\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div> \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Penguin Random House<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tMarcus was one of the original Rolling Stone <\/em>founders \u2014 he wrote the famous 1970 review of Bob Dylan\u2019s Self Portrait<\/em> with the opening line, \u201cWhat is this shit?\u201d He\u2019s carried that spirit into books like Dead Elvis<\/em>, Lipstick Traces<\/em>, What Nails It<\/em>, and The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan\u2019s Basement Tapes<\/em>. He writes his Real Life Rock Top Ten column, now on Substack<\/a>. And his \u201cTreasure Island\u201d discography in the 1979 anthology Stranded<\/em> is the best and funniest 47-page cheat sheet to pop history you\u2019ll ever read. Marcus spoke to Rolling Stone about the strange evolution of Mystery Train<\/em>, and why the new edition feels \u201celegiac\u201d to him.<\/p>\n \n\tCongratulations on the new Mystery Train<\/em>. It\u2019s amazing how this book keeps expanding.\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tBut the tales in this book never end. Elvis, Sly, Robert Johnson, the Band \u2014 they\u2019re always mutating.<\/strong> \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tBut the stories never end. They build on each other. And I think the reason is that the music is so rich that it continues to generate new stories, new versions of itself, whether it\u2019s other people covering the songs, or people writing about them, making movies about them, addressing their own past, trying to grasp a future. This story goes on, and I hope when I\u2019m gone, the stories in the book, they\u2019ll keep traveling.<\/p>\n \n\tRobert Johnson and Elvis \u2014 they\u2019ve been especially busy the past decade. Why are they still cultural obsessions?<\/strong> \n\tBut\u00a0with Robert Johnson, there\u2019s new stuff that nobody could have imagined. First of all, you\u2019ve got his stepsister Annye Anderson, who was 12 years old when he died, with her book Brother Robert<\/em><\/a>. She played with him; he sang nursery rhymes to her. There\u2019s a picture of Robert Johnson on her book cover that no one had ever seen before. <\/strong>That\u2019s the story as I\u2019m telling it \u2014 trying to make it all work together and most of all, letting all the people speak.<\/p>\n \n\tThis will probably be the last edition of this book, and it\u2019s very frustrating. There\u2019s so much more I want to put in it.<\/p>\n \n\tI hope it\u2019s far from the last edition. But when you told me about it, you said this edition felt \u201celegiac\u201d to you. Why?<\/strong> \n\tThat made me a little more aware of mortality. I made a point in this edition of noting the birth and death dates of every figure in the \u201cNotes\u201d who died. Sly Stone<\/a> died only this year. The Band, every single one is dead. Garth Hudson <\/a>was the last leaf to fall from that tree. And boy, that\u2019s sobering. I knew all the members of The Band, Robbie [Robertson]<\/a> in particular, over many, many years. It\u2019s really painful. I don\u2019t like it. Also, our oldest daughter died in 2023<\/a>, and she\u2019s a part of this book. So I\u2019m just aware that I\u2019m living on borrowed time, and so is everybody else who\u2019s still around in the book. Well \u2014 who\u2019s around?<\/p>\n \n\tRandy Newman. And Mike Love.<\/strong> \n\tI don\u2019t know what the answer is for him or anybody else, but I\u2019m sure that he\u2019s wrestling with that question. I\u2019m not so sure that Dick Cavett is still wrestling with it. Maybe Rita Moreno, who\u2019s there on the first page of the book, who lives just a few miles from me \u2014 maybe she is, but I don\u2019t believe Dick is.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tLast year you put out this really brief and personal book, <\/strong>What Nails It<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, about why you write. It feels deeply connected to the new Mystery Train<\/em>.<\/strong> \n\tI don\u2019t like to write about myself. I\u2019m not that interested in myself, and one person I am not is a narcissist. But I was in the hospital. I got a call from my editor, asking, would I give this lecture at Yale? And I said, no, I\u2019m in the hospital. I have no idea if or when I\u2019m getting out. And he said, well, next<\/em> year. My attitude was, sure, I\u2019ll probably be dead by then, so who cares? I can say yes, then they can find somebody else. But it turned out I made it through. So now I had to write this lecture, and I had to write this book to go with it.<\/p>\n \n\tSo it was really liberating to write about myself as a writer, not in a personal sense, not telling any secrets, but just to try and be honest about that side of my life. I like what Bob Dylan said: \u201cI just don\u2019t advertise my life. I write songs, I play onstage, and I make records. That\u2019s it. The rest is not anybody\u2019s business.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe way you elegize these major figures in your life, whether it\u2019s your father or your friend Pauline Kael, it\u2019s a different voice than you\u2019ve used before. Where did that come from?<\/strong> \n\tShe\u2019s one of the voices you bring into the book. Do you feel like your book is part of keeping these voices alive and communicating?<\/strong> \n\tThe poet James Merrill, he <\/strong>defined the elegy<\/strong><\/a> as \u201ca new machine which makes the dead available to life.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tYou came up with a book title in 1997 that became part of the language \u2014 <\/strong>The Old, Weird America<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. It really sums up the America you\u2019ve been chronicling your whole life. Is it ever bizarre to you how often people quote this phrase?<\/strong> \n\tMy favorite result of that \u2014 can you see this? [Holds up menu<\/em>] This is a beer menu for a brew pub in Washington, where they carry the New Weird America Pale Ale<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tI hope you at least got a free beer out of that.<\/strong> \n\tRandy Newman\u2019s saga has taken so many strange twists, since these days, everybody grows up knowing his voice from kids\u2019 movies.\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tRandy Newman\u2019s got so many connections with Steely Dan, as you frame him in the book. They\u2019re both describing the dark side of that Southern California mythos. Alex Pappademas\u2019 book <\/strong>Quantum Criminals<\/em><\/strong><\/a> is about Steely Dan\u2019s fictional world, but it could also be about Newman\u2019s.\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tNeil Young<\/a> is another artist who\u2019s barely mentioned in Mystery Train<\/em>, but he could have his own chapter.\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tHe is a conundrum, Neil. He is a force of nature. Nobody\u2019s ever gotten close to what makes his music what it is. No one\u2019s cracked that nut.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Grateful Dead<\/a> are not in the book, and you\u2019ve almost never written about them, but do you hear them as part of this story, on albums like Workingman\u2019s Dead<\/em>?<\/strong> \n\tI would like to write about that tiny little window of Grateful Dead World. They came out of the same town I came out of. I went to school with Bill Kreutzman and Bob Weir. I knew Kreutzman \u2014 we were at a tiny Quaker elementary school. Jerry Garcia was my daughter\u2019s guitar teacher before anybody had heard his name. This is Menlo Park; this is Palo Alto. John Dawson, who became \u201cMarmaduke,\u201d was in my class at Peninsula School, and I always valued John. He meant a lot to me. He was the only person in our class who was shorter than me, and a worse athlete.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat about a group like Moby Grape? Do they fit into this tale at all?<\/strong> \n\tThere was one terrible night at the Fillmore where the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, and Quicksilver Messenger Service were all on the bill together, the Big Three, and each band encored with \u201cIn The Midnight Hour.\u201d Then around 2 o\u2019clock, all three bands were on stage together, and they played \u201cIn the Midnight Hour\u201d AGAIN. That was when my wife said, \u201cNever again. Never coming back here.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tYou\u2019ve mentioned doing a book on Bryan Ferry<\/a>. Is that coming next?<\/strong> \n\tIn all the previous editions of Mystery Train<\/em>, you predicted Jerry Lee Lewis would be the last to go. This time you say, \u201cHe won.\u201d But you\u2019ve spent your entire life with these characters in this book, keeping them alive.\u00a0<\/strong> \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tAre you ever surprised that all of these stories just keep on moving forward?<\/strong> \n\tThat was the motive of the book. This was all music I loved, and by some grace have never lost interest in. It\u2019s music that has never bored me\u2014I\u2019ve never said, \u201cWell, enough of this. I don\u2019t need to hear this song again.\u201d And because I only wrote about stuff that I really cared about, I was able to put that sense of high stakes into the book. To be a little obnoxious, I think the book itself entered into all of these stories. In some small way, the book played a role in the way these stories would continue to be told. I think that\u2019s true. But I am a little piece of that story. It\u2019s a big story.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
I\u2019m just very lucky that I\u2019ve had a publisher willing to say, \u201cLet\u2019s keep these stories going,\u201d and give me unlimited space to do it. Nobody said, \u201cWell, it can\u2019t be more than 400 pages or whatever.\u201d No one\u2019s ever said anything like that.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s true \u2014 every time I finish an edition of the book, I start a file for the next edition. The last was in 2020, when the Folio Society in England put out an illustrated edition. But this time, the publisher could get revisions into the book three weeks before it actually existed. The last change I made was in mid-July when Robert Johnson\u2019s stepsister Annye Anderson died. I was able to get that in. People just keep dying, with a book that\u2019s been around for 50 years. They just keep piling up, and luckily I\u2019m not yet one of them.<\/p>\n\n
I\u2019ve been on this beat for more than 50 years, so it\u2019s not surprising the way that Elvis came back. The Elvis story continues to mutate, especially as more and more filmmakers come in to write the story in their own way. Not just with the Baz Luhrmann film, which I think is a great film \u2014 maybe not as great as his version of The Great Gatsby<\/em>. But also the whole slew of documentaries in the last ten years, particularly the Eugene Jarecki film, The King<\/em><\/a>. Then near the very end of my deadline comes Lisa Marie Presley\u2019s memoir<\/a>, completed by her daughter Riley Keough. You\u2019ve got this tremendously vital and galvanic and often shocking book, with great dark humor. Nobody could have expected that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Look, some of it is personal. Three years ago, I spent three and a half months in the hospital. I had two open-heart surgeries, had to learn how to walk and talk again. I didn\u2019t expect to live out the year, and I had actually very low chances of doing that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mike Love will live forever. Randy Newman is 81 at this point, and we\u2019ll see what he has to say. He\u2019s never going to shut up. He\u2019s a thinking person; he\u2019s a tortured person. He looks out at the country today in the same way I imagine you and I do \u2014 with horror and displacement, wondering, \u201cIs there a place for me in this country anymore?\u201d Which is another way of saying, if you\u2019re a creative artist, \u201cDoes anybody want to hear what I have to say anymore? Should I just go away? Should I just shut up?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yeah, I feel that too. I wrote that book and did the revisions to this edition of Mystery Train<\/em> at the same time. And they share the same mood. They share the same sense of people asking, \u201cWhy am I so obsessed with mystery and the unknown and unsolvable questions?\u201d Well, for me, I KNOW why. So I wrote a book about that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I had a father who died before I was born<\/a>, in World War 2. He wasn\u2019t even a specter because people didn\u2019t talk about him, and I just had nothing to go on. I never heard any stories. My mother, who married him, didn\u2019t talk. To find out about his death, then to have our older daughter join the story \u2014 she started to go to reunions of the survivors of the naval disaster in which he died in 1944 in the Philippine Sea. That was something I would\u2019ve not had the nerve to do. But she said, \u201cThis is my<\/em> story too, I\u2019m going to meet these people,\u201d and they became alive to her, real people to her. As soon as she walked into their reunion in Las Vegas, they knew who she was. They recognized their old comrade in her \u2014 I mean, physically. It\u2019s hard, because she didn\u2019t live much longer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yeah, I\u2019m dedicated to that. And keeping voices alive just means leading someone to listen to a song and say, \u201cWow, I\u2019ve never heard anything like that before. Who could these people be? What are they really saying? Why does this move me so much?\u201d And begin to ask the same questions I ask, and answer in their own ways. And not just about the things I wrote about, but anything they care about, anything they love. Sure \u2014 it\u2019s just a way of passing it along.<\/p>\n
Yeah, that\u2019s not bad if you can really do it.<\/p>\n
I fantasize that my obituary will read, \u201cReputed to have coined the phrase\u2026\u201d It\u2019s a real burden, but it\u2019s a burden I can\u2019t complain about \u2014 to say something offhand and have it follow you the rest of your life.<\/p>\n
No \u2014 I tried. I wrote the company, but it didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s wonderful, and that\u2019s a perspective that I don\u2019t have in the \u201cNotes\u201d \u2014 the perspective of someone who knows and loves Randy Newman through his movie work. He once told about a concert where some people have brought their little kid. He\u2019s up there playing \u201cDavy the Fat Boy\u201d <\/a>or \u201cSail Away\u201d<\/a> or whatever it might be, and the kid is screaming, \u201cPlay \u2018You\u2019ve Got a Friend In Me!\u2019\u201d<\/a> I don\u2019t have the perspective of that kid in my book, but it should be there.<\/p>\n
That is an extraordinary book.\u00a0Quantum Criminals<\/em>\u00a0is an absolute breakthrough in terms of how to write about music, how to write about a band, how to write about songs. He simply takes all these characters in the songs and gives them their own lives to lead, so to speak. And Walter Becker and Donald Fagen \u2014 they\u2019re there too, but off to the side. Their creations have gone on to live their own lives. This guy had real courage in writing this book. I have always felt that when criticism really hits its stride, when it\u2019s at its highest pitch, it\u2019s fiction. It really is. It does what fiction does. And he just said, \u201cOkay, why not?\u201d\u00a0I was crazy about that book. I felt so gratified \u2014 \u201cboy, someone\u2019s finally doing something really different.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
If I had written about Neil Young in Mystery Train<\/em>, I would\u2019ve been so frustrated because he\u2019s done all of his best work SINCE then. Even his folk-song album, Americana<\/em>, even his \u201cOh Susannah,\u201d <\/a>which is right in the core of the heart of what Mystery Train<\/em> wants to be. It\u2019s like he said, \u201cThe hell with that book \u2014 I can SING it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, they were <\/em>part of it in a way. They started out as a folkie group. My favorite Grateful Dead recording is an old folk song that recorded at the Avalon Ballroom in \u201865 or \u201866, \u201cCold Rain and Snow.\u201d <\/a>Their first album is old blues and basically Harry Smith songs done their way, \u201cNew Minglewood Blues\u201d and all those old-timey songs. Same thing with the Charlatans \u2014 they were old folkies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oh, sure. I could have written about Moby Grape<\/a>, a wonderful band, really fantastic band. I was lucky to see them, and they were deep, and they were powerful, and they were fun, and they were trivial. They were just everything. They didn\u2019t have any of the pretentiousness of the Jefferson Airplane or the Grateful Dead or even Quicksilver Messenger Service. They were always just \u201cthat other band.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yes, I\u2019m writing a \u201clistening to Bryan Ferry\u201d book now. I\u2019m in touch with him \u2014 he\u2019s very forthcoming and helpful. Ever since that third Roxy Music album, Stranded<\/em>, with \u201cStreet Life\u201d<\/a> \u2014 boy, that got me, and I\u2019ve been listening to him ever since, being surprised and stunned, wondering, \u201cWhat is this about? Where did this come from? Why is he so different?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the second edition, after Elvis died, the publisher said, \u201cWe should put the Elvis chapter in the past tense now.\u201d I said absolutely not. It\u2019s going to stay in the present tense. I want it to read as this unlikely, astounding story that CAN\u2019T end, that can\u2019t have a simple ending, and I want the vitality of it to come through. I don\u2019t want it to read as, \u201cOh, once upon a time.\u201d I placed a bet that the writing would have enough life in it to sustain a sense of presentness.<\/p>\n\n
It\u2019s been 50 years and I know these stories keep traveling. I know they\u2019re not going to stop. I know people are not going to lose interest. If they do<\/em> lose interest, they\u2019ll rediscover this record, that performance, and be shocked and mystified and say, \u201cI\u2019ve got to solve this problem. Why does this music affect me so much? Why is it so difficult? Why are people so wrong <\/em>about it?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n