Dave Marsh, who has died aged 76, was amongst the first music writers I befriended in New York where I was posted in 1973 and spent the better part of the next four years as Melody Maker’s man in the US. He and I bonded over our shared admiration for The Who, but I soon came to realise that he was no sycophant and that if he felt The Who were straying from the path of righteousness – as he saw it – then he’d be the first to take them to task. Indeed, any rock or soul act that he deemed had somehow betrayed whatever values and virtues rock music was duty bound to fulfil would feel the sharpness of his pen.
In this respect Dave held true to the old-fashioned values that I believe were shared by, amongst others, Dylan, Lennon, Townshend and Springsteen; that not only was there an intrinsic morality in rock music but that its best exponents were duty bound to uphold that morality. Like these stars, Dave believed that while rock music couldn’t save the planet it did have the power to improve our world. He was the enemy of overt commercialisation, of vanity, of greed, of tastelessness and of any act that disrespected or short-changed their fans. He made a few enemies along the way but he didn’t give a shit.
Born in Michigan, Dave co-founded Creem magazine in Detroit where he worked alongside his close friend Lester Bangs. Between them they turned Creem into an opinionated ‘must-read’ for serious rock fans, covering metal, glam and punk, never afraid to write dismissive reviews of LPs they felt were under par, regardless of the act’s popularity or status. He went on to become an associate editor of Rolling Stone, the rock and pop columnist for Newsday and in the early 1980s launched Rock’n’Roll Confidential, a subscription-only fanzine-style pamphlet that exposed dubious practices in the music industry. I was an early subscriber and even contributed a few ideas.
Dave went on to write over 20 books. His first was Born To Run, the first substantial biography of Springsteen for which Omnibus Press acquired UK rights in 1981. He wrote a second book on Springsteen, entitled Glory Days, published in 1987, his connection to Springsteen enabled by his marriage to Barbara Carr, whom I first met as a publicist with Atlantic Records in New York and who went on to co-manage Springsteen with Jon Landau.
Dave also wrote Before I Get Old, the second in a triumvirate of Who biographies that were published in the early eighties, alongside Richard Barnes’ Maximum R&B and my own Illustrated Biography. Many fans felt the book was too pro-Townshend, with scant attention paid to the other three members of the group, but Dave didn’t care; that was the way he saw it and the way he wanted to write it. When he came to the UK to research the book we visited a few old Who sites together, among them the Oldfield Hotel in Greenford where, in February of 1964 they billed themselves as The Who for the first time, and in May of that year were joined on stage by a drummer from the audience whose name was Keith Moon. Dave and I shared a couple of pints and, together, we closed our eyes and tried to imagine the scene that night. The Oldfield was demolished in 2001.
In the 1990s, when I was involved in the reissue of upgraded CDs from The Who’s back catalogue, I commissioned Dave to write liner notes for The Who Sell Out. He delivered in spades, describing it as, “The Who’s consummate masterpiece, the one work that holds together as most tightly as concept and realisation. Sell Out is the most fun of any Who album, and the one whose spirit is most tightly linked to the glorious pop insanity that psychedelia and its aftermath destroyed forever.”
Among the many other books that Dave wrote were The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made, Louie Louie: The History and Mythology of the World’s Most Famous Rock’n’Roll Song, and biographies of Michael Jackson, Sam & Dave and George Clinton. His journalism was collected in Fortunate Son (1983) and his only book on the Beatles, The Beatles Second Album (2007), mercilessly skewered Dave Dexter, the clueless Capitol Records employee responsible for overseeing Beatles releases in America. Both Lennon and George Martin were also highly critical of Dexter, of whose work Dave described as “genuinely stupid”.
Many bands felt the sharp tip of Dave’s pen, among them Led Zeppelin – he was particularly critical of John Bonham’s drumming – Queen, Journey and, most notably, Kiss. Then again, he could be critical of his favourite band, The Who, writing of Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy in 1972: “They really let us down this time. I don’t know if anyone else resents it, but I do. Why reissue things for the second (third) time on an album when you have such an incredible backlog of material? C'mon Peter: who won't get fooled again?” I disagreed with him on that one and can recall an evening spent arguing with him over its merits at JPs bar on New York's Upper East Side. On another night in that same bar my friend Glen Colson and I joined a heated discussion involving Dave, Barbara, Jon Landau and Bruce, the topic ‘the greatest British hit singles’.
Wrote Bruce on his website today: “[Dave] was a true Rock’n’Roll Lifer. He was soulful, intelligent, heartfelt, opinionated, bruising and often fantastically argumentative. Watching Jon Landau and Dave drive each other crazy over some arcane piece if music would make my day.”
Dave had been ill for some time and I was told recently by a mutual friend that he was losing his sight. I hope to hell he never lost his hearing and that during his final days Barbara cranked up the speakers in their Connecticut home and played Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’, Dave’s all-time favourite song, at top volume.
RIP old pal.
Written with real affection. I have a couple of his books and enjoyed his writing whenever I came across it.
ReplyDeleteLoved Dave’s writing and his proud passion for pop, rock, and soul. His affection for Bruce and The Who, in particular Pete Townshend, is well known but he was also a huge fan of the Stones. His review of their first 20 years of releases in The New Rolling Stone Record Guide, 1983 edition, is essential reading for all those who love the work of Mick, Keef, Charlie, and the boys.
ReplyDeleteI greatly enjoyed his singles book which was witty, amusing and passionate.
ReplyDeleteDave Marsh’s writing was as meaningful to me as any music journalist of rock’s busiest years, starting with his first Bruce bio and maybe peaking with his hysterical telling of The Who’s coming-out party at the Murray The K shows in 1967, as printed in Dave’s segment of the booklet found in the Thirty Years of Maximum R&B box set.
ReplyDeleteDave made me cringe many times, too. His throat-slitting of Linda Ronstadt (who I didn’t care for much, anyway), his dismissal of Kate Bush (who I did), and his gruesome name-calling of Queen were moments I could do without. His definition of Queen’s music as fascist duck-calls couldn’t be said to be far off-target, though: If we’re supposed to have “no time for losers,” what happens to us when we’re the ones branded as just that?
I also recall him burning Billy Joel alive on tinder made from that singer’s perceived sanctimony near the height of Joel’s career. Years later, on his Sirius XM radio show, Dave confessed he found Joel to be a bright and kind person, though Marsh had “serious problems with some of his music.” The point being that it wasn’t personal, no matter how bloody.
But nothing said more about Dave Marsh than a moment on television. I can’t remember the year. It had to be at least twenty years back and was probably a round-number anniversary of Elvis’s death, with a bigger than usual memorial going on at Graceland that had brought Dave to Memphis. I presume he’d been part of some kind of discussion panel there and appeared on one of the big morning shows as part of it – Today, Good Morning America, doesn’t matter which one. Maybe it was CNN, whatever. Dave spoke with verve about The King’s legacy, and the host closed the segment asking Marsh what Elvis song meant the most to him. Dave began to recite “If I Can Dream”, starting with “There must be lights burning brighter somewhere…” And when he began to add the line, “Why, oh why can't my dream come true?,” your friend, the gifted, passionate, unflinching, funny, curmudgeonly, overstepping rib-puncher, the first rock writer I followed by byline, choked up completely and then fell entirely to pieces on live national TV. Tears poured down Dave’s face, and his voice was lost in a flood of emotion surely swelled by a recollection of Elvis Presley’s greatest visual moment, the pinnacle of the 1968 ‘comeback special’.
The question for which Elvis begged an answer was the root and exponent of all that rock music had aspired to as it survived its earliest days and learned to walk; The dream of a better place was the floorboard of modern rock and roll and with it came the thoughts and words it inspired in people like Dave. In fact, one could argue that the entire rationale for Elvis’s existence was captured in just over three minutes of a song written expressly to cap a Christmas-time television special, though clearly a cry from the grave of MLK to that of Bobby Kennedy.
Seeing all this written on Dave’s face was to see someone so close to their biographical subject that they were no longer objective to that subject’s art. Rather, the writer had dug down to the very core of it and trumpeted its most essential truth at his own cost. And with that, if Marsh had transgressed others with caustic writing, it was surely redeemed. Like the best of the music he championed, there was nothing between himself and his audience in that moment. Dave appeared now as a believer in a shining ideal and wanted only for others to feel what he had and hear what mattered most.
I’ll always be grateful for his writing and for being fortunate enough to see Dave break down that morning. He confirmed a rock and soul axiom… The one that says ‘hope’ is the best four-letter word and can’t be sung off-key.
Condolences to you, Chris and all those close to Dave.
Thanks Glenn, lovely tribute, beautifully written.
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