Scott:   As one of the few people who's consistently written rock criticism for over 30 years, I'm curious to know what your primary motivation to continue to write about it is.

Dave:   I guess if that was a question you thought of very much you wouldn't...I mean, there was never a...

Scott:   I guess what I'm getting at is...

Dave:   I don't mean it's not a good question, I don't have a good answer. [laughs] Tell me what you were getting at.

Scott:   I guess that when you look at old issues of Creem and that sort of thing--or if you read some of the other interviews on this site--there just seems to be a lot of people from that period [the early '70s] who don't seem to be doing it any more.

Dave:   Some of them are dead, so I guess the first reason is I'm still alive. [laughs] You know? And the second reason is, what's there to do that's better? I don't know--my lack of need for responsibility is very helpful here.

Scott:   Well what made you want to be a writer in the first place?

Dave:   What made me want to be a writer was being a reader. And what made me want to write about this stuff, which might be what you mean by that question, is listening to the music and deciding that, well, I'm living in a world at that point in my life where it's invisible in culture--much more invisible than it is now. And back then, a show like "Roseanne" was inconceivable. You could have "The Life of Riley" that completely ridiculed working people, or for that matter "The Honeymooners", right? But something that sort of seemed to come out of that culture and express that culture's values at some marginal level--that didn't exist, except that it existed in music. So, it was like, I was invited to that party; I wasn't invited to the other party.

Scott:   How would you define the role of the critic?

Dave:   I don't think that there is a role. I think different people do it different ways.

Scott:   How do you define your job?

Dave:   What I think I'm doing--which I guess is how I define the job--is I think I'm still doing that thing, of trying to look at this thing, the music thing, and how it expresses things for people who don't have any other means of public expression. Which can be applicable to Eminem, it can be applicable, in a funny way, to Sting, it can be applicable certainly to dozens of performers around the world who--I don't know, hundreds, thousands, millions. And the other thing I'm trying to do, I'm trying to write from the point of view of an informed and intelligent and at this stage I would guess it's fair to say 'expert' audience member. I'm not trying to write from the point of view of a musician, I'm not trying to write from the point of view of a record industry insider, that's not what I do. So those are the two things I'm doing, that I can see.

Scott:   What are you listening to in the background?

Dave:   You know something, the record player is in the other room, and it just changed itself. I was listening to the third or fourth disc of that Stax compilation, the one that's live [The Stax Story]. Hang on second...[Music increases in volume.]

Scott:   Is that an old girl group thing?

Dave:   Well, whatever this is I'm not going to be listening to it much longer!

Scott:   So, aside from the obvious fact that there's a lot more rock criticism nowadays--it just keeps growing exponentially--how do you think rock criticism as a genre has changed since its early days?

Dave:   Well, it's changed in so many different ways that it would be hard to nail down one. To me, the first thing that comes to mind is, one of the things you can say about it, amazingly enough, is that it's better. And it's better simply because people are better informed, people have a little better idea of what they're doing. I think the standard of craft is considerably better. And then, you know, you can go to the other side and talk about why it's worse, and it's worse because the whole thing as a project has had its spirits dampened considerably by events, by the rampant kind of--well, even that's a contradiction, because on one level, the most obvious thing to think is, from the point of view of aesthetics, is that there's too many records made, too much music, whatever. But that's really a bizarre thought. And I think what it is is that there IS an over-production of the commodity, but the fact that so many people are making music of one kind or another and that virtually all of it has some relationship to this rock/r&b thing in terms of coming from that rhythmic basis if nothing else--that's a pretty remarkable thing, it seems to me. So I am a little weary--I don't think it's such a good idea to say, well, that's too much.

So, you've got your hack work, but you always had your hack work. You always had the teen magazines, and there are even gradations in that. I don't mean to stand here and put down my friends who edited teen magazines, like Gloria Stavers at 16 and Danny Fields at Date Book and Paul Nelson at Hullabaloo, because they did great stuff that helped inspire me. But there was always crap out there, and in a society organized the way this one is, there always will be. I don't even know how you would measure it out and try to figure out whether percentage-wise it's gone quote-unquote up or down. My instinct is that there are more people trying to do serious work now than there were in 1969 when I started at Creem. Quite a lot more, percentage-wise.

Scott:   I would agree with that, and I thought one of the assumptions made in Let It Blurt is that rock criticism has gone downhill since Lester Bangs died, and I'm a little uneasy with what I thought WAS an assumption.

Dave:   Well, you know, Jim's got his own particular take on it. Jim's a lot more--he comes out of that kind of punk-alt rock perfectionist thing, which is a group of people who tend to see the world in very politicized terms, in terms of the office politics of things, and miss the big political picture. [laughs] In terms of the social structure of politics. And I think when you look at it from that point of view, it would appear--I have to be careful what I say here because it's not what I think, and it's so fucking easy to caricature it [laughs], and I have a real talent for that, I think--but from my own point of view, that kind of angry, cynical... there was this writer I used to work with in Boston named James Isaacs, I think he does public radio or something up there, and his thing used to be, "Nothing ain't no good no more." Well, you know, if I felt that way I wouldn't even be here; I'd just check out, that's easy to do. It isn't even expensive any more. There are great drugs! I mean, what could that Darvon that Lester took--not that I think Lester killed himself, that's a bad joke. But really, one of the things that this society we live in provides us is: you don't have to stick around if you think it all sucks, you don't have to be here. And I'm not encouraging anyone to leave, it's just, you know, if that's how you feel, then check yourself out. And how I feel is, I'm glad to be here.

Scott:   Were you pleased with the Bangs biography? Did you feel it was an accurate portrayal of both Bangs and the whole world of Creem and all that?

Dave:   I would say in terms of the place where Lester and my world intersected--which is at Creem --I'd say it's about 3/4, which is above the average by a little bit. There are things in there that I told Jim weren't true, and quite logically explained to him that it was impossible, for instance, that I had ever gone out on this night of bar-hopping with Lester and Handsome Dick Manitoba, for the very simple reason that I never go bar-hopping in my life with anybody. It's not something I do. [laughs]

Scott:   I actually re-read that passage today, and he made it sound like you couldn't handle it or something, and that was the last they saw of you...

Dave:   Well I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to handle it--that's one of the reasons why I don't do it. And the other reason I wouldn't have been able to handle it is that unlike those people, I'm not an alcoholic. In short, I had no reason to handle it. I had a whole other kind of life, and it was certainly... you know, here's what I think. I think Jim meant well 100% of the time. I think he had a theory and I think there are lots of parts of the theory that are correct, but my interest in that book--I have not sat down and read that book from beginning to end for a bunch of different reasons including the fact that I'm working on something very far afield from it, and also because I think I would find it very painful. Not because of how I feel about Lester--I mean, not because of any negative feelings I have about Lester--but because I miss the smelly old bastard. But I did read the stuff about Creem, so all my comments are only about Creem and whatever other places, like that Dick Manitoba thing... like, he's got that whole story about me leaving Pine Knob. The only way you can get out of Pine Knob is by automobile, otherwise you have to walk. I didn't have a driver's license, and the nearest person I knew to Pine Knob is my mother who lives about ten miles away. I guarantee you I would remember a ten mile walk in the middle of the night. And I told it to Jim just like that: It didn't happen, and this is why it didn't happen, this is why it couldn't have happened. But like I said, he's got a theory and he stuck to it.

Scott:   Through various things that you've been involved in, such as some anti-censorship campaigns, you've come to know and probably befriend a lot of musicians, and you're obviously pretty close to Springsteen, and I think you've been stupidly criticized for that--it's not like you're not qualified to write a book about him; that's just an old argument and a stupid one. But what I am curious to know is, is it difficult for you to separate your personal relations from your professional obligations? Have you ever panned any records made by your friends, and what was their response?

Dave:   [laughs] Yeah, it's happened, you know, I mean, Peter Wolf didn't speak to me once for about a year-and-a-half. The last time I saw Roger Daltrey was in an elevator at about 8:00 in the morning, and I think if I hadn't been standing with a friend of mine who happened to be black and at least as big as his bodyguard, I'd still have a lump on my head. So, yeah. It's funny because I have this contradictory reputation on the one hand for being this kind of acerbic, trouble-making, fire-starting, invective-brandishing bully--tough guy, whatever. And on the other hand, being this callow sap for celebrities. Well, you know [laughs], both are wrong. Because nobody's that simple. And really, one reason why people didn't like the Springsteen books--those who didn't like them--was because that's the point of the Springsteen books. Not only does celebrity not make you happy, it also doesn't mean that you have to be sad, or a sad case. It doesn't predetermine anything. And, like I said, people have got theories and they stick to them, and boy, did that fly in the face of a lot of what people... that's what people--it isn't that I'm close to Bruce, which I am, what it is is that I didn't think that he became a rat when he became successful, because he didn't become a rat when he became successful. He didn't even become--life became more complicated in some ways, and simpler in others. That's what happens, that's what all the stories are about, that's what the Who story's about with an unhappy ending. And really, I went from the Who book into the second Bruce book to get the taste of the ending of the Who book out of my mouth, it's as simple as that.

This thing was coming up, I knew it was going to be an extraordinary thing. Bruce is not only my friend, he's also somebody in whom I have a lot of confidence, and I thought there was a story there. I had no idea I was going to drag Ronald Reagan into it in quite such a direct way, but you know, I could see a story shaping up there that I wanted to tell, and I thought I really needed, after the Who book, and Keith and the reformed band and Cincinnati and all of it, I just said, I need to tell a true story with a happy ending, where I am gonna be...You know, listen, I'm working on a Marvin Gaye biography, my daughter gets cancer and dies, I spit the bit on the Marvin Gaye book for the simple reason that I couldn't go through...another one of those. And in a strange way, the Marvin story was another one of those. So some of it is how I internalize this stuff, and nobody has to know that--unless they ask--but I do think that in terms of the ideology of the whole thing, what I do is, where I stand, is not, you know--I stand in the place where I think Jann Wenner's full of shit, I think Thomas Frank is full of shit. [laughs] I just think that they're both wrong! And it's not this great giddy thing to become a rock star, and it ain't always good, and people who become successful aren't always good--including some of the ones who are the most celebrated for being good--but then on the other end of it isn't always bad. And you're not trapped.

That whole kind of po-mo thing that Frank represents, I guess--which I think, actually, Jim DeRogatis in some ways falls into--is this notion that if you become involved in certain things that are bigger than a fly speck, you've sold out to the system. But you haven't sold out to the system because there's only one system and all of us live within it. Some of us are working to change what the system is, and some of us are working to keep things the same, and some of us are visibly engaged in denying that any change is possible, which to me is the post-modernist project. But that was always very far afield from the Creem project, and the Creem project--I can't really speak for anyone else, but I'm pretty sure that this is still true for Jaan Uhelszki, and for me and her alone--but for me, the Creem project was about having this culture that gave people like us a voice, and using it, and not making too many assumptions based on that about what was worthy and unworthy. You know, sometimes trash is trash, and it's hard for some of the people who've discovered that trash is sometimes art to get around that. It's like, okay, you've learned to hit the curve ball, now we're going to throw you the slider. [laughs] And it's interesting to me because the signal characteristic of the sort of defeatist po-mo mob is that they're very well educated, and yet, they have this need to see things in this very extreme terms, and the human dimension, and the muddled and tainted dimension--it's as if things can exist un-tainted. And you know, really, they can't. The Replacements can't. the Clash couldn't. I'm trying to think of other things that really tried to be un-tainted. Bruce couldn't. Everybody walks around with some part of both things... the worst people you can think of are tainted by stuff that's great. Look at Ahmet Ertegun. Here's a guy who virtually made destitute any number of people who I both know personally and revere as artists, right? And yet, at the same time he also made this music that, as much as any single, non-performer, he made this thing happen. So it's just, it's a messy world, as Rodney Crowell once said.

Scott:   Are you happy to take credit for coining the phrase 'punk rock'?

Dave:   Well, happier every year! It's funny because a bunch of different people, even Bob Christgau, called me up and said, Legs McNeil says in his book [Please Kill Me] that he coined the term. And I said, well, he didn't. This is when it happened--in my ? Mark and the Mysterians "Looney Tunes" column. And Legs McNeil was still, you know, learning how to lift his tone-arm at that point. And that's just true. Now, he has some need, I guess, to write me out of the story. I mean, hey, being able to write that much oral history about the MC5 and Detroit and not mention my name? That takes a very skillful and dishonest person. What was impressive to me about it was the skill, because I already was aware of the dishonesty.

Scott:   You may have partly answered this question already, but in regards to the punk rock that did emerge in the late seventies, you were a little more skeptical about it than many of your contemporaries at the time...

Dave:   I don't like movements in music and in the arts. I don't trust them very much. I like social movements. And what punk was in the United States, as a social movement, was not clear to me, and the parts of it that were clear to me I didn't like from the git. From the git, I was aware that Lester had wound up in the White Noise Supremacists. I always saw that. And part of how I saw that was that's how I heard it, and by that I mean, the drumming and the bass lines--with the exception of the Clash bass lines which were very, very good, and some of the Sex Pistols--but for the most part in that music the rhythm is atrophied. That wasn't very interesting to me. And to me, one of the cycles in these musics is that they're kind of invented by outcasts of one kind or another: black people, poor people, Southern people, you know, English working class people, whatever. And much nuance gets obliterated in the taking over because, well, you can look at it in different ways.

For instance, Brian Wilson just had a lot more education than the guys who were doing the doo-wop records, and he knew some things about harmony that many of them didn't know. I'm not sure he ever actually made a record that was any more harmonically sophisticated than a Platters record or a Flamingos record, but with the run of doo-wop records, sure. You get into bluegrass music, bluegrass music becomes an instrumental music even though it's basically, before the college kids get involved, a platform for voices. Well, the kids can't sing. The Charles River Valley Boys and those various groups--they can't sing like the Stanley Brothers or the Butch Mountain Boys or Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. They can't do that! So, they reinvent it and it becomes this kind of Jerry Garcia/David Grisman thing. Something is lost. And I think that if you move from Johnny Thunders to Richard Hell you're doing another version of that. I just think you are. And I think that there was something going on in the music of, let's say, the MC5, the Dolls, the Sex Pistols, that is not going on in most other punk music. That's a gross way to put it, and it's unfair to all kinds of people--it's unfair to Pete Shelley--but as a general thing, that was what was happening. And it also meant ignoring--I'm not gonna give up liking Bootsy Collins. For that matter, I'm not gonna give up liking Jackson Browne! If the price of this is becoming musically narrower, I'd never have noted yes for that. Even with the MC5, which seems like the narrowest possible thing, you go look at those early issues of Creem, we're writing about Charles Mingus, we're writing about Ray Charles, we're writing about all kinds of things... [laughs] Let me put it this way, we're writing about all kinds of things that are much more sophisticated than anything that we know to say about them. But there isn't a blanket--I'm not the one who wrote James Taylor must die ["James Taylor Marked For Death," Lester Bangs]. I didn't like James Taylor very much, but I'm not the one who wrote James Taylor must die, that was somebody else. And so, if you're weary of that, then you're weary of the whole thing. Do I think that what happened in punk was important? Yeah, it was important. I don't know that it was any more important than disco.

Scott:   I was going to ask you about disco.

Dave:   In the long run do I think punk was more important than disco? I think in the long run the way that punks who survived as musicians mainly sustained themselves by taking ideas from funk and disco. I think that answers the question right there. And do I think that the revolution in white rock 'n' roll, or in part of white rock 'n' roll, that happened in England and was stillborn in the United States with punk, approaches the significance of the rise of rap music? That's a silly idea. It seems to be the idea that has animated much of rock criticism for the last 20 years, but it's an absurd idea, I mean, it's just ludicrous.

Scott:   It seems like your own feelings about disco at the time were kind of complicated.

Dave:   My feelings about everything at ALL times is pretty complicated. [laughs] Here's what happened. I wrote a piece about some of the r&b vocal groups that had been desperately trying to make disco--Archie Bell & the Drells. And Vince Aletti wrote a brilliant rejoinder to it in the Voice, which totally changed my mind about what was going on. And really--I think I may have called Vince and apologized. [laughs] I remember doing something like that. And then of course the other thing that happened was that horrible pogrom at the Detroit Tigers / Chicago White Sox game with those racist disc jockeys. Then I think the other thing was--it's in The Heart of Rock and Soul--I went to Yankee stadium before opening day, must've been '78 or '79, the year of the Reggie Bar, I think it was. And Reggie Jackson's doing batting practise and he's hitting ball after ball... hang on a second, I gotta get my dog. [Calls dog into the room.] He's hitting ball after ball into the right field stands, and while this is happening the record that's playing at full volume over the Yankee Stadium loudspeakers is "Disco Inferno." Well, you know, I argue with lots of things, but I do not argue with my ears.

And when you hear--disco music is a music that--and house is like that and some of the techno and stuff that's derived from techno--is that you have to hear it in the right context or you can't get it. I remember Arthur Baker being astonished, because I'm not a clubgoer and I like the first house records that he played for me. And I liked them because I understood the ostinato piano figures as being basically a sped-up version of Chicago blues, which they are. But that was a fluke. In general, you're going to have an experience that snaps you out of your context and INto the context of that music. I can hear free jazz very easily--not to say that I understand it or write about it well, but I hear it, take pleasure in it, and have some concept of what's going on because of all those Sun Ra / MC5 shows, it's as simple as that. I have been in that world long enough to know, right? And sometimes that's truer than other times. Early reggae you didn't need that, or at least I didn't, because you could rely on some parts of your r&b thing to get you through. Dancehall, you're gonna have to work harder, it's as simple as that.

Dave Marsh interview, part 2