Read Online History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs by Greil Marcus - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Greil Marcus
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disease you could catch if you got too close—something to turn away from, something decent people should not have to look at, as the figures on the album now titled The No Longer Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan acknowledged, turning their faces away from the viewers’ gaze, sparing them their disgust. Suze Rotolo died less than three months after the story appeared; Fred Parris, enormous, his features locked in place, was still singing “In the Still of the Nite.” Jesse Belvin never had to worry about it. He died in a car crash on 5 February 1960, after a show in Little Rock with Little Willie John and Jackie Wilson.
Some months before the Wall Street Journal ran its story, the Slades gathered in what looked like a locker room to rehearse for their own appearance on a PBS doo-wop special.Two of the four were fat; they were all bald. They sang “You Cheated,” and then they sang “In the Still of the Nite.” Tommy Kaspar did not allow himself even the slightest change of expression as he carefully picked the strings of his guitar through his backing vocal; John Goeke and Jimmy Davis bore down as well. Don Burch, his guitar far out in front of his body, resting on his huge stomach, his eyes smiling, made his way through the song like a swimmer without a doubt in his mind that he’d make it to shore. He didn’t sing “When she kissed me.” As the other Slades chanted “I remember” around him, maybe that was something he didn’t.
All I Could Do Was Cry
2013 • 1960 • 2008
In early 2013 Beyoncé bestrode America as a colossus. On January 21, at Barack Obama’s second inauguration, following James Taylor’s rendition of “America the Beautiful,” Kelly Clarkson’s of “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” a strong inaugural address, a poem by Richard Blanco, and a benediction by the Reverend Luis León, she closed the ceremonies with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Less than two weeks later, on February 3, she took the halftime show at the Super Bowl. She was inescapable, a pop image so overwhelming that the person inside of it seemed not unreal but beyond reality, and beyond criticism. When the New Yorker columnist George Packer wrote that her Super Bowl performance left him “a bit cold—a highly polished combination of corporate marketing and pole dancing,” the scent of failure came off the words. You could feel that he had demeaned himself, not her.
These are official historical events, now folded into the official American story. As they happened, they echoed endlessly off the sides of the American mountain. “America the Beautiful” is unendurable to begin with; James Taylor’s autumn-leaves stroll through the number could have been a recruiting video for a second-rank New England prep school, if not Austin Riggs. “I have to admit, this shows how far we have come as a nation,” Stephen Colbert said thatnight, appearing as the right-wing talk show host he has played on The Colbert Report since 2006, the year he appeared at the White House Correspondents’ annual dinner to eviscerate both attending President George W. Bush and the toadying White House press corps itself. “A black guy who likes James Taylor! ‘’Cause I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain,’” he crooned, “‘but I’ve never seen a black guy at your shows.’” Suddenly Barack Obama turned into Steve Martin in his “I was born a poor black child” standup routine, explaining how as a white foundling he was raised by a family of black sharecroppers, only discovering his true self—not as a white person, but as a music lover—when, as a young man, he heard Montovani for the first time. It was a parable of American identity restaged most expansively in Martin’s film The Jerk, in 1979, with the family gathered around their radio:
“ . . . and that concludes this Sunday night Gospel Hour, live from the Four Square Gospel Church at the Divine Salvation in St. Louis, Missouri, the Reverend Willard Willman, Pastor. And now,
Some months before the Wall Street Journal ran its story, the Slades gathered in what looked like a locker room to rehearse for their own appearance on a PBS doo-wop special.Two of the four were fat; they were all bald. They sang “You Cheated,” and then they sang “In the Still of the Nite.” Tommy Kaspar did not allow himself even the slightest change of expression as he carefully picked the strings of his guitar through his backing vocal; John Goeke and Jimmy Davis bore down as well. Don Burch, his guitar far out in front of his body, resting on his huge stomach, his eyes smiling, made his way through the song like a swimmer without a doubt in his mind that he’d make it to shore. He didn’t sing “When she kissed me.” As the other Slades chanted “I remember” around him, maybe that was something he didn’t.
All I Could Do Was Cry
2013 • 1960 • 2008
In early 2013 Beyoncé bestrode America as a colossus. On January 21, at Barack Obama’s second inauguration, following James Taylor’s rendition of “America the Beautiful,” Kelly Clarkson’s of “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” a strong inaugural address, a poem by Richard Blanco, and a benediction by the Reverend Luis León, she closed the ceremonies with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Less than two weeks later, on February 3, she took the halftime show at the Super Bowl. She was inescapable, a pop image so overwhelming that the person inside of it seemed not unreal but beyond reality, and beyond criticism. When the New Yorker columnist George Packer wrote that her Super Bowl performance left him “a bit cold—a highly polished combination of corporate marketing and pole dancing,” the scent of failure came off the words. You could feel that he had demeaned himself, not her.
These are official historical events, now folded into the official American story. As they happened, they echoed endlessly off the sides of the American mountain. “America the Beautiful” is unendurable to begin with; James Taylor’s autumn-leaves stroll through the number could have been a recruiting video for a second-rank New England prep school, if not Austin Riggs. “I have to admit, this shows how far we have come as a nation,” Stephen Colbert said thatnight, appearing as the right-wing talk show host he has played on The Colbert Report since 2006, the year he appeared at the White House Correspondents’ annual dinner to eviscerate both attending President George W. Bush and the toadying White House press corps itself. “A black guy who likes James Taylor! ‘’Cause I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain,’” he crooned, “‘but I’ve never seen a black guy at your shows.’” Suddenly Barack Obama turned into Steve Martin in his “I was born a poor black child” standup routine, explaining how as a white foundling he was raised by a family of black sharecroppers, only discovering his true self—not as a white person, but as a music lover—when, as a young man, he heard Montovani for the first time. It was a parable of American identity restaged most expansively in Martin’s film The Jerk, in 1979, with the family gathered around their radio:
“ . . . and that concludes this Sunday night Gospel Hour, live from the Four Square Gospel Church at the Divine Salvation in St. Louis, Missouri, the Reverend Willard Willman, Pastor. And now,
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