Over the years I've been inclined to loathe Greil Marcus as a -- indeed, the epitome of a -- pompous, self-involved, hipster douchebag [I mean, just look at him], and of course so Berzerkley PC as to make MIT's Chomsky sound like Herman Cain giving dating tips, and in general his new book, THE DOORS: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Wild Years [PublicAffairs, 210 pp., illustrated, $21.99] does nothing to change that impression. It is, as Saul Austerlitz says [though he g
ets the title wrong, "Five Wild Years," reminding me of Rüdiger Safranski's Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy] a mixtape book, where Marcus's lifetime gets equal weigh to the listening, various Doors songs and concert moments being springboards for his reflections on, well, just about anything.Then, when he's writing about Oliver Stone's movie, and veers off into talking about Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" or, specifically, the 1989 live, acoustic version, which he's apparently been writing about since 1994 -- see what I mean about 'douchebag'? -- he gets of this line, paragraph really, that is so great it reminds me of the days of Creem Magazine, which come to think of it, had a lot of younger, less douchebaggy Marcus in it:
...the audience is as present in the sound as the singer, violently ignoring the singer's every violent denunciation of what he country has come to. As Young sings about a dead crack baby -- if those lines aren't rock 'n' roll, what is? -- the people in the crowd cheer, yell, stomp, raise fists, pump arms in the air: Free World! Alright! We won! They're so excited that this Sixties person is right there in the flesh, they can tell someone they saw him before he died. The audience sounds as if it's tossing a beach ball back and forth as the guy on stage sings about the death of all he hold dear.
Damn that's some good writin'! I feel like pushing back from the tiki bar, brushing the nacho crumbs off my Hawaiian shirt, and buying this guy another margarita.
Oh, and you can get it as a ringtone, too. What's that, son?
2 comments:
I can't get that song out of my head now. KORITFW!
Greil Marcus prides himself on never having smoked so much as a single joint, let alone used any other drugs in the rock n' roll pharmacopia. Imagine an authority on The Doors who has never broken on through to the other side, a guy writing about Jimi Hendrix who must answer "No," to the question, "Are you experienced?"
Having trouble getting that old cat toy Neil Young's song out of your head? Try replacing it with this one: http://littleredlung.bandcamp.com/track/rare-bird
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