening to the way Johnny Rotten tears at his lines, and then hurls the pieces at the world; recalling the all-consuming smile he produced as he sang-my back stiffens; I pull away even as my scalp begins to sweat.
betrayal rock-and-roll play
I never could understand - it was impossible for me to get my head around - what the furor was, what the sense of betrayal and anger and rage was about Bob Dylan's beginning to perform with a band, to play rock-and-roll, to get on the radio.
voice speech strange
Punk to me was a form of free speech. It was a moment when suddenly all kinds of strange voices that no reasonable person could ever have expected to hear in public were being heard all over the place.