Mystery Train

In 1975, Greil Marcus's Mystery Train changed the way readers thought about rock 'n' roll and is to this day justly regarded as one of the most accomplished examples of contemporary music writing. 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.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition features new introductions by both the author and the New York Times' critic and editor Dwight Garner, alongside completely rewritten discographies. The result is an invigorating and wholly original study that remains a high watermark in cultural criticism.

Greil Marcus was born in San Francisco in 1945. In 1963, two events took place that have shaped his life since: in August, at a Joan Baez concert in New Jersey, she brought out a singer who sang a song called "With God on Our Side"; and on the Monday of the week that President Kennedy was assassinated, at the University of California at Berkeley, he met his future wife, Jenny Bernstein of St. Paul, who had already heard of the singer he hadn't.

In 1969, he became the first Records Editor at Rolling Stone. He has written many books, including Lipstick Traces (1989) and What Nails It (2024), and for many publications. Since 1986, his column "Real Life Rock Top Ten" has migrated through a dozen outlets, from The Village Voice to Substack. In 2009, with Werner Sollors, he edited A New Literary History of America. Between 2000 and 2019, he taught at Cal, Princeton, the New School, Minnesota, NYU, and the Graduate Center in New York. He lives in Oakland.