The perfect book

Like Nelson Eddy, Devon Malcolm and the composer Havergal Brian, the critic Greil Marcus has one of those names that is all the more memorable for being obviously the wrong way round. He is, of course, the doyen, high priest and panjandrum of American music writers, whose best-known book, Mystery Train (1975), dared to treat American rock with a seriousness and a dignity it had previously been denied. In the years since, Marcus has taught rock, and indeed roll, at several prestigious US universities, and settled into the role of revered cultural historian. Staring out of the flyleaf of this latest volume, he looks slightly concerned but distracted in a brainy way. Nick Hornby thinks he is the bee’s knees.

So here, you feel, is his most daunting challenge yet. Van Morrison is the most individual and uncompromising of rock performers, instinctive, crotchety, constantly yearning for something unreachable, transcendental at best, repetitive and wearying at worst. Writing about what he is trying to achieve with his music is like trying to juggle with wet fish. Marcus saw him play Astral Weeks live last year:

The sound Morrison made when he opened his mouth seemed to come out of nowhere. It was huge; it silenced everything around it, pulled every other sound around it into itself.

He describes Morrison’s early style thus:

The blues singer’s marriage of emotional extremism and nihilistic reserve, the delicacy of a soul singer’s presentation of a bleeding heart, a folk singer’s sense of the uncanny in the commonplace, the rhythm and blues bandleader’s commitment to drive, force, speed, and excitement above all.

That’s almost better than the music it describes.

When he moves from the general to the specific, however, Marcus can become as challenging as his subject.