When Greil Marcus’s editor suggested he write a history of rock ’n’ roll, he not surprisingly felt it was ‘a terrible idea, that it had been done to death’. Thankfully, Marcus did not shy from the task; instead, he reinterpreted it entirely. As our finest bridge between rock journalism and academia, Marcus is unrivalled in his abilities: he picks over the sacred bones of rock ’n’ roll, in the end more of a soothsayer than an archaeologist, revealing the hidden pathways that connect between culture, society, theory and mysticism.

Without spinning the well-worn prayer wheels of nostalgia and epiphany that characterise most other personal histories, Marcus deliberately avoids the songs and singers who might seem almost compulsory (Elvis, the Beatles, Bob Dylan), and includes some that are almost certainly destined to remain obscure or cultish (the Flamin’ Groovies, Christian Marclay), thereby leading us into new territory. He parses obscure meanings and resonances from these ten songs, recorded between 1956 and 2008, which unveil a sort of parallel narrative to orthodox rock history, one that has hitherto remained submerged.

Each of the 10 songs have a talismanic quality, catalysts for Marcus’s idiosyncratic interpretation – the Teddy Bears’s saccharine wedding ballad ‘To Know Him Is to Love Him’ becomes a sort of prism, refracting the public and private histories of Phil Spector and Amy Winehouse (the song’s infamous author and its troubled interpreter) via one of Winehouse’s inspirations, 60s girl group the Shangri-Las. Likewise, Joy Division’s ‘Transmission’ acts as a galvanic totem, a segue between the pre- and post-punk eras, drawing Albert Camus, the Sex Pistols, the Kray twins and Graham Greene into its vortex. Marcus has written both an essential volume of contemporary history, and a hugely readable investigation of rock music’s esoteric underbelly – its unknown pleasures.

Tam Patton