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Mystery Train
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Greil Marcus’s study of American rock ‘n’ roll is justly regarded as one of the most accomplished examples of contemporary music writing. Using a handful of artists — a brace of bluesmen, The Band, Sly Stone, Randy Newman and Elvis Presley — Marcus illuminates and interprets the American Dream in rigorous prose, touching on myth, landscape and oral tradition. The result is an invigorating and wholly original study — here in its revised, sixth edition — that remains a high watermark in cultural criticism.
'Probably the most astute critic of American popular culture since Edmund Wilson.'
'Perhaps the finest book ever written about pop music.'
'Probably the best book ever written about rock.'
'The 1975 appearance of Greil Marcus's first book Mystery Train, was an explosion an unexpected and indelible as the first records Elvis Presley cut exactly twenty years before.'
'Gets as close to the heart and soul of America and American music as the best rock 'n' roll.'
Greil Marcus was born in San Francisco in 1945. He is the author of Mystery Train, Invisible Republic, Lipstick Traces, Double Trouble and Bob Dylan: Writings 1968-2010and the editor of Lester Bangs’s Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. In 1998 he curated the exhibition ‘1948’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. He writes the Real Life…
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