The History Of Rock ‘N’ Roll In Ten Songs, by Greil Marcus

It was not far into this book when I realized that the author was more interested in showing himself to be an interesting person and a knowledgeable critic than he was in writing the history of rock & roll, and it was not a surprise to me at all to find out that he worked for the Rolling Stone as their first reviews editor because of his general clueless arrogance.  To be sure, this author does offer some historical observations on rock & roll music, but for the most part the work is a great deal of the author’s own personal opinion and not so much the sort of history that one could think of as objective or for most readers even that interesting.  There is certain to be a small class of people who think very highly of themselves and their own perspective on music who will find much to enjoy here, but this book did not answer my own interest in history because it was not orderly, not well-researched, and far too deeply tied to the author’s own blovaiting and opinionated writing.  If I want this sort of op/ed to read (and I don’t), I can find it in a great deal of music journalism, not in a book that purports to write a history rather than a collection of personal essays.

This book is about 250 pages and is divided into chapters based on songs.  The book begins with a claim that rock & roll amounted to a new language that is to be praised for looking at wild behavior in the absence of consequences.  After that the author discusses the song “Shake Some Action” before looking at the complexity’s of Joy Division’s “Transmission” and the music of its time.  After that the author looks at the history of In The Still Of The Nite and the interplay between Beyonce’s and Etta James’ All I Could Do Was Cry, including the sad and poignant irony that Etta James sung the song without being fully aware of what it meant for her at the time she was recording it originally.  This leads to a chapter on Buddy Holly’s Crying, Waiting, Hoping and the strange complexity of his life and death and recording career and its possible future.  After an instrumental break that includes “another” history of rock & roll, there are chapters on Money (That’s What I Want) and Money Changes Everything, This Magic Moment, Guitar Drag, and To Know Him Is To Love Him, after which the book ends with notes, acknowledgements, and an index.

Ultimately, there are a few things that make this book a real chore.  For one, the author is not so much interested in rock & roll itself as in various stories that he can tell and conclusions that he can jump to.  Whether he is looking at remakes and what he thinks makes them special (while, of course, being hipster enough to avoid many of the more obvious choices), or looking at what is gained and lost by singers returning to their own material decades later in concert, or examining the hidden meanings and significance of certain moments of music and attempts to speculate on how things could have been had they gone differently, the author here is mainly interested in showing off his own supposed insight about music and music history.  Since this insight is limited by his monumental self-regard, this book is not nearly as good as it could have been had it been written by someone who was willing to get out of the way of his own observation of music, and someone who was willing to choose more representative sources to deal with the various strains of rock & roll music that have long existed and that remain relevant.