Saturday 4 October 2025
'Mystery Train' Greil Marcus book 50th Anniv: When Greil Marcus' 'Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'N' Roll Music' was first published in 1975 it was described as "Perhaps the finest book ever written about pop music.”
Now at it's 50th anniversary re-release, on Sept 16, 2025, Rolling Stone stated, “In 1975 it was hailed as the greatest book ever written about rock & roll. Fifty years after it came out, there’s a lot more competition — but no other book has come close.”
Bruce Springsteen said, “Gets as close to the heart and soul of America and American music as the best of rock ‘n’ roll.”
In the special 50th-anniversary edition, Greil Marcus revives its analysis of the relationship between rock ‘n’ roll music and America with updated discographies and new intros. Marcus’ definitive book focuses on just six bands and artists: early rock ‘n’ roller Harmonica Frank; country blues singer Robert Johnson; and some of the better-known musicians who followed... including Elvis.
Music journalist / critic Wayne Robins recently interviewed the famous author ... which included these comments
Wayne Robins: The notes in the 50th anniv edition are copious, and your comments, in the case of Randy Newman, complicated.
Greil Marcus: I was originally going to write about The Band, Sly Stone, and Elvis, after Harmonica Frank and Robert Johnson. But the book was coming out too short, so I needed another chapter. .. So I decided on
Randy Newman. And it could be that I became more interested in him as time went on. For the second edition, 1982 well after Elvis's death, I was asked by the publisher to put that Presley chapter in the past tense. I said it would lose all immediacy- that the writing in the chapter is all about immediacy- and that Elvis' story was big enough to hold the present tense even if he was dead.
WR: Why was it essential for you to climax "Mystery Train" with a serious exegesis on the importance of Elvis Presley when he was, by 1974, not in the rock conversation? One can't deny the impact that that chapter, "Presliad" had on then-current thinking about Elvis Presley and his place not just in history, but in the ability for the reader to understand the then-current rock and roll world? It made "The Sun Sessions" as essential as "The Basement Tapes."
GM: Millions of words had been written about Elvis from his first review in the Memphis Press-Scimitar in 1954 to the most recent piece by Peter Guralnick just before I started writing, but it seemed to me that nobody had written about his music. After the book was published, I would always be asked, "What made Elvis so special?" and I always answered, "The way he sang," and then I could talk about that for another five minutes or another five days. And yes, I wanted to change the conversation, to, essentially, "This dumb hillbilly has forgotten more than you'll ever know”.. I wanted to say that Elvis had been and gone from places no one else would ever get to, but if you listened, the map of those places would begin to fill itself in."
To understand more about Greil Marcus's wonderful book 'Mystery Train' go here to EIN's spotlight
https://elvisinfonet.com/book-spotlight ... esley.html
