All posts by Michael Goldberg

About Michael Goldberg

Michael Goldberg is a distinguished pioneer in the online music space; Newsweek magazine called him an ‘Internet visionary.’ In 1994 he founded Addicted To Noise (ATN), the highly influential music web site. He was a senior vice-president and editor in chief at SonicNet from March 1997 through May 2000. In 1997, Addicted To Noise won Webby awards for best music site in 1998 and 1999, and also won Yahoo Internet Life! awards for three years running as best music site in 1998, 1999 and 2000. Prior to starting Addicted To Noise, Goldberg was an editor and senior writer at Rolling Stone magazine for 10 years. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Esquire, Vibe, Details, Downbeat, NME and numerous other publications. Michael has had three novels published that comprise the "Freak Scene Dream trilogy": "True Love Scars," "The Flowers Lied" and "Untitled" which can be ordered here. His new book, "Wicked Game: The True Story of Guitarist James Calvin Wilsey," can be pre-ordered from HoZac Books. In November Backbeat Books will publish "Addicted To Noise: The Music Writings of Michael Goldberg," which can be be pre-ordered here.

“Jukebox”/ Michael Goldberg to Appear at Book Passage

Jukebox cover

Michael Goldberg (that’s me) will be talking about being a music photographer, a rock journalist, his new book “Jukebox: Photographs 1967 – 2024” and showing photos from the book at Book Passage in Corte Madera (that’s in Marin) on Saturday August 24 beginning at 4 PM. Book Passage is located at 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, Ca.

I spent over a year and a half putting the book together, drawing from 1000s of photographs of musicians I’ve taken over the years. The book begins with the first photograph I took of a musician, of Jim Morrison leading The Doors on Mount Tamalpias at the Mountain Theater in late June of 1967. The Doors headlined the first day of the two-day KFRC Magic Mountain Fantasy Fair and Music Festival, the first U.S. rock music festival. A week later the Monterey Pop Festival was held.

There are photos of Phil Lesh, Sam Andrew of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Janis Joplin and Peter Kraemer of the Sopwith Camel, also taken in 1967. There are also photos I took when I was 17 of Jerry Garcia at his home in Larkspur, as well as photos of members of the Grateful Dead performing in Marin.

At Book Passage I’ll show photos and talk about many other musicians, probably including Toots and the Maytals, Professor Longhair, the Flaming Groovies, Tom Waits, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Neil Young, Alice Cooper, Michael Bloomfield and others.

Hope to see you at Book Passage, where the book is currently available for purchase. Or you can order it direct from the publisher , HoZac Records and Books.

Hard cover: https://hozacrecords.com/product/pre-order-jukebox-1967-2023-photographs-hardcover-book-by-michael-goldberg/

Soft cover: https://hozacrecords.com/product/pre-order-jukebox-1967-2023-photographs-book-by-michael-goldberg/

San Francisco Chronicle Feature on Michael Goldberg and “Jukebox” Photo Book

Great feature in the San Francisco Chronicle on my new book, “Jukebox: Photographs 1967 – 2023.” Brandon Yu writes, “’Jukebox pulls from his vast photo archive and mostly from this period [1970s and 1980s], capturing an eclectic range of musicians — from Patti Smith and Neil Young to Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits — in hotel rooms, in dressing rooms and live onstage. …

“The book is also a panorama of San Francisco at that time as a vibrant hub for music and where the ‘countercultural bohemian’ ethos from the decade prior had a longer shelf life than the rest of the country,” writes Yu, who quotes me saying, “There were all these great (venues), all these great musicians coming through constantly back then, and the scene — basically, it took quite a while for the ’60s to kind of end,” Goldberg says. 

You can read the whole feature here.

Jukebox cover

Please note that the book can be purchased directly from the publisher, HoZac Records and Books or if you are in San Francisco, at the Haight Street Art Center and they have books at Book Passage in Corte Madera too because I got an early shipment of books. In addition to getting a book filled with unique photos, if you buy one you are supporting independent publishing (HoZac is a small independent press that has been releasing great records for over 15 years and publishing unique books for about five years) and indie writers and photographers like myself.

I will be doing an event at Grace Cathedral’s Forum on Sunday, August 11 starting at 9:30 am. Books will be available at The Forum and I’ll be around to sign them.

I will also be doing a presentation on “Jukebox” at Book Passage in Corte Madera on August 24 beginning at 4 pm and books will also be available there. And, nearly 40 photos from the book are on on display through September 22 at the Haight Street Art Center, where you can also see “We Are the One: San Francisco Punk 1970s – 1980s,” an art exhibit that I curated. Books are available there and there will be an opening party on August 2 from 6 pm to 9 pm. If you are in the Bay Area, please come to the party.

Booked On Rock Podcast features Michael Goldberg Talking About “Jukebox”

Eric Senich interviews me about my new book, “Jukebox: Photographs 1967 – 2023,” on his latest podcast. We spoke for nearly an hour and a half about the musicians I photographed including Van Morrison, the Sex Pistols, Jim Morrison and many others. I talk about the first rock festival in the country and photographing Jim Morrison when I was only 13 years old. I talk about photographing and interviewing Jerry Garcia when I was 17, and how loose things were in the late 60s and 70s. Hanging out with musicians and photographing them in their hotel rooms or backstage.

I think it’s an interesting conversation that people who are into music will enjoy. Watch the Youtube version here. Or just listen here.

Recently the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story on the book and I that you can read here. ” … his images across the ’70s offer a snapshot of a bygone era when access to artists was more open,” writes Brandon Yu.”…The book is also a panorama of San Francisco at that time as a vibrant hub for music and where the “countercultural bohemian” ethos from the decade prior had a longer shelf life than the rest of the country. “

kJukebox cover

“Jukebox” Includes photos of the Sex Pistols, Crime, the Ramones, the Avengers, Debbie Harry, Devo, the Nuns, the Clash, Tom Verlaine, Lou Reed, John Cale and the Dils as well as Tom Waits, Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, Janis Joplin, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Muddy Waters, Toots and the Maytals, Patti Smith, Bettye Lavette, the Who, Neil Young, Jonathan Richman, David Byrne, Eno, Townes Van Zant, the Flamin’ Groovies, and many many more.

Please note that the book can be purchased directly from the publisher, HoZac Records and Books. I will be doing an event at Grace Cathedral’s Forum on Sunday, August 11 starting at 9:30 am. Books will be available at The Forum and I’ll be around to sign them.

I will also be doing a presentation on “Jukebox” at Book Passage in Corte Madera on August 24 beginning at 4 pm and books will also be available there. And, nearly 40 photos from the book on display through September 22 at the Haight Street Art Center, where you can also see “We Are the One: San Francisco Punk 1970s – 1980s,” an art exhibit that I curated. Books are available at the Art Center and there will be an opening party on August 2 from 6 pm to 9 pm. If you are in the Bay Area, please come to the party,

Louder Than War: “‘Jukebox’ is a Thrill Ride Through the Golden Age of Rock N Roll…”

Jukebox cover

Excellent coverage from the Louder Than War and Best Classic Bands websites of my new book, “Jukebox: Photographs 1967 – 2023.”

Louder Than War critic Robin Boardman writes, “It soon becomes clear as you turn the pages of this Aladdin’s cave of photographs that Goldberg not only knows how to hold a camera, but he also has an instinctive eye for what makes a good shot, born of his wonderment at the world of icons and wannabes in which he operates. … it’s a cornucopia of musical delights celebrating the broad church of rock music in all its forms with treats at every turn.”

Meanwhile, the folks at Best Classic Bands note, “Music journalist and former Rolling Stone senior writer Michael Goldberg has published a new book, “Jukebox—Photographs 1967-2023,” featuring distinctive, full-page photographs of musicians taken between 1967 and 2023. Goldberg is best known as a writer, but for over 50 years he’s also been photographing musicians and the photos in Jukebox are drawn from the thousands he’s taken over the years.”

jDebbie Harry copyright 2024 Michael Goldberg

Included are photos of the Sex Pistols, Crime, the Ramones, the Avengers, Debbie Harry, Devo, the Nuns, the Clash, Tom Verlaine, Lou Reed, John Cale and the Dils as well as Tom Waits, Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, Janis Joplin, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Muddy Waters, Toots and the Maytals, Patti Smith, Bettye Lavette, the Who, Neil Young, Jonathan Richman, David Byrne, Eno, Townes Van Zant, the Flamin’ Groovies, and many many more.

“Text is kept to a minimum, restricted primarily to artist name, date and location,” writes Boardman, “allowing the photographs to do the talking, and that’s something they do very eloquently indeed. Jukebox is a thrill ride through the golden age of rock n roll which no fan will want to miss.”

Please note that the book can be purchased directly from the publisher, HoZac Records and Books. I will be doing an event at Grace Cathedral’s Forum on Sunday, August 11 starting at 9:30 am. Books will be available at The Forum and I’ll be around to sign them.

I will also be doing a presentation on “Jukebox” at Book Passage in Corte Madera on August 24 beginning at 4 pm and books will also be available there. And, nearly 40 photos from the book will be on display beginning July 25 through September 22 at the Haight Street Art Center, which you can also see “We Are the One: San Francisco Punk 1970s – 1980s,” an art exhibit that I’m curating. Books will be available there and there will be an opening party on August 2 from 6 pm to 9 pm.

Grace Cathedral Forum To Feature Michael Goldberg

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In a special summer Forum at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, I’ll be talking about my new book, “Jukebox: Photographs 1967 – 2023,” and projecting many photos from the book so the audience can get a good idea of the photos. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with me about my experiences with the musicians, the challenges of photographing musicians, and my pioneering career creating the first web music magazine, Addicted To Noise, and in writing about music for Rolling Stone. The Forum takes place downstairs from the main cathedral. Grace Cathedral is located at 1100 California Street. There are parking garages nearby including one under the church building.

Along with some of rock’s biggest stars (Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Neil Young), the collection features an impressive array of underground figures and outcast luminaries captured in their natural habitat, most seen here for the first time anywhere. Bridging the gaps between the late ‘60s psychedelic era, primitive first-wave ‘70s punk, and soul & reggae, as well as never-before seen images of country and folk iconoclasts and rule-breakers across the spectrum, and even including some modern artists still making waves, “Jukebox” is an acclaimed photography collection.

Debbie Harry copyright 2024 Michael Goldberg

Photo of Debbie Harry copyright 2024 Michael Goldberg.

“A visual encyclopedic history of rock & roll and pop culture as it really was. Michael Goldberg was there and documented it as it happened. A behind the scenes and real look at icons through the ages.” – Laurie Kratochvil, award winning Director of Photography at Rolling Stone (1982-1994) and editor of more than a dozen photo books including 20 Years of Rolling Stone What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

I’m best known as a writer, but for over 50 years I’ve also been photographing musicians and the photos in “Jukebox” are drawn from the thousands I’ve taken over the years. The book’s Foreword is written by acclaimed music book author Joel Selvin“Come for the big names – Stones, Dead, Van, The Band; stay for the beautiful faces from the distant past – Tim Buckley, Professor Longhair, Sal Valentino. An extraordinary portfolio from any shooter, let alone one we know primarily as a writer.”

“This is a book of musicians I’ve dug over the years, musicians whose recordings moved me (and still move me), musicians I was lucky enough to photograph. I think these particular photos are my best, and I hope you find them unique, and at times mysterious; there are many excellent photographers of musicians, but none of them took these photographs.”

Books will be available at The Forum and I’ll be around to sign them.

Please note that I will also be doing a presentation on “Jukebox” at Book Passage in Corte Madera on August 24 beginning at 4 pm and books will also be available there. And, nearly 40 photos from the book will be on display beginning July 25 through September 22 at the Haight Street Art Center, which you can also see “We Are the One: San Francisco Punk 1970s – 1980s,” an art exhibit that I’m curating. Books will be available there and there will be an opening party on August 2 from 6 pm to 9 pm.

“We Are the One: San Francisco Punk, 1970s – 1980s” Opens in Late July

We Are the One poster

An art exhibit celebrating the punk rock scene in San Francisco during the late 1970s and early 1980s will open at the Haight Street Art Center on July 25, 2024 and run through September 22, 2024. An opening party will be held from 6pm until 9 pm on Friday August 2.

I’m the curator of this exhibit and I’ve been working on it for the past six months with help from Haight Street Art Center staff curator Ben Marks. The show includes approximately 150 photographs from an amazing group of artists/photographers: Ruby Ray, the late Bruce Conner, Jonathan Postal, Chester Simpson, Richard Alden Peterson, James Stark (Stark’s photo of the original Avengers can be seen below), Kamera Zie, Vincent Anton Stornaiuolo, the late Bobby Castro, Jeanne Hansen, and the late Jeff Good. I will also have photos in the show. There will also be over sixty flyers and posters, mostly provided by Kareem Kaddah, drawn from his extensive collection. Some of the flyers are on loan from former Crime drummer Henry Rosenthal. Jonathan Postal, once of the Avengers and the Readymades, designed the poster for the show (see above) which features his photographs. Video of half a dozen key bands will play as part of the exhibit and there will be audio recordings by many San Francisco punk bands and bands that influenced them playing in the main exhibit room.

Among the exhibition’s many highlights are 22 of artist Bruce Conner’s photographs that he took during 1978 at the famed Mabuhay Gardens, where the S.F. punk scene began in late 1976. In addition to Conner’s stunning black-and-white photographs, “We Are the One” will include eight rarely seen color photos that Conner took at the club. “In its own way, it [the Mabuhay scene] reminded me of the energy of the poets, artists, filmmakers, and dancers who had been characterized as the Beat generation in the 1950s,” Conner said during a 2005 interview with journalist/publisher Mike Plante for his Cinemad magazine.

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As a complement to the exhibition, the Art Center will present a punk film night and panel on Friday September 6. “San Francisco’s First and Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Movie: Crime 1978” directed by Jon Bastian will be screened, along with the rarely seen, unfinished, “In the Red,” a documentary shot in 1977 and 1978 by Liz Klein and Karen Merchant. There will also be live performance clips shot by Target Video’s Joe Rees. Following the screening there will be a panel discussion of the films and the punk scene featuring V. Vale, Henry Rosenthal, Jon Bastian, Liz Klein, Karen Merchant, Avengers singer/songwriter Penelope Houston. I’ll be facilitating it.

Running concurrently with “We Are the One” will be “Jukebox: The Music Photographs of Michael Goldberg,” a selection of almost 40 photographs drawn from my new book, “Jukebox: Photographs 1967 – 2023.” Included in the “Jukebox” show are photographs of Frank Zappa, Jerry Garcia, Jim Morrison, Debbie Harry, Tom Waits, Townes Van Zandt, George Clinton, Professor Longhair, Emmylou Harris, Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, Peter Tosh, Muddy Waters, Bettye LaVette, Bob Dylan, and Van Morrison.

“Jukebox: Photographs 1967 – 2023” Due Soon

Jukebox cover
Cover of Goldberg’s new book, “Jukebox: Photographs 1967 – 2023.”

My new book, “Jukebox: Photographs 1967 – 2023,” gathers together more than 50 years of photographs of musicians I’ve taken. The book, due from HoZac Records and Books (www.hozacrecords.com) in late July, is 10 inches by 9 inches with one photograph on each page (with just a couple of exceptions). There are about 250 photos in the book.

The book’s Foreword is written by acclaimed music book author Joel Selvin. There is a limited edition of 150 hard cover books; only 99 of those are left. They can be preordered now only at the HoZac Records and Books website.

The softcover version of the book can be preordered here.

Many of the photographs have never been seen including shots of Jerry Garcia at his house in Larkspur that I took when I was 17 in 1970.

The book includes photos of the Who from 1970, the Rolling Stones from 1975, Patti Smith from 1975 and 2022, Professor Longhair on stage and at his hotel room in 1977, the great director Nicholas Ray (“Rebel Without a Cause,” “Johnny Guitar”) in 1977, Townes Van Zandt in 1978, Emmylou Harris in 1978 and 2017, Bettye LaVette in 2023, the Sex Pistols at their last show in 1978, plus Debbie Harry, Crime, Tom Verlaine, John Cale, Lou Reed, the Blue Oyster Cult, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Muddy Waters, the Ramones, Tom Waits, Frank Zappa, Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Bob Dylan, Toots and the Maytals, the Meters, Neil Young, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead and many more.

Two photos of Jerry Garcia at the Dead guitarist’s house that I took in 1970.

“Good photographs are designed to make you feel like you are ‘there,’ and those are the kind of photographs Michael Goldberg takes. His live shots make you feel like part of the audience, while his audience shots make you a member of the band, basking in the adulation. His best portraits make you feel like you’ve just shared a secret with the subject. This is a wonderful overview of 50 years of great musicians from rock, blues, and folk and should be in your library right now!” said Roberta Bayley, formerly chief photographer for Punk magazine; photographer for her book, Blondie Unseen; photographer for the first Ramones album cover.

“Who knew intrepid Rolling Stone interviewer Michael Goldberg was a shutterbug? Here’s the abundant evidence – fifty years of snapping candid backstage moments and dramatic live performances from his privileged behind-the-scenes access. Who didn’t he shoot? Come for the big names – Stones, Dead, Van, The Band; stay for the beautiful faces from the distant past – Tim Buckley, Professor Longhair, Sal Valentino. An extraordinary portfolio from any shooter, let alone one we know primarily as a writer,” said Joel Selvin, author of numerous books including Hollywood Eden andThe Haight: Love, Rock, and Revolution The Photography of Jim Marshall.

The Haight Street Art Center in San Francisco will present “Jukebox: the Music Photographs of Michael Goldberg,” a selection of photographs drawn from my new book, “Jukebox: Photographs 1967 – 2023.” The show will run from July 25 through September 22, concurrent with “We Are the One: San Francisco Punk, 1970s –1980s,” which I curated, and there will be an opening party on August 2. Books will be available and I will be signing them.

The Haight Street Art Center is located at 215 Haight Street in San Francisco. More info at haightstreetart.org or call 415-363-6150.

“Wicked Game”: “…is probably my favorite rock book of all time. …”

In critic JD Stayfree’s Top Ten of 2022, he writes of my book,“Wicked Game: The True Story of Guitarist James Calvin Wilsey” (HoZac Books),” “If you have not yet read the Wilsey bio, do yourself a favor and get a copy as soon as you can. It is probably my favorite rock book of all time. Dirty story of a hard livin’ tone poet who was betrayed by his friends in the greedhead cut throat capitalist music business. …”

Earlier this year, Stayfree wrote this long gonzo review about the book. He ends that review like this: “I will be listening to those Chris Issak/James Calvin Wilsey records for the rest of my life, and I know many of my old garage band hombres will always be listening to the Avengers. I am ever so grateful that this sharp writer, Michael Goldberg put so much passion and dedication into telling Wilsey’s story–about 400 pages of highs and lows and winning and losing and heartbreak and the whole human drama. Only the lonely love Chris Isaak and James Calvin Wilsey like I do. Greatness to behold. Get the book, you’ll be glad you did.” 

 And, Americana Highways founder/editor Bill Bentley wrote of “Wicked Game”: “This is the rock & roll book to read this year. It is a thrilling, heart-breaking, mind-blowing, cautionary and in the end passionate tale of how a guitarist of infinite ability and absolutely addictive tendencies attains the highest success on the rock & roll merry-go-round, only to flame out in a desperate tale of heroin, homelessness and, in the end, suicidal escapades that killed him. Rock & roll can be the scariest game there is if the person isn’t wired for success. Failure is survivable, but for those not ready for it, success is the killer. …”

If you’re interested, the best place to get the Wilsey book, and it can make a great holiday gift, as can my newest book, “Addicted To Noise: The Music Writings of Michael Goldberg” (Backbeat Books), is from the HoZac Records and Books website. I’ve giving 25% of my royalties from each Wilsey book sold to Jimmy’s teenage son, Waylon James Wilsey.

“Michael Goldberg is a Five Star Journalist General”

In an excellent review of my new book, “Addicted to Noise: The Music Writings of Michael Goldberg” (Backbeat Books), Houston Press critic Bob Ruggiero begins, “What is the state of Music Journalism today if it can even still be called that?” He goes on suggest that back in the heyday of music journalism, it was “art, but it was also war.” And then he continues, “And if that’s the case, Michael Goldberg is a Five Star Journalist General. He’s spent more than 40 years writing about music and musicians for a wide variety of publications (in print!) like Esquire, Creem, New Musical Express, Musician, The San Francisco Chronicle, and a decade at every writer’s wet dream job, Rolling Stone (albeit a bit after the Almost Famous years…).

“In 1984, Goldberg also developed and ran the first Internet Music Magazine. Its title is shared with his new book, and pretty much sum up his life’s motto. He has collected the best of his writing in the dense, expansive, and leapfrogging anthology Addicted to Noise: The Music Writings of Michael Goldberg. …” Read this great review here.

Addicted To Noise cover

Covered in the book: Bob Dylan, Beach Boys/Brian Wilson and Dennis Wilson, Prince, Neil Young, Patti Smith, John Lee Hooker, Flipper, Frank Zappa, Crime, Townes Van Zandt, Michael Jackson, Rick James, James Brown, the Ramones, Sly Stone, George Clinton, Sex Pistols, San Francisco ’60s scene (Janis Joplin and others), Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, John Fogerty, Chris Isaak, Gil Scott-Heron, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Richard Thompson, Flamin’ Groovies, Robbie Robertson, Tom Waits, Stevie Wonder and more. Also 30+ full page photos of some of the artists.

Greil Marcus wrote the foreword.

I’m featured on “The Whatever, Buddy?! Podcast.” Among the musicians we discuss are the Ramones, the Clash, the Sex Pistols, Rick James, Michael Jackson, and much more. Please check it out here.

And at “Lew’s Book Reviews,” Lew Shiner writes, “His [Goldberg’s] forte is the extended profile, with a mixture of quotes from the artist, quotes from others, and commentary from Goldberg. … His Stevie Wonder profile is worth the price of the collection all by itself… Goldberg needs time and space to do his best work. When he has enough column inches and access to an artist for days at a time, he can come up with pieces like the one on Brian Wilson’s first solo album, where the walls come down and you really feel like you’re seeing into people’s hearts. He managed the same feat with Brian’s brother Dennis, even with the disadvantage of writing it after Dennis’s death. … Another highlight of the book is a close comparison of Dylan’s “Desolation Row” with Jack Kerouac’s DESOLATION ANGELS.” Read the entire review here.

The Whole World In a Song: An Interview with Critic Greil Marcus on Bob Dylan, His New Dylan Book, the Role of the Critic and Much More

Greil Marcus by Michael Goldberg

Greil Marcus in his office, September 16, 2022. Photograph by Michael Goldberg

By Michael Goldberg

Greil Marcus writing or talking about Bob Dylan is the holy grail. He is the leading authority on Dylan, and the best known and most respected rock critic in the U.S. (and probably the world). His first in-depth book about rock music, “Mystery Train” (the title coming from one of Elvis’ Sun Records recordings), published in 1975, established him as a leading authority on rock music, and his stature has only grown since then.

David Cantwell wrote in a December 2015 profile of Marcus published in the New Yorker, that nearly as soon as “Mystery Train” was published it was “short-listed as ‘the best’ or ‘the finest’ or ‘most compelling’ book ever written about popular music…”

After the book was first published, Frank Rich wrote in the Village Voice, “‘Mystery Train’ is determinedly and proudly in the tradition of such ground-breaking works of American cultural criticism as Leslie Fiedler’s ‘Love and Death in the American Novel,’ D.H. Lawrence’s ‘Studies in Classic American Literature’ and F.O. Matthiessen’s ‘American Renaissance’ (the first two of which Marcus draws from in his work); as his predecessors sought to understand Poe’s nightmares or the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock in terms of our most substantial national myths, so Marcus attempts to place such songs as Randy Newman’s “Sail Away,” The Band’s “Across the Great Divide,” and Elvis Presley’s early efforts for Sam Phillips at Sun Records into the same broad cultural context.”

Although “Mystery Train” might have seemed to some to be about a handful of musicians—Harmonica Frank, Robert Johnson, The Band, Sly Stone, Randy Newman and Elvis Presley—the book is about much more than that. As Marcus states in the intro, the book is “an attempt to broaden the context in which the music is heard; to deal with rock ’n’ roll not as youth culture, or counterculture, but simply as American culture. … [These musicians] share unique musical and public personalities, enough ambition to make even their failures interesting, and a lack of critical commentary extensive or committed enough to do their work justice. In their music and in their careers, they share a range and a depth that seem to crystalize naturally in visions and versions of America: its possibilities, limits, openings, traps. Their stories are hardly the whole story, but they can tell us how much the story matters.” This was the beginning of where Greil Marcus would go for the next 47 years, finding America, and so much more, within a handful of songs, sometimes a single song.

Born during the summer of 1945 in San Francisco, Marcus grew up in Menlo Park, a suburb south of the city; he attended U.C. Berkeley, where he earned an undergraduate degree in American studies. He saw Bob Dylan for the first time in 1963, when Joan Baez brought the determinedly scruffy singer/songwriter onstage at a show that took place in “a field in New Jersey.” One of the songs Dylan sang that day was “With God on Our Side” and, as Marcus told me during our interview, he was “absolutely stunned.” It was the beginning of an obsession with Dylan and his music.

 In 1968 Marcus wrote a review of an album by the Who, and, unsolicited, sent it to Rolling Stone, the rock magazine that had begun a year earlier; two weeks later it was published in the record reviews section. Soon he was on-staff and spent a year as Rolling Stone’s record reviews editor; he lost the job due to a dispute with publisher/editor-in-chief Jann Wenner over Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait; Marcus infamously began his review of the album this way: “What is this shit?”

Over the years Marcus wrote for Creem, the Village Voice, New West, Artforum, Interview, the Wire, Salon, The Believer and many other publications including the New York Times and the New Yorker. He has written 19 books and edited another six. Perhaps his most remarkable book (and a favorite of mine) is “Lipstick Traces,” which he spent nine years researching and writing; as Andy Beckett wrote in The Independent, “‘Lipstick Traces’ began as a book about the Sex Pistols; then expanded crazily back in time to Paris in 1968, Dada in 1917, the French Revolution, and ultimately to libertarian heresies in the Middle Ages. Marcus found himself writing ‘a secret history of the 20th century,’ a search for the origins and story of the nihilistic impulse that the Sex Pistols had stumbled upon.” 

Original cover of “Lipstick Traces.”

Marcus wrote a monthly column, “Real Life Rock,” for New West magazine from 1978 into 1983; that column combined an essay with a top ten at the end. Three years later, Marcus was asked to take the top ten and turn it into a 700-word column for the Village Voice, which he titled, “Real Life Rock Top Ten.” The column “had room for anything,” Marcus wrote in his introduction to “Real Life Rock,” a book that collects every column he wrote from 1986 through September 2014 (a second book, “More Real Life Rock,” was published earlier this year), “music, movies, fiction, critical theory, ads, television shows, remarks overheard waiting in line, news items, contributions from correspondents… treating the column as a forum or a good site for gossip, or the everyday conversation it has always wanted to be.”

Over time, the “Real Life Rock Top Ten” moved to Salon, The Believer, Interview, Rolling Stone and some other publications. Most recently, Marcus wrote it for The Los Angeles Review of Books, where it was published until February 2022; he was about to move it to Substack when he became ill; he has been recovering for many months and the future of the column was up in the air when I spoke to him in mid-September.

Folk Music

His most recent book, “Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs” (Yale University Press), was published on October 1, 2022. It’s the fourth book Marcus has written about Dylan, the others being “The Old Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes,” “Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads,” and “Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings, 1968-2010.” Additionally, a third of his book “Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations” is devoted to Dylan’s “Ballad of Hollis Brown.” “Folk Music” is unlike any other book about Bob Dylan, and other than Dylan’s own memoir, “Chronicles,” it gets as close as may be possible to who Dylan the singer, songwriter, recording artist and performer is, and what can be found within his recorded… Continued at Rhythms Magazine.