Edited extract from Mystery Train (1975)
“In the work of each performer is an attempt to create himself, to make a new man out of what is inherited and what is imagined. Each attempt implies an ideal community where that new man would be at home, where his work could communicate easily, and where that community would speak to the artist as clearly as he does to them.
“The audiences that gather around rock ’n’ rollers are as close to that ideal community as anyone gets. If the audience demands only more of what it has already accepted, the artist has a choice.
“He can move on, and perhaps cut himself off from his audience. If he does, his work will lose the vitality it had when it mattered to other people.
“Or else he can accept the audience’s image of himself, pretend that they are his shadowy ideal, and lose himself in his audience. But then he will only be able to confirm, never to create.”
Greil Marcus
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