Top Greil Marcus Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Greil Marcus Biography

Greil Marcus (born June 19, 1945) is 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.

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Greil Marcus Quotes

Think about how rare it is for anyone to encounter a teacher who can open you up to the notion that there is an infinite amount of meaning and possibility and inspiration in the smallest thing before you.

Teacher, Inspiration, Thinking, Meaning, Notion

Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether.

Dispensing, Elvis, Redneck, Talent, Transcends

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.

Future, Movement, Tries, Trying, Youth

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.

Betrayal, Rocks, Rock And Roll, Understand, Anger, Impossible

Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing. . . Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice

Appalachian, Contemporary, Everyday, Voice, Writing

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.

Powerful, Writing, Sweat, Smile, Down, Hurls

Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.

Drama, Elvis, Escaping, Limits

Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.

Farber, Film, Mean, Poet, Reading, Writing

I was the first records editor at Rolling Stone, and there were no rules. There was nothing to fall back on as to how do you write about this kind of music, so people were trying absolutely everything with a great sense of freedom and experimentation and success and failure, and a feeling of, “My God, people are actually paying attention to this. Let’s pretend they aren’t because we don’t want to be intimidated by what somebody might think of what we’re saying.

Fall, Writing, Thinking, Records, Lets

What always attracted me to [Bob] Dylan, and what has sustained me as a Dylan listener, or has always continued to surprise me, is his voice, the way he sings, the way he wraps his voice around certain words, the way he backs off from melodic moments, the way he moves forward to grab something in a song that, were anybody else performing it, they would have no idea it was even there.

Certain, Ideas, Moments, Moving, Song, Words

We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn't just ours -- it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can't beat it.

Music, Song, Mean, Looking, Link, Radio

I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

Ideas, Want, Projects, Show, Make, Idea

If 'Mystery Train' is my Nixon book and 'Lipstick Traces' my Reagan book, 'Invisible Republic' is my Bill Clinton book. I really liked Clinton. He made me proud to be part of this country again. For all of his failings, the way he put all that he'd done in jeopardy, I supported him from beginning to end.

Country, Book, Done, Part, Republic

It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits

Born, Interesting, Learn, May, Struggle, Value

I had tremendous fun fooling around with the way people talked about songs, just the way that became another way of understanding the world.

Song, Fun, People, Way, Became

It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.

Culture, Dead Ends, Myth, Myths, Sign

Listening is like running down a mountain on a switchback trail, the sound of surprise generating its own momentum. There’s a punk glee inside the bluegrass craft–and a punk vehemence inside the bluegrass smile.

Like, Listening, Mountain, Running, Sound, Trail

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.

Heard, Kinds, Speech, Strange, Voice, Voices

Hearing things like 'Wake Up' by Lora Logic, or the Raincoats' 'In Love' - that was something I wasn't prepared for. I couldn't hear anything that came before it in the music, and I didn't want to. I was absolutely in love with its out-of-nowhereness.

Hearing Things, Like, Raincoats, Wake, Wake Up, Want

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.

Clarity, Fun, Ideas, Judgment, Rocks, Utter

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