Photo by Yuliia Brunner - Getty Images
Vintage records - Getty Images
If a rock music critic can be called “important” to the genre, Dave Marsh was. Born in Pontiac, Michigan, in 1950, Marsh was an editor at Creem Magazine and wrote for many publications, including Rolling Stone and The Village Voice. He died August 14 at age 76 after a long illness.
My first encounter with Dave Marsh was in 1988. I sent him an essay I had written about the demise of the 45 RPM single, submitted for his newsletter Rock & Roll Confidential. Marsh wrote back to tell me that my premise was misguided but he was still, in his own way, encouraging.
Over the following decades I would occasionally contact him for clarification about something he had written. The responses were curt and sometimes cryptic, but he did reply. When I sent him my essay on a 2011 Motorhead concert, Marsh said he was going to use my piece as “Exhibit A” when he tried to get the band inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Nice to hear.
No Dissent?
A friend of mine had a “Letter to the Editor” published in Rock & Roll Confidential; it disagreed with some political stance that Marsh had taken in a recent issue. The problem was, the letter had been heavily edited and even rewritten, making my friend appear to be agreeing with Marsh rather than voicing an opposing opinion.
Two things led to my expulsion from Marsh’s email world. The first had to do with John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. An expanded CD had been released, and I mentioned theologian Thomas Merton’s admiration for Coltrane’s ability to worship God through his saxophone explorations. Marsh went nearly ballistic in his reply, insisting that A Love Supreme was neither a spiritual nor religious work. I kept wondering if he had ever looked at the album’s liner notes. Coltrane’s spirituality did not fit with how Marsh saw the artist, so it must not be a religious work.
The final purge came when I saw that one of Marsh’s favs, Joan Jett, had been scheduled to appear on South Dakota’s “Mount Rushmore American Pride” float in the 2013 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I said that the gig didn’t sound very rock and roll. Marsh didn’t appreciate even a gentle jab at one of his chosen ones. He chastised me for daring to mock Jett and told me to never write him again. Thin skinned; an insistence on always being right; revamping narratives to foster his own worldview—sounds a bit like a president he so frequently derided.
Kick Out the Jams
Dave Marsh should be lauded for his early and vocal support of The Who and of Bruce Springsteen, among others. He defended Elvis Presley even when it was hard to do so. I once asked him what his book on Elvis brought to the table that Peter Guralnick’s lacked. “A sense of the South,” he replied. A curious reply, I thought—then and now.
Marsh’s writings and later his Kick Out the Jams radio show could be entertaining, if preachy. He spoke often about hunger in America and how to resolve the problem, frequently pointing to the pioneering work of Harry Chapin. Marsh made it clear he had little time for Chapin’s music but admired the man’s altruism in food relief. In some ways this attitude sums up Dave Marsh’s career as a critic—the music an artist created was important, but not as important as agreeing with Marsh’s opinions.
Tom Wilmeth is the author of several books including Sound Bites: A Lifetime of Listening (Muleshoe Press, 2016)
