Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music

Greil Marcus was born in San Francisco in 1945. In 1963, two events took place that have shaped his life since: in August, at a Joan Baez concert in New Jersey, she brought out a singer who sang a song called "With God on Our Side"; and on the Monday of the week that President Kennedy was assassinated, at the University of California at Berkeley, he met his future wife, Jenny Bernstein of St. Paul, who had already heard of the singer he hadn't.

In 1969, he became the first Records Editor at Rolling Stone. He has written many books, including Lipstick Traces (1989) and What Nails It (2024), and for many publications. Since 1986, his column "Real Life Rock Top Ten" has migrated through a dozen outlets, from The Village Voice to Substack. In 2009, with Werner Sollors, he edited A New Literary History of America. Between 2000 and 2019, he taught at Cal, Princeton, the New School, Minnesota, NYU, and the Graduate Center in New York. He lives in Oakland.