Dave Marsh
Dave Marsh has written more than a dozen books about rock and popular music, as well as editing several others. He co-founded Creem, the legendary Motor City rock and roll magazine that helped launch heavy metal, glam and punk, among other styles, and spent five years as an associate and contributing editor of Rolling Stone, where he was chief music critic, columnist and feature writer. In 1969, the nineteen-year-old Marsh dropped out of Detroit's Wayne State University to edit Creem. He departed in 1973 to become Newsday's pop music critic, music editor of The Real Paper, and then joined Rolling Stone as an associate editor. He and several others started Rock and Roll Confidential - later Rock and Rap Confidential - in 1983.
List of articles in the library by artist
Profile by Dave Marsh, Creem, November 1972
"LUTHER ALLISON come into the picture about the middle of 1957. I needed a bass player and I met Luther Allison walkin' on Ogden Avenue ...
Animals, The, Canned Heat, Guess Who, The: The Animals, Canned Heat and Guess Who albums
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, March 1971
The Animals With Eric Burdon: In The Beginning (Wand) Canned Heat: Live At Topanga Corral (Wand) Guess Who: Shakin' All Over (Scepter) ...
Band, The: The Band: Rock Of Ages
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, November 1972
On a great night, the Band grab and mesmerize, so that neither your eyes nor your thoughts can be on anything else. It helps that ...
Band, The: The Weight: The Band's Anthology
Review by Dave Marsh, Boston Phoenix, 1978
IT'S NOT HARD to understand the release of Anthology, the second repackaging of Band material in two years. The group made only eight albums (one ...
Band, The, Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan and the Hawks Live At Albert Hall, 1966
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, June 1971
IT IS THE MOST supremely elegant piece of rock'n'roll music I've ever heard. ...
David Bowie: The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (RCA)
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, September 1972
DAVID BOWIE may become a star this year, or he may not. This may or may not make a difference in your life. But, for ...
Brinsley Schwarz: Nervous On The Road
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, December 1972
NERVOUS ON THE Road continues in typical Brinsley fashion. It's full of jumping good time rock songs, a little rockabilly, a shade of the Band ...
Jackson Browne: Jackson Browne
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, June 1972
MYTHICALLY, JACKSON BROWNE emerged from an article in Cheetah (the magazine of rock, when Crawdaddy! was the 'zine of roll) in late '67 or early ...
Captain Beefheart: The Spotlight Kid (Reprise)
Review by Ben Edmonds, Dave Marsh, Creem, April 1972
The Kid is gonna Booglarize ya ...
Chairmen Of The Board: Chairman of the Board: In Session (Invictus)
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, March 1971
THIS IS REPUTEDLY a live set, recorded in Harlem at the Apollo but I doubt that. But regardless of that little caveat emptor, the Chairmen ...
Ray Charles: I Believe to My Soul
Essay by Dave Marsh, Harp, September 2004
One of these days, and it won't be longYou gonna look for me, and I'll be gone ...
Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (Warner Bros.)
Review by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, May 1975
IN 1971, COMMANDER Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, already a legend in such disparate climes as San Francisco and Detroit, finally reached a recording ...
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, March 1971
SAM COOKE HAS always seemed, to me at least, the most underrated (or simply ignored – you don't really rate these people) of all the ...
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, February 1972
AT FIRST GLANCE these two don't seem to have much in common, aside from the fact that they're both on the same label. While that's ...
Creedence Clearwater Revival, John Fogerty: Where Has John Fogerty Gone?
Essay by Dave Marsh, Musician, April 1981
As apocalyptic anxiety at nameless dread descend on the body politic, how relevant the work of Creedence Clearwater now seems. ...
Dire Straits: Bottom Line, New York
Live Review by Dave Marsh, Melody Maker, March 1979
LIVE, DIRE Straits are precisely what they are on record: a throwback to the kind of unassuming funk that hasn't enjoyed much popularity since Delaney ...
Dixie Chicks, The: I Shall Be Free: The Blacklisting of Dixie Chicks
Comment by Dave Marsh, Harp, June 2003
IN CHRIS BUHALIS'S 'Talkin' Sounds Just Like Joe McCarthy Blues', John Ashcroft declares questioning him un-American, to which the singer replies, "It's called a democracy. ...
Doors, The: The Doors: Thirteen
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, March 1971
THE UNFORTUNATE situation epitomized here is that of the record company which has to resort to the "greatest hits" ruse when a band doesn't meet ...
Profile and Interview by Dave Marsh, Creem, July 1972
GUMBO IS DR. JOHN'S fifth album, but it seems like his first. For once, the record and the recording both feel right, as though they ...
Essay by Dave Marsh, Creem, February 1972
PICKS OF THE WEEK: BOB DYLAN, 'GEORGE JACKSON' (Ram's Horn, BMI). Bringing it all back home, the ever-relevant Dylan, who watched the river flow for ...
Interview by Dave Marsh, Harp, November 2002
With his latest CD Jerusalem, Steve Earle has written the most political and urgent release of his career. Dave Marsh explores the reasons why. ...
Earth Wind and Fire: Earth Wind & Fire: I Am
Review by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, August 1979
MAURICE WHITE, Earth, Wind and Fire's presiding genius, ranges across popular music like a robber baron, selecting only the tastiest artifacts for his collection. ...
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, August 1972
I'M LISTENING TO a tape of The New John and Yoko lp. If you thought, as I did, that Sometime in New York City was ...
Faces, The: The Faces: A Nod Is As Good As A Wink
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, April 1972
A Nod Is As Good As A Wink is the first signal that the Faces have matured as a band. Their infatuation with variations on ...
Faces, The: The Faces: Ooh La La
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, July 1973
SOMETIME ROD STEWART or the Faces (or both) should make a record that is enjoyable without being enervating. The effect of each of their records ...
Faces, The: The Faces: The Daring Young Man And The Flying Chimpanzees
Report and Interview by Dave Marsh, Creem, August 1972
THE LAST WEEK of April, the American Retreaders Association shared the Executive Inn, Louisville, Ky., with a collection of dwarves, freaks, dope dealers, high wire ...
Faces, The: The Faces: The Rock'n'Roll Circus
Report and Interview by Dave Marsh, Creem, April 1973
THE LAST WEEK of April 1973 the American Retreaders Association shared the Executive Inn, Louisville, Kentucky, with a collection of dwarves, freaks, dealers, high-wire acts, ...
Four Tops, The: The Great Levi Stubbs
Memoir by Dave Marsh, Rock and Rap Confidential, October 2008
WHEN I WAS 15, I met the Four Tops on a downtown Detroit street, where they were doing a photo shoot with the Supremes. ...
Review by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, September 1980
LUCID AND DRIVEN, Peter Gabriel's third solo album sticks in the mind like the haunted heroes of the best film noirs. With the obsessiveness of ...
Marvin Gaye: No-One Quite Like Him
Obituary by Dave Marsh, Record Magazine, July 1984
Blessed with a cool born of control rather than emotional distance or reserve, Marvin Gaye was the artist who best expressed Motown's mix of disparate ...
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, April 1973
SOCIOLOGISTS LIKE TO talk about black people mimicking whites, and I suppose that it is inherent in the presumptions most of us make about black ...
Gary Glitter: Garbage Rock Comes of Age
Essay by Dave Marsh, Creem, April 1973
WHEN THE CURTAIN comes up, the band are all ready there, pumping out a fuzzy, semi-atonal, rhythmically confused version of left-field '50's music. They are ...
Lesley Gore: They Don't Own Her
Report by Dave Marsh, Let It Rock, July 1975
IN 1964, A seventeen-year-old freshman named Lesley Gore put out her first record, 'It's My Party (And I'll Cry If I Want To)'. It was ...
Jimi Hendrix: The Voodoo Lives On
Essay by Dave Marsh, Musician, October 1980
HENDRIX SAW himself as a symbolic figure who contained in his bloodstream elements of all races. The goal of his performances was both racial and ...
Jimi Hendrix: Hendrix In The West
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, May 1972
I DON'T KNOW if there, is even anything to add to Jimi's legend. You can build it up or tear it down but it remains ...
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, July 1972
THERE'S SOMETHING intriguing in the idea that Humble Pie are so thoroughly enjoyable yet refuse so adamantly to yield to any kind of critical insight. ...
Jackson 5, The: The Jackson 5: Greatest Hits
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, April 1972
MOTOWN HAS ALWAYS been known for its little ones more than its big ones, and the Jackson Five are no exception. This is undoubtedly their ...
James Jamerson: What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted?
Comment by Dave Marsh, Record Magazine, November 1983
"I walk in shadows, searching for light, Cold and alone, no comfort in sight. Hoping and praying for someone who'll care, Always moving and going ...
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, August 1972
JETHRO TULL's admirers are wont to believe that the lads are an inventive, entertaining, eminently witty, oft profound rock group, with a propensity for satire ...
Kinks, The: The Kinks: Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygroround — Part One
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, March 1971
WELL, ALL RIGHT. It took two months but I think I begin to understand the meaning of this album, which is that the Kinks understand, ...
Report by Dave Marsh, Melody Maker, October 1973
GREAT WHITE ROCK has not often come from New York City and its surrounding boroughs, even though – or perhaps because the American music business ...
Review by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, January 1975
TWO YEARS AGO, while working for another magazine, I rejected a rambling interview between black poet Nikki Giovanni and singer Gladys Knight. The interview wasn't ...
Denise LaSalle: Denise La Salle: Trapped By A Thing Called Love
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, May 1972
IF THIS ISN'T THE best soul album this year, someone is going to have to come up with something really amazing. Denise La Salle is ...
John Lennon, Yoko Ono: John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band (Apple)/ Yoko Ono: Plastic Ono Band (Apple)
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, March 1971
BOTH OF THESE records are remarkable in some aspect, a sort of East-West five years after Butterfield and Allan Watts. Certainly, until this point, John ...
Jerry Lee Lewis: The Killer Rocks On
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, July 1972
YOU CAN TELL this one is special from the beginning. The strings come in, but all of a sudden, there's an insistent, pounding drum driving ...
Loretta Lynn, White Stripes, The: Jack White and Loretta Lynn: Deconstructing Jack
Comment by Dave Marsh, Harp, July 2004
AT THAT POINT, after one and a half listenings, I concluded that White had heard all the Loretta Lynn records ever made and liked everything ...
Manfred Mann's Earth Band: Manfred Mann's Earth Band
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, April 1972
MANFRED MANN'S strength, perhaps his only one, is as an interpreter. His jazzlike motions with Chapter Three – the group that was broken up so ...
Essay by Dave Marsh, Creem, October 1971
Their mamas all warned 'emnot to come into townBut they got it in their blood,now they gotta get down– 'Shakin' Street', The MC5 ...
Van Morrison: His Band And Street Choir
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, October 1971
THERE'S A SECRET to every Van Morrison album, and even this one, which too many of us wrote off too long ago, has it. The ...
Report by uncredited writer, Dave Marsh, Creem, March 1972
The new Plastic Ono Band comes to Ann Arbor to Free John Sinclair – Starring David Peel, Archie Shepp, Ed Sanders, Stevie Wonder, Commander Cody, ...
Interview by Dave Marsh, Musician, April 1998
ROCK BANDS ARE like families on the Tolstoyan model. The happy ones are exactly the same (perhaps because they're nonexistent?) while the unhappy ones are ...
Persuasions, The: The Persuasions: Street Corner Symphony
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, April 1972
THE PERSUASIONS ceased to be a pleasant, though strange, acappella curiosity with their last album, We Came to Play. That album took a more pop ...
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Tom Petty
Interview by Dave Marsh, Musician, July 1981
WHEN TOM PETTY burst into his manager's Sunset Blvd offices early this April he was exuberant. No wonder. He'd just finished mixing his fourth and ...
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, November 1971
I WAS IN Los Angeles this spring, when a friend dropped in to say, "Hey there's a new Pink Floyd album and it's all old ...
Elvis Presley: Elvis: The New Deal Origins of Rock 'n' Roll
Essay by Dave Marsh, Musician, December 1982
EACH YEAR, on August 16, the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, Memphis State University hosts a memorial service and seminar in his honor. ...
Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis: The Million Dollar Quartet
Essay by Dave Marsh, Musician, June 1981
WE USUALLY think of Elvis Presley simply stepping into Sun Studios in Memphis, in answer to Sam Phillips' call, and walking out a few days ...
Raspberries, The: The Raspberries: Starting Over
Review by Dave Marsh, Let It Rock, April 1975
A YEAR AGO, the Raspberries seemed like nothing so much as a prefabricated rock band in the tradition of the Monkees. ...
Essay by Dave Marsh, Let It Rock, January 1974
LET'S GET one thing straight. Otis Redding's posthumous rise to the Kingship of soul is highly suspect. He earned the accolade a little too easily ...
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles: From The Beginning…
Report and Interview by Dave Marsh, Creem, April 1972
SMOKEY IS LEAVING the Miracles. This may mean more to those of us in Detroit, who've watched the Miracles almost, but never quite, make the ...
Smokey Robinson: Cruisin' with Smokey
Interview by Dave Marsh, Record Magazine, August 1983
In an exclusive interview, the master of the romantic vignette-in-song gets into some nuts-and-bolts talk about the creative process and gets down with some vintage ...
Rolling Stones, The: Mick Jagger: I Can Get It Up, But I Can't Get It Down
Interview by Dave Marsh, Creem, August 1975
OF COURSE, Mick Jagger was talking about flying the twin-engine Cessna which had brought him into the Marine Air Terminal in New York's LaGuardia Airport ...
Rolling Stones, The: The Rolling Stones: Black and Blue (Rolling Stones)
Review by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, May 1976
Decembers Children Today: Glimmer Twins Star As Stones Roll On ...
Diana Ross, Curtis Mayfield: Black Music
Comment by Dave Marsh, Let It Rock, May 1973
SOMETIME LAST fall, John Percy Boyd, Mark Bethune and Michael Brown, a trio of black college students in Detroit, decided to put an end to ...
Review by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, August 1980
PAINTED IN CONTRASTING shades of urban blight, suburban boredom and rural decay, Michigan is perfect primitive rock & roll territory: a place where nothin' to ...
Sam & Dave: Sam & Dave: Back At' Cha!
Review by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, November 1975
IF ANYTHING SYMBOLIZES the decline of the Stax Records era (recently brought to a probable close with the indictment of president Al Bell for bank ...
Bob Seger: Back in '72 (Palladium / Warners)
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, May 1973
BOB SEGER'S 'Rosalie' is so strong it could break you in half. But it is the only song here that is close to what I ...
Bob Seger: Doncha Ever Listen To The Radio…
Profile and Interview by Dave Marsh, Creem, May 1972
How To Remain Obscure Through Better Rock 'n' Roll ...
Obituary by Dave Marsh, Harp, May 2005
THE RECORD industry thought it covered its tracks by finally making a huge deal out of Ray Charles, at the first Grammy ceremony after his ...
Spencer Davis Group: The Return of Spencer Davis
Interview by Dave Marsh, Creem, March 1971
SPENCER DAVIS suffers from a peculiar affliction – his name is tied inextricably to that of Stevie Winwood, it's almost certain that, first time around ...
Interview by Dave Marsh, Musician, February 1981
A YEAR AGO, taking a respite from recording to play two nights of the M.U.S.E. anti-nuke concerts, Bruce Springsteen pared his normal three hour show ...
Bruce Springsteen: Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. (Columbia)
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, May 1973
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN has enough gall to actually commit suicide on stage of his own volition. Unlike Alice Cooper and David Bowie, who only yak about ...
Bruce Springsteen: Little Egypt From Asbury Park
Profile by Dave Marsh, Creem, October 1975
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SITS cross-legged on his half-made bed, and surveys the scene. Records are strewn across the room, singles mostly, intermixed with empty Pepsi bottles, ...
Bruce Springsteen: Shouldn't He Be Famous?
Comment by Dave Marsh, Let It Rock, December 1974
IT WAS DIFFICULT to tell just when the stage caved in. It seemed to happen during 'Rosalita', the last song before the encore. But maybe ...
Stooges, The: The Stooges: The Incredible Story
Special Feature by Dave Marsh, ZigZag, December 1970
THERE'S A SAD possibility that people are on the verge of discovering, exploiting and generally going on about the Detroit Sound (like they did with ...
Stooges, The, Iggy Pop: Iggy & The Stooges: Raw Power (Columbia)
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, March 1973
Iggy in Exile: Love in the Fire Zone ...
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, October 1972
AFTER TUPELO HONEY Van Morrison must have been faced with a choice. He could continue with his domestic tranquility myth, which was as artistically false ...
Review by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, June 1980
AS A FUNDAMENTALLY religious artist, Pete Townshend fashions his music from sermons and confessions. Though it's not an easy thing for intellectuals to admit, this ...
T. Rex: Can The Electric Warriors Conquer America?
Profile and Interview by Dave Marsh, Creem, May 1972
YOU CAN SEE Marc Bolan almost anywhere and walk away with the same impression. You'll think he looks cherubic, not a little elfin, and that ...
Who, The: The Who: Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, February 1972
THERE ISN'T MUCH to say. They're really let us down this time. I don't know if anyone else resents it, but I do. Why reissue ...
Who, The: The Who: Quadrophenia Reconsidered
Comment by Dave Marsh, Creem, March 1974
PHILADELPHIA ON Tuesday night is nobody's good time. Nonetheless, because the Who were not coming to New York on their fall tour, it was worth ...
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, October 1971
WHO'S NEXT IS TO the Who what the White Album must've been to the Beatles. After Tommy, which was a concept-rock summit, not, as commonly ...
Who, The: The Who: Betrayed by Rock'n'Roll
Comment by Dave Marsh, MOJO, July 1996
Fan and friend Dave Marsh celebrates Pete Townshend's most puzzling work, Quadrophenia, written in an era full of possibilities which,"ended badly". Could it be that ...
Betty Wright: I Love The Way You Love (Alston)
Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, May 1972
SOMETIME LAST spring, a single appeared called 'I Love the Way You Love'. One of the people I live with bought it; she said, "This ...
Comment by Dave Marsh, MOJO, September 1994
"Coming to the conclusion that he was a second-rank artist scared the hell out of even a veteran heretic like myself." Neil Young unpraised by ...
List of genre pieces
Comment by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, March 1976
EACH YEAR, the American music industry embarrasses itself by nationally televising a 90-minute display of the irrelevant and the ridiculous, the Grammy Awards. ...
Punk Attack: 'The Obituary of Rock and Roll'
Book Review by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, June 1979
Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons: The Boy Looked at Johnny (Pluto Press) ...
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