Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition [Paperback]

The perfect gift for music fans and anyone who loves artists like Elvis Presley, Randy Newman, Sly Stone, Robert Johnson, and Harmonica Frank.

In 1975, Greil Marcus’sMystery Trainchanged the way readers thought about rock ’n’ roll and continues to be sought out today by music fans and anyone interested in pop culture. Looking at recordings by six key artists—Robert Johnson, Harmonica Frank, Randy Newman, the Band, Sly Stone, and Elvis Presley—Marcus offers a complex and unprecedented analysis of the relationship between rock ‘n’ roll and American culture. In this latest edition, Marcus provides an extensively updated and rewritten Note and Discographies section, exploring the recordings’ evolution and continuing impact.Praise forMystery Train:
His tinkering has kept it relevant through six editions, but his writing and ideas have rendered it ageless. I’ve been reading it for years; when I lent it to a friend I missed it so much I bought a second copy.Mystery Trainis more than rock criticism. It explores the meaning of America through rock ’n’ roll. The chapter on Robert Johnson opens with the end ofThe Great Gatsby.Woodrow Wilson and D. H. Lawrence turn up in the Elvis section. A moment on the Band’s debut album inspires this: 'You couldn’t ask for a more perfect statement of the conviction that America is blessed, or of the lingering suspicion that it is cursed.' The Marcus worldview — the notion that pop culture matters as much as history and literature — is perfectly distilled in the prologue, where he connects the immortal sweep of art to Little Richard. —Manny Fernandez, Houston bureau chief

Mystery Trainchanged a lot of things for me. Most basically, it plugged me into a lifetime’s worth of listening. Because of it, I erased 'English lit' as my college major and inked in 'American lit.' lc8