Dave Marsh, the rock critic, author and broadcaster who helped define generations of music writing, died Aug. 14 at his home in Norwalk, Connecticut. He was 76. Jim Rotolo broke the news on social media, saying Marsh had died late yesterday at his home in Connecticut.
SiriusXM said it was deeply saddened by the death and called Marsh a pioneering music journalist, author, broadcaster and longtime member of the SiriusXM family. E Street Radio will pay tribute to him on Wednesday, Aug. 19 at 10 a.m. ET, a sign of how closely his name was tied to Bruce Springsteen even though that part of his output was only a small slice of a career that stretched across more than 25 books and six decades.
Marsh’s Springsteen work helped make him a fixture for readers who followed the artist as closely as they followed the music itself. He wrote Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story, published the first significant biography of Springsteen in 1979 and later updated Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts: The Definitive Biography, 1972-2003 in 2003. He also wrote Rolling Stone’s first Bruce Springsteen cover story in 1978 and, years earlier, escorted Jon Landau to his first Springsteen concert in 1974, then encouraged him to write the I Saw Rock and Roll Future column in Boston’s Real Paper.
But the Springsteen shelf never told the whole story. Marsh was an early editor of Creem, wrote for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and Newsday, and spent years building a reputation as a fearless critic with a wide reach. During his time at Rolling Stone, he spearheaded the first edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide in 1979, and after The Who broke up in 1982 he conducted extensive interviews with Pete Townshend that formed the basis of Before I Get Old: The Story of the Who.
His range ran far beyond the artists most closely associated with him. The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made, The First Rock and Roll Confidential Report: Inside the Real World of Rock and Roll and Louie Louie: The History and Mythology of the World’s Most Famous Rock ‘n’ Roll Song reflected a critic obsessed with the history of the form, not just its biggest names. He also wrote a notorious Rolling Stone review of Queen’s 1979 LP Jazz, including the line, “Whatever its claims, Queen isn’t here just to entertain,” and “This group has come to make it clear exactly who is superior and who is inferior.”
The unanswered question is the simplest one: what took his life. The cause of death has not been disclosed, and for now Marsh is being remembered through the work he left behind and the tribute SiriusXM has scheduled for E Street Radio next week.
