IN MEMORY OF DAVE MARSH, Part 1: "The Pen Is A Sword" by Lee Ballinger
November 10, 2026
Editor's note: Welcome to the first installment of In Memory Of Dave Marsh, a planned multi-part series of features intended to cover every aspect of what has made Dave's work so important, influential, and enduring. When Dave died in August, we briefly noted through our sadness that his work "had a profound, lasting influence on the international community of Springsteen fans, and continues to do so. This very website has been greatly influenced and inspired by him." We also promised that in due time we would "have much more to share about Dave Marsh and his enduring impact and importance."
It didn't take very long for us to realize that no single feature, especially if it were assembled hastily, could do enough justice to all that Dave accomplished in his lifetime: as a great critic, journalist, writer, Springsteen biographer, E Street Radio founder/host, leader, mentor, and activist, just to name a few of his many "careers." He's left an indelible impact on so many of us in the Springsteen-fans "universe," but also in the hearts and minds of so many people from so many different backgrounds and communities, all of whom share a common belief in and critical thinking about the best of popular music/culture and its ability to help change our world for the better. Therefore we've decided to take our time to do right by Dave and his legacy, presenting an ongoing series of features involving many different folks who knew him well, worked side-by-side with him, and/or whose lives were greatly affected by his work.
Of course there's no better way to launch this series than with the words of Lee Ballinger, Dave Marsh's longtime friend and key collaborator at Rock & Rap Confidential, their excellent, groundbreaking, advertising-free, and editorially independent newsletter that also became an important hub for networking and activism. We are very pleased and honored that Lee has permitted us to publish an enhanced version of his beautiful essay about Dave, "The Pen Is A Sword." 'Round these parts, not surprisingly, the title of Lee's essay also brings to mind a few relevant lyrics from a certain Springsteen song, as well: "...[T]his is your sword, This is your shield/This is the power of love revealed/Carry them with you wherever you go/And give all the love that you have in your soul." Take it from here, please, Lee...
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DAVE MARSH - THE PEN IS A SWORD
by Lee Ballinger
Dave Marsh was my editor at Rock & Rap Confidential (RRC, formerly Rock & Roll Confidential) for over thirty years. [Click here to explore some of RRC's archival material, and you also can click here to purchase a copy of the now-out-of-print 1985 book The First Rock & Roll Confidential Report.] It was recently suggested to me that I consider writing a book about him. I appreciate the thought, but this is what I did instead...
"I’m Dave Marsh, I’ve been writing about music for a very long time (1969-present seems long to me, anyhow). Most of what I’ve written about is, I guess, driven by an urgent sense of needing mileposts to live my life by. The fact is, at least for me, that the whole reason I write about, and listen to, so much popular music is that if you dive deep enough, often enough, you really do find concepts to live by." - email; January 22, 2016
Author/journalist Dave Marsh died from complications of posterior cortical atrophy, a form of dementia, on August 14. He had a fierce work ethic which allowed him to generate an astounding body of written work. But the rest of Dave's life - connecting people and ideas and movements to each other - was mostly a group activity. Dave was sometimes an initiator, sometimes a foot soldier, but always a visionary.
"I want a house with a crowded table
And a place by the fire for everyone"
Dave Marsh was a friend who always had your back and was generous in sharing whatever he had. He had a wicked sense of humor, often at its best when deployed against the wicked among us (although taking friendly fire could sometimes be the price of being Dave's friend.)
The following tales are based on, as they say in the movies, "true events." Dave was present for most of them. Come to think of it, even if he wasn't present, he was.
In the spring of 1984, John Tirpak and two other local union officers were fired by Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel in Ohio because the company didn't like what they had written in their local's independent newspaper. Six months after the firing, on October 13, 1984, Tirpak spoke about what had happened since, and some 350 writers, musicians, dancers, painters, editors, poets, critics, filmmakers, and actors listened.
They attended a party hosted by Rock & Rap Confidential in New York City held to bring together artists with union leaders under the banner of Art Meets Labor.
The first speaker was Ron Weisen, president of Steelworkers Local 1397 in Pittsburgh, who had recently received national publicity when his local's food bank received a $10,000 check from Bruce Springsteen. Other speakers included Brooklyn Congressman Major Owens, Patricia Jones (program coordinator of the poetry project at St. Mark's, where Patti Smith got her start,) and Dave Marsh.
Art critics traded experiences with shop stewards from an Ohio steel mill... Latin singing star Ruben Blades exchanged ideas with Major Owens and columnist Alexander Cockburn about how to mobilize the Latin vote in order to get rid of New York Mayor Ed Koch... Writers from MTV and New Musical Express spoke with Curtis Worthy, the president of the Black Caucus at U.S. Steel in Philadelphia... New York transit workers got to know not only John Mellencamp (who flew in for the occasion) but poets, painters, club DJs and record producers.
One photographer summed up some of the most important results of the evening: "I often feel like I'm isolated in the larger culture and waging a personal battle with my art. Tonight made me understand that it's not just personal, that I have something in common with people across the country, whether they're artists or not."
That feeling spread around the country as Art Meets Labor events were subsequently held in Philadelphia, Chicago, Rapid City, Lincoln, Omaha, and Los Angeles.
Frank Joyce: "I was the Communications Director of the United Auto Workers (UAW.) Dave actively supported our efforts at the UAW to encourage writers at local union newspapers."
Lauren Onkey writes, "I was honored to write the introduction to Kick Out the Jams, a recent anthology of Dave Marsh’s work. I started it like this: 'Since 1969, Dave Marsh has been writing about music like our lives depended on it.' I keep putting off posting about Dave’s passing. Maybe because I’ve been spending so much time reading posts from friends and writers and musicians, or because instead I’ve been reading a lot of old Marsh reviews that meant so much to me. Maybe because I can’t really process it, even though I knew it was coming. I wish he was still writing and talking about music. I wish he was still supporting so many nascent writers and musicians. I wish he was still raising money and awareness for cancer research. I wish he was still pissing people off. But maybe that sentence is all I’ve really got: Dave wrote about music and the people who made it and listened to it like it mattered, despite what the world might tell us."
When The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame opened, Dave, then a member of the nominating committee where the real power lies in the Hall, was enthusiastic. He became less so over the years, frustrated by the Hall's failure to reach its potential, a failure made maddening by the things it got right. In 1989, at the conclusion of an article about those frustrations, Dave shared his ballot:
LaVern Baker
Ruth Brown
King Curtis
The Four Tops
Little Willie John
Frankie Lymon
Bob Marley
Wilson Pickett
The Platters
The Who
"Everyone has a list of unforgettable first encounters with great records," Dave wrote. "Mine includes hearing the Animals' 'House of the Rising Sun' during one of my first shaves and nearly amputating a lip; being awakened at 4 AM for a job I hated by Len Barry's dreadful '1-2-3' and being snapped into full consciousness when Dylan's 'Positively Fourth Street' followed; 'Papa's Got a Brand New Bag' while stuck at a railroad crossing with my R&B-hating father; 'Every Breath You Take' on a black-oriented dance music station at four o'clock on an August Sunday afternoon."
Dave loved and promoted jazz, heavy metal, and Latin music, and a whole lot of what's in between. Including Madonna. Because, like Dave, she was from Detroit. Because she had "entered the rarified ranks of those pop stars who function as lightning rods for assholes." Because Madonna told the magazine YM that the person in history that she would most like to trade places with is Malcolm X. Above all, Dave loved Madonna's music and videos and if you had a few hours to spare, he would have been glad to tell you why.
Dave is well-known for his love for and expertise in music history, but he hardly lived soaked in nostalgia. Dave was given an Award of Merit by The Black Rock Coalition, he co-wrote The New Book of Rock Lists with James Bernard (co-founder of hip-hop bible The Source,) and, in The First Rock & Roll Confidential Report, Dave came up with a Baker's Dozen of producer Arthur Baker's greatest hip-hop/electro hits ("Planet Rock," etc.) He was the first to use the word "punk" to describe a form of music, and in 1993 he changed the name of Rock & Roll Confidential to Rock & Rap Confidential.
Not long after I first encountered Dave Marsh, I met up with him at the offices of Rolling Stone. I don't think he even said hello to me before he pointed to a chair (with the implied command of "Sit!") and slapped some headphones on me. He pushed play on a cassette player and turned the volume way up. It was some backwoods preacher, testifying and singing as if his life depended on it. It was great. When it was over, Dave looked at me with a satisfied smirk and said: "No one else here can stand to listen to this stuff."
“A great new sound reaches us, always, as a miraculous gift.” - Dave Marsh, writing about avant-jazzman Albert Ayler
One day I went over to Dave's house and he was holding court at his kitchen table with Detroit rocker Marshall Crenshaw. The three of us spent a few hours raving about our faves and telling music industry war stories. Yo Yo Ma? The mayor of New York? There is almost no one on earth that I would have been surprised to run into at Dave's house (with the exception of members of the Grateful Dead.)
Or run into by being at someone else's house. Dave was at my house once when he remembered an appointment in Hollywood. "Come with me!" Dave implored. OK. It turned out the appointment was a meeting with Jan Gaye, Marvin Gaye's lovely ex-wife, about a possible book deal. Jan was getting her hair done, probably thinking to herself "Is this guy with Dave a lawyer? There weren't supposed to be any lawyers today." I was definitely thinking "Are you the woman Marvin wrote all those songs about?"
"I was trying to think of my favorite book by Dave and couldn’t come close. In a literary sense, in terms of focus, erudition, grace, and fun, maybe The Beatles’ Second Album (available for purchase here or here.) For audacity and scholarship, the Louie Louie book. For the desert island, The Heart of Rock & Soul. But most of all—these are books that no one else would ever have written. He arrived and he left. He was his own creation." - Derek Murphy (via Greil Marcus)
Dave did indeed write many books. Elvis. The Who. Michael Jackson. The Beatles. Best ofs. Compilations. Books about censorship, including one about "Louie Louie." Sam Moore. And a handful about Bruce Springsteen [his two biographies, later republished/expanded into one large volume entitled Two Hearts..., as well as Bruce Springsteen On Tour: 1968-2005.]
"I recall his helpful response upon my decree that 'you have now officially missed your deadline by ten years' with a distracted 'Tell Simon and Schuster that they can both go fuck themselves.'" - Sandy Choron, Dave Marsh's agent
There's also 360 Sound: The Columbia Records Story - Legends and Legacy [the book-supplement/flash-drive/now-collectors'-item,] in which Dave selected 263 audio/music tracks and wrote about them. Or the liner-notes for Queen of Soul: The Atlantic Recordings by Aretha Franklin, for which Dave received a Grammy. Or Dave's co-edit of Pastures of Plenty: A Self-Portrait [The Unpublished Writings of An American Folk Hero, Woody Guthrie.]
"The Beatles showed their allegiance to the principles of the civil rights movement when they refused to play any racially segregated shows on their 1964 concert tour." - from Dave Marsh's book, The Beatles' Second Album
Email from Gene Glickman, received November 7, 2007: "I was a member of Long Island CORE [civil rights organization] during the 1960s. We hit upon the idea of a fundraiser and sought to involve the Beatles. They replied that they would have loved to participate, but they were booked on another continent. So we had Pete Seeger and Nina Simone instead."
Dave also wrote a mountain of essays, columns (one of which got him fired from Rolling Stone offshoot The Record,) and record reviews. He was the founding editor of Creem and a co-founder and editor of Rock & Rap Confidential.
"Thanks for all the great work in Rock and Rap... I love it." - Jeremy Pikser, Oscar-nominated for co-writing the script for Bulworth with Warren Beatty
"I have been reading many of the 200-plus pieces on your website and have been enjoying the thought provocation and enlightenment you share." - Michael Franti, Spearhead
"This, RRC, this is what we need." - Joe Strummer
"RRC remains the best publication to hit my mailbox." - Cameron Crowe
"Here's a slightly crumpled check from the promoter of the show. It's not a million dollars but it should help you do something." - Wesley Stace (aka John Wesley Harding)
Dave had his own radio shows on SiriusXM but that pales next to his cumulative record as a very promiscuous radio and television guest. Sometimes he was promoting his latest book, but Dave was always promoting human liberation.
Dave also did two lecture tours. The first was about his life on the road with some of music's biggest artists. He made a presentation to a few hundred people in Stillwater, Oklahoma, which he later described as "The best lecture I've ever given." It was good enough to entice local student Danny Alexander to join the staff of Rock & Rap Confidential, become Dave's lecture agent for a while, and go on to write books about Soul Asylum and Mary J. Blige.
Dave's second tour focused on censorship and he took his message deep into the heart of America. For instance, on February 18, 1991 he spoke to over a thousand people at Northeast Missouri State University in the small town of Kirksville. Every time he attacked censorship the audience gave him a standing ovation.
Following lunch one day with a record company vice-president who was a strong supporter of RRC, Dave and I got to talking about the demographics of changing the world. We concluded that while those who are suffering a problem must be the driving force for change, they need to be aligned with all kinds of folks from throughout society. Further, that we were in a good position to help make those connections (not to mention the personal delight we got from diverse company.)
After years of voting in various polls, I long ago became a serial list maker. Here's a list of a sweet sixteen of Dave's friends, which could easily contain several hundred other names. Many of these connections happened by accident, but the way Dave lived, surrounded by some of the coolest people in the world, was no accident.
"Friends
Ones we can depend on
Friends
How many of us have them?
Friends
Before we go any further, let's be
Friends"
1. A former coal miner, John Woods lived in desperate poverty with his family after the mines closed in Harrison County (Ohio's poorest county.) He and homeboys Randy Payton and Kirby Stokes (joined along the way by Orlando computer whiz/ metal maniac Kenny Moore) created the organization Rock Out Censorship (ROC,) complete with a crusading national newspaper of the same name. They somehow found ways to travel the country, sounding the censorship alarm and pointing out that music censorship was based in the need of America's elite to keep the poor from communicating with each other. Elbowing their way past the liberals of the music industry, John Woods & Co. went out on tours such as Guns N' Roses/ Metallica, Wu Tang/Rage Against the Machine, and Ozzfest. Woods, the former president of the Jaycees in Jewett, Ohio, had a big wall map of the United States up on his kitchen wall with a pin marking every time a new anti-censorship group emerged. (There were a lot of them.)
A week before the 1992 Presidential election, Rock Out Censorship announced that they had collected thirty thousand signatures on a petition demanding that the warning labels ("Tipper stickers") forced onto fans by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) be removed. Ten thousand signatures came from a Guns 'N Roses tour, where Rock Out Censorship was a guest of the band, and the rest were gathered by fans in all fifty states. On October 30, a caravan left ROC's Ohio headquarters and set off for the Washington, DC offices of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA,) the group that agreed with Tipper Gore's PMRC to put warning labels on records. After stopping off for a protest rally at PMRC headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, the ROC delegation headed across the river to RIAA offices, which for six weeks had dodged ROC's attempts to set up a meeting. Jay Berman, the RIAA's $600,000-a-year president, was conveniently "out of the country." Unsurprisingly, when the ROCers got to the RIAA offices, no one would talk to them or accept their petitions.
2. Joyce Moore, the wife of Sam Moore of Sam and Dave, has been involved in a fight for the fair compensation of artists for decades, a struggle near and dear to Dave's heart and one he was very active in.
When I was working on my Lynyrd Skynyrd book, I needed producer Tom Dowd's number so I could interview him. Dave gave me Joyce's number and told me to call her and get Dowd's number. I did and I called him. At first he seemed a little hesitant at being accosted by a stranger, but then he checked: "Did you say you got my number from Joyce Moore?" "Yes." Then he got excited and started telling me what a great book I was going to write. I don't know about that, but Tom Dowd certainly made it better.
3. Harry Chapin ("Cat's in the Cradle.") Reporting from the December 7, 1988 Tribute to Harry Chapin at Carnegie Hall, Dave wrote: "Harry Chapin should also be remembered for his reminders about the inextricable ties between starvation and malnourishment and the banks and corporations who profit from them and also his ceaseless warnings about 'event psychosis': the illusion that staging an event solves a problem."
4. Cheri Honkala, longtime leader of poor people's organizations in Philadelphia and nationwide. Cheri has helped to lead housing takeovers and fights for access to food, water, and medical care and helped to spearhead many marches, some several hundred miles long. Dave often had Cheri on the radio and helped to bring musicians into the mix.
5. Black Rose, the founder of Zoom Black Magic pirate radio, housed in an old trailer in Fresno, California. He and Dave were fast friends from the moment they met. Dave became a champion of what was becoming a burgeoning pirate radio movement and Rose connected Dave to many veteran blues and gospel artists.
6. Holly Gleason, one of the smartest people in Nashville, a good enough golfer to hang with Vince Gill on the links, editor of Woman Walk the Line: How the Women in Country Music Changed our Lives and co-author with Kenny Chesney of Heart Life Music.
7. Myron Walden, alto saxophonist with Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band. He and Dave would get together, each with a stack of obscure records, and have a record-review party. One of Dave's favorites in these sessions was Walden's own Countryfied, a different approach than the elegance of the Fellowship: organ/guitar funky with bits of church and Hendrix, plus sprinklings of down-home rock & roll.
8. Steve Messick. At an event in Philadelphia, Dave Marsh comes up to me with a young stranger in tow. "Hey, Ballinger, this is Steve Messick!" This was good news, to meet the guy who had been writing long, passionate music-savvy letters to us. Turns out Steve was a Delaware factory worker, a runner of marathons, and could sometimes be found on the stages of local clubs blowing harp. He also became the host of the "In Defense of Music Beach Party" in Georgetown, Delaware, where anti-Tipper warriors gathered to party and strategize.
9. Ernie Perez, lead singer of Boxing Gandhis, kinda sorta descendants of Sly & the Family Stone and War. They tore up L.A. clubs for years and toured the country opening for Dave Matthews. Ernie is the founder of Rock A Mole [rhymes with "guacamole"] Productions, which is legendary in L.A. for its festivals featuring music, poetry, art, and dance (plus one of the first major gigs for Ozomatli.) Rock A Mole also produced the The Ultimate Song, a documentary about music's role in ending poverty. Ernie is a deacon at his church in South Central L.A., where the HOPE Kitchen prepares hot meals every weekend for distribution to local homeless folks.
10. Stew Francke, a Michigan band leader of local renown who had a long battle with leukemia that he finally lost in 2025. Dave hooked me up with Stew and some L.A. musician friends of mine, and when a friend of ours came down with cancer, Stew stepped up and gave our buddy moral and medical support, even flying out to share his experiences. Our friend is still alive and well today.
11. Carvell Holloway, head of the music department at Dominguez High School in Compton. Carvell is also a professional jazz trumpet player who has played with Kamasi Washington and Terrace Martin and recorded with the likes of The Temptations. Not to mention playing with the African American Chamber Music Society and Southeast Symphony. For decades, L.A. has been blessed with a steady stream of high school music teachers known citywide who lift their students up and then watch them fly. Carvell is the latest in that line and he has more love for his students than any teacher I have ever met.
12. Ruben Blades, the Latin singing star, came into Dave's life just when Ruben was making his first foray into recording in English. Dave & Co. did everything they could to help him find new audiences. Ruben once said, "The thing I like about you guys is you really understand what I'm doing with my music." Hmm, I'm not at all sure about that, but we sure did feel it. Ruben later ran for president of his native Panama (came in third) and subsequently was named the country's Minister of Tourism.
13. Tony Mazzocchi was vice-president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union (OCAW) and secretary-treasurer from 1988 to 1991. He was a primary force behind enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA.) Mazzocchi was chair of the first Earth Day rally in New York City on April 22, 1970. He was a mentor to Karen Silkwood, a newly minted union leader at an Oklahoma factory. Silkwood died in a car accident in 1974 while on her way to deliver evidence to a New York Times reporter about the safety violations at her plant. The evidence she had collected was missing from her car at the crash site. (A film, Silkwood, starring Meryl Streep and Cher, was released in 1983.) A passionate advocate for the role of culture, in 2001 Tony Mazzocchi founded the Labor Film Festival at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
14. Ruben Funkahuatl Guevara is the Ruben of Frank Zappa's Ruben and the Jets. He went on to launch a record label, Zyanya (Los Angelinos: The Eastside Renaissance,) and wrote the first history of Chicano rock & roll in The Rock & Roll Confidential Report (followed many years later by the book Confessions of a Radical Chicano Doowop Singer.) Ruben is also a poet, a producer, and a performance artist. If you check out Con Safos, the excellent documentary about his life, you'll see that he's also a helluva dancer. I heard Dave describe Ruben on more than one occasion as "a national treasure."
15. Susan Martinez. Along with some musician friends from LA, I attended a Folk Alliance national conference long ago, which is where I met Sue. Clearly, she was the most influential person there. (Dave Marsh, also present, a rare number two in that category.) Connections were made and many still reverberate today. At a subsequent Folk Alliance conference Sue was the leader of the Cake Conspiracy, in which a satirical birthday cake for Dave Marsh was prepared in secret, transported across the country and snuck into a conference room. Dave pretended not to be amused.
16. Ron Wynn is the Sports and Entertainment Editor at the African-American newspaper The Tennessee Tribune, a contributor at The Bluegrass Situation, and was a writer for the now-defunct Nashville City Paper. Of course, he also wrote excellent contributions to RRC. For example: "While no one gets upset when a white country artist like Ronnie Milsap ('Any Day Now') or Barbara Mandrell ('If Loving You is Wrong') covers a black song, many still see Charley Pride as some kind of freak. Yet the presence of black country singers makes perfect sense in light of the common roots of country, soul, and rock among blacks and whites in the South. No, Pride is not a freak. He's an artist of great creativity who has succeeded in playing music his way without being defeated by myth and ignorance." My personal favorite of Ron Wynn's RRC musings was when he dropped science on the question of why blacks and whites dance differently.
Dion writes, "We were at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame premiering a video on the Winter Dance Party, the fatal plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. Dave Marsh interviewed me that night for the audience that was there. In the course of the interview he said to me: 'Dion, you're the only artist from the Fifties who remained creative and relevant all these decades.'
"He said, 'Dion, your music is Black music filtered through a Bronx Italian neighborhood, comes out with an attitude. Yo!' And he said, 'You're a rhythm singer and in your very DNA you are steeped in the blues, you have an affinity for this music, it's at the center of your being.' So he convinces me of this stuff.
"My wife was there and we were talking after that presentation and she said 'What are you going to do about it?' The last album I made was Blues With Friends. I gotta say 'Dave, thank you.' Maybe at the beginning of my career I was successful but now, I kid you not, I am fulfilled. Those are two different things--being successful and being fulfilled. Fulfillment is a beautiful thing. Thank you, Dave Marsh, my dear friend. I love you."
Dave would embrace you as a friend even if he'd never met you. I can remember more than once when I was talking to him on the phone and he'd say "Gotta go! Gotta take this call." Later I would find out that it was someone who had cancer in the family and wanted to talk to him about it. That always took priority.
As for myself, back in the day, Dave and I both belonged to SABR (Society For American Baseball Research.) SABR published a member's directory with addresses and phone numbers. So when my first book came out and I was in New York doing media, I cold-called Dave in the afternoon and he quickly said "Why don't you come over?" I did. It was around dawn when I left. Dave and I formed a productive bond that would last over forty years.
Karen Steele writes, "I want to add my voice to the chorus of those paying tribute to the legendary rock writer Dave Marsh. Dave was the very first person I contacted when I created my Gloria Stavers [editor of Sixteen magazine] website [now a Facebook page.] I asked him for permission to post the 1983 obituary he wrote for her in Rolling Stone. Dave replied yes, that the website was fantastic, and he gave me some people to send it to. He continued to be generous and encouraging over the next few years.
"It was in those subsequent years that my husband Jack was diagnosed with cancer. Dave, who had lost his daughter Kristen to cancer, offered moral support and assistance with referrals to oncology doctors at Sloan Kettering."
A friend of mine used to say to me, "If you aren't making enemies, your friends ain't shit." Dave had no worries on that front. The Washington wives of the Parents Music Resource Center held a pro-censorship war council in Maryland that included not just Tipper and Al Gore, but several other presidential candidates, military and corporate leaders and foreign dignitaries. Dave knew that he, along with countless artists, had acquired a very large target on his back. The IRS tried to take Rock & Roll Confidential down with fake news about our pristine tax returns. Through it all, Dave didn't bat an eye.
Nor did Dave bat an eye when RRC and several allies launched boycotts of Marriott and 7-Up for their ties to music censors. Marriott caved in pretty quickly but 7-Up tried to keep up the fiction that their hands were clean, insisting that they didn't service that pro-censorship war council in Maryland. The president of 7-Up would call us at home and wail, "But we love rock & roll!"
I never saw or heard Dave back down from anyone. He battled LAPD chief Daryl Gates over gangsta rap on a national radio show, and Dave took no prisoners. When Bono was the owner of Forbes (the billionaires magazine) and around the time that Bono had a sit-down with the US Secretary of Defense to discuss plans for a new U.S. military command in Africa, he and Dave agreed to a debate. But Bono backed out.
When the national PTA first announced it was going to war against music, Dave was one of the very first to respond. (Frank Zappa gets a silver medal at best.) In marshaling forces for counterattacks, Dave didn't much seek out troops in the media or the non-profit industrial complex. Thanks to his organic relationship with the likes of Rock Out Censorship, Dave was able to help raise the bar of informed resistance with places and people such as:
DJ Productions, Yellville, Arkansas
Local Bands! East Haven, Connecticut
Brothers and Sisters in Solidarity, Chicago
Music Alliance Against Censorship, Baltimore
Apollo Records, Buffalo
Greater Kansas City Coalition Against Censorship, Kansas City
Rockin' Rudy's, Missoula, Montana
Blakasaurus Mex, Los Angeles
Parents For Rock & Rap, Libertyville, IL
Metal Originals and Stagewear, Jersey City, New Jersey
Local Hero, Tulsa, Okalahoma
Asymptote, Memphis
Twig's Compact Video Discs, Sugarland, Texas
Retail Employees Against the Censorship Threat, Tucson
Right to Rock, New Orleans
Rock & Roll Bar Association
Artist Management, Inc. Mount Horeb, Wisconsin
Fans Fighting For Freedom, St. Paul, Minnesota
GRIP (Group for Rap Industry Protection), Berkeley, California
One thing I'll always remember about Miles Davis was his arrival at Arthur Baker's Shakedown Sound in New York for the "Sun City" recording sessions in the summer of 1985. The record would become the centerpiece of Artists United Against Apartheid. There were a lot of other musicians laying down tracks that day - Bonnie Raitt, Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC, Steve Van Zandt, Kashif, Darlene Love. Everybody was feeling good because the cause was righteous and the anti-apartheid "Sun City" project was bringing together artists who'd never had a chance to rub shoulders before.
But Miles Davis wasn't feeling good; his words dripped with hatred for apartheid. He talked about South Africa, but maybe he was also thinking about how - only a few blocks from where he was standing - he'd been beaten bloody by cops in 1959 while taking a smoke break between sets at Birdland. Within ten minutes of his arrival, he'd recorded the mournful, angry notes that kick "Sun City" into gear.
Dave Marsh wrote the "Sun City" project's accompanying book, promoted the record when it came out, and summed up the concluding celebration as "the most diverse lineup of popular musicians ever assembled for a single session." They included Miles Davis, DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Ruben Blades, Bob Dylan, Pat Benatar, Herbie Hancock, Ringo Starr, Lou Reed, Run-DMC, Peter Gabriel, Eddie Kendricks, Bobby Womack, Afrika Bambaataa, The Fat Boys, Jackson Browne, Bono, George Clinton, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, Bonnie Raitt, Jimmy Cliff, Stiv Bators, Ron Carter, Ray Barretto, Gil Scott-Heron, Nona Hendryx, Kashif, L. Shankar, and Joey Ramone.
Today we take all-star events and cross-genre projects more or less for granted but in 1985 they were almost unheard of. Artists United Against Apartheid was a big step into the future. Granted, the segregation of the music industry quickly reasserted itself but it has been crumbling bit by bit ever since. The results of "Sun City" can still be felt today.
Of course, apartheid existed in the United States too. In 1982 Rock & Roll Confidential produced a short film, I'll Vote On, about the suppression of voting in smalltown Alabama. State Senator Hank Sanders, the first Black state senator from the Black Belt in Alabama since Reconstruction, credited the film with being a key factor in his re-election. RRC brought local Alabama leaders Albert Turner (who led the mule in Martin Luther King's funeral cortege) and Wendell Paris to the New Music Seminar in New York, where they met musicians and industry folk from around the world and gave a presentation at historic Riverside Church. Tom Silverman, president of Tommy Boy Records and a mover and shaker at the New Music Seminar, was instrumental in crafting a welcoming space for Albert and Wendell.
Dave was a part of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band of authors which played sporadic gigs for the Homeless Writers Coalition, Literacy Volunteers of America, and the Right to Rock Network. I was at the Remainders' first gig at Cowboy Boogie, a cavernous line-dancing emporium, in Anaheim, California on May 25, 1992. The first problem was that a number of Stephen King fans had hidden themselves away in the venue for hours (days?) before the show. Once that was resolved, the show could begin with Stephen King on lead guitar and Dave in the Critics Chorus. Al Kooper was the music director and other luminaries onstage included Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Dave Barry, and Barbara Kingsolver. Several thousand dollars was raised, and bass player/mystery writer Ridley Pearson wrote afterwards, "It literally brings tears to my eyes to think that, because of the music we played, someone will wind up being able to read."
Heidi Schulz Adams writes, "When people asked how I knew Dave, I always clarified that I wasn’t a music person, I was a cancer person. I grew to know and love Dave and his wife, Barbara Carr, not as famous rock-n-roll people, but as the fiercest champions of young adults with cancer (like me) whom I have ever met. He taught me how to advocate and defy 'the way it’s always been done,' encouraged my writing, catalyzed the launch of Planet Cancer, and enthusiastically supported every other crazy idea I ever had.
"Dave introduced me to the music of (and gleefully embarrassed me in front of) Patty Griffin, and I’ve been listening to her songs nonstop... Feels appropriate to end this by quoting the first song of hers he ever played for me, on a night long ago when we were drinking wine at his kitchen table. It was a joy to be a part of Dave’s mad mission and I will miss him every single day."
"It’s a mad mission
Under difficult conditions.
Not everybody makes it
to the loving cup.
It’s a mad mission,
But I got the ambition.
Mad, mad mission,
Sign me up."
Sue Martinez writes, "The room was packed for keynote speaker Little Richard at the South by Southwest convention in Austin, Texas in March 2004. Dave Marsh, who was to interview him onstage, was introduced. Dave said, 'I'm the luckiest man at SXSW this week' and talked about the beauty of Richard's voice. 'And he really is as pretty as he says he is,' he added, which was Little Richard's cue to come out.
"At the third question, Richard took off for twenty-five minutes. He rapped and rhymed and preached and told stories. He talked about how all this music comes from gospel, talked about hip-hop and soul and race, and said soul isn't a black-only thing, everyone of every color has it and everyone's soul needs to be acknowledged. He implored musicians to perfect their craft, master their instruments, comb their hair, sign their own checks. He peppered his talk by acknowledging various people he spotted in the audience, then came back exactly on point with more advice.
"At the twenty-five minute mark, Dave was sitting back in his chair with his legs crossed and wearing a big smile, when Little Richard looked at him and said 'Dave? Oh MY! I forgot you were here! You still HERE? Did you want to ask me a question or something?' And the place roared.
"The next afternoon we picked up with the third Health Care for Musicians panel at SXSW. Dave Marsh moderated a panel with me; John Connolly, president of AFTRA; and Simon Abou-Fadel from the Actors Fund. The people in that room ultimately agreed on the need to embrace every avenue of delivering health care to musicians while promoting a vision of a new health care system of universal access to care for all."
Another 21st-century musicians' health care throwdown was held at the Country Music Hall of Fame. The featured speakers were bluesman Bobby Rush (thanks to a connection via Black Rose) and Dave Marsh. Once again, the spirited discussion concluded that we need to do two things: Get urgent medical care to musicians immediately AND establish a system of universal free health care. We stayed in town a day or two extra so that we could eat and drink to our heart's content and so that we could hang out with Bobby Rush (who a few weeks ago finished a summer tour, mainly of sheds not clubs, at age 93.)
Pete Townshend writes, "I think I probably met Dave in Detroit. He was then a founder of Creem Magazine, that survived (so it seemed then) by featuring Kiss on the cover every week for about twenty years. It's no wonder Dave ended up disliking them so much. Occasionally there might be glimpses of bands that were less appealing to the young Kiss fans who mainly enjoyed, it seemed, looking at older men's tongues. The Who might then feature. Dave was not always kind to us. He wasn't always kind - period. It was about fifty-fifty, I think. His truth, his opinions, and his critique were always sharply penned, and he expected great things from us, from me especially. He was literate and smart, and regarded rock music as a new form of sociopolitical force that had massive potential for change for the better. Culturally, artistically, and politically. I believed this, too. It was hard for both of us to live up to.
"It's sad I can't be at his side to remind me of my worst behavior, laugh, and perhaps weep a little. Because in the end, when you get to your late seventies, you realize that your best friends aren't always those you have seen often, but those who cared about what you do and who you really are. I'm talking about me, of course, Dave caring about who I am, and what I do. How many friends have I really got? I can count them on one hand. And so, in memory of fine critique - good and bad - over the years, I hereby give Dave a finger."
Mike Stark, former stalwart at the world's greatest heavy metal radio station (KNAC/Long Beach) and the author of a book on Black Sabbath (edited by Dave Marsh,) recently was on a pleasure trip to Nashville. He took in a club show featuring folk singer Amy Speace and when the two of them were comparing notes afterward, they discovered that they had both just posted online remembrances of Dave after he passed.
Amy wrote, "She [Barbara Manners] invited me to lunch with Dave Marsh to meet him. I’m not sure how, but we got to talking about Shakespeare. We both were obsessed and very well read and could quote passages. I told him about my years in NYC, studying acting at The National Shakespeare Conservatory. He knew about my music and he was - can I say it? - a fan. He told me he thought I had a musical in me. He said I should write an album of songs inspired by Shakespeare. He dared me to do it.
[Speace did do it. It's called How To Sleep In a Stormy Boat, filled with songs that were responses to characters in Shakespeare’s plays, direct responses to certain monologues, imagery, and sonnets.]
"When it was done, the first person I shared it with was Dave Marsh. He loved it. I shyly asked him if he’d write the liner notes and he immediately said yes.
"Dave Marsh lost his daughter to cancer at the age of 21. He wrote a letter to her every year for her birthday and somehow I became part of a list of people he would send the email letter to. He inspired me to write a letter to my own dead father every Father’s Day. His words always moved me and I always wrote him back.
"Dave died on August 14. He was 76. I wish I could have told him how much it meant to me to just sit and talk with him about Shakespeare. That he included me in his email chain about his daughter. That he was always available to me if I called or emailed. You never know when you’re going to meet a champion who will change your life. Rest in Peace, my friend."
Thank you, Amy. Dave Marsh is everywhere. Dave Marsh is forever.
Dave's imagination knew no limits. He envisioned a world where no one goes hungry, no one leaves the house only to meet a bullet, no one gets sick without being treated, no one walks the streets to return to an eviction notice, and no one has to keep their music locked up inside for lack of a guitar.
Let's all help nurture and harvest the seeds that Dave Marsh sowed during his most extraordinary life.
Click here to visit the archived 2021 online event Land of Hope and Dreams: A Celebration of Dave Marsh's Work and Vision.
Thanks to: Danny Alexander, Black Rose, Sandy Choron, Mr. Ebony, Holly Gleason, Sue Martinez, Mike Stark, and Daniel Wolff
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For further reading on Dave Marsh from the Letters To You archives, click here and here to read our 2023 and 2024 features published in the wake of the hardback/paperback editions of the excellent Marsh anthology Kick Out The Jams: Jibes, Barbs, Tributes, and Rallying Cries from 35 Years of Music Writing.
And stay tuned, of course, for more installments of our multi-part In Memory Of Dave Marsh series...
