It was 1968 and he saw something in the window of a California record store that as a fan, he was thrilled about; a copy of The Who on Tour.
Griel Marcus paid the $1.99 and rushed home to discover that that album was not a live album at all but a studio recording with a misleading title. He scribbled down his disheartened review and mailed it to Rolling Stone, a publication that was but a year old. A week later, the twenty-something opened the magazine and saw his words in print.
After American studies at Berkeley and graduate school in political science, his drive to write and love of music lead him to become the first records editor for Rolling Stone in 1979. He was paid $35 per week.
Marcus has since written for Artforum, the New York Times, Creem, The Village Voice, Salon, Interview, and The Believer. He is the author of “The Old, Weird America” (1997), “The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice” (2006).
J. Gabriel Boylan calls Marcus’ books “Mystery Train” (1975) and “Lipstick Traces” (1989) “two of the most compelling investigations of music ever published.”
“I was always a huge music fan,” Marcus told me as he reminisced about how his love affair with rock music began, “I remember at one point I was trying to get someone to understand this 1959 Barrett Strong cover, the 1963 Beatles recording of “money,” which was not released in the US at the time my young friend’s father was an airline pilot and brought home the British recording.
A couple years later, as I’m explaining this song to another friend, he doesn’t get it, I go into a pseudo-lecture about the individual being crushed by technology and this song as a scream coming from the crushing machine. As I’m doing it, I realize I totally believe everything I’m saying, and that’s really what I’m into. It was startling!”
Griel’s ability to turn his love into a long and successful career shimmers in the distance for college students who fear graduating into a barren economy, “You know, I came of age at a very different time, the economy was very different,” yet he offered advice for the generation entering the workforce today.
“I’m a writer. If you feel the need to write, you have to start writing. The student paper, a website; you’ve got to get it out and get a response, you have to give it public dimension. When you first see your work in print, you think, ‘how could I say that,’ and you cringe. But you keep writing, keep struggling-and send it all over the world. Writing, making music, I’m talking about anything. If you think you might want to be a writer, you’re not a writer. A writer needs to write. Writing poetry and wanting to be a poet are two different things. ”
Asked to give a talk in Portland in conjunction with the current exhibit Backstage Pass: Rock and Roll Photography, showing at the Portland Museum of Art through March 22, Marcus chose to speak about what is in the collection, as well as what’s not.
“I’m fascinated by what’s not in the show, most of the photography is taken of action offstage and there’s maybe only one shot performing -why isn’t that in there?” He’d also touch on what how the show speaks to the cliché of rock music.
His Monday evening talk, the PMA’s annual Bernard A. Osher lecture, drew a crowd of 4
450 at the Holiday Inn by the Bay.
In Marcus’ introduction, the museum’s chief curator Thomas Denenberg, proudly spoke to Portland’s enthusiasm for the show, beaming. “A visitor approached me this week and told me that he’s lived five minutes away from the museum and never once come in, until he came to see the rock and roll show.”