93 Quotes by Greil Marcus

Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether.

Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.

I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

Hearing things like 'Wake Up' by Lora Logic, or the Raincoats' 'In Love' - that was something I wasn't prepared for. I couldn't hear anything that came before it in the music, and I didn't want to. I was absolutely in love with its out-of-nowhereness.

Records that were the sound of somebody - more often than not, a she - speaking with a voice that had never been heard before. Somebody who'd never had the nerve to speak up before. I felt: 'I wanna meet these people.' Which is unusual for me: I don't usually want to meet the people who are making music that I like. But they sounded interesting.

Rock 'n Roll is a combination of good ideas dried up by fads, terrible junk, hideous failings in taste and judgment, gullibility and manipulation, moments of unbelievable clarity and invention, pleasure, fun, vulgarity, excess, novelty and utter enervation.

It draws a line in the sand. Once you cross it, you can't go back,

Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits, ... Mystery Train.

It made itself a home on Top 40 radio.