Thirty-six stories above Sixth Avenue the place was all chrome and glass, windows staring flat-out at another scraper, which from that view looked like a vertical runway shooting heaven-ward to obscure every last smear of sky. I suppose people with thirty-six story window offices get used to this kind of stimuli, but to me the whole world seemed to shift step-by-step as I walked the windowside hallway—a megacity optical illusion. These windows gave a new perspective. The screen in the lobby flashed a video loop over the scene, reflecting in the windows and glass and gleaming surfaces. I sat in the lobby watching multi-mirrored images of Paul Stanley in full starchild black-and-white face paint, the hirsute chest and pouting—oh, baby, do me—lips. Ah, yes, we are in Rock Land, 2014-style. And, I do not lie, within a minute a new face was reflected from the giant lobby screen and it was the face of none other than Jon Bon Jovi. Of course, I know these faces. Everyone does. But do we enjoy them? Get your face out of my face. Building security had escorted me on the elevator ride up, as was procedure when dealing with visitors who aren’t in possession of a photo ID.

Dave Marsh, it turns out, is every bit the veteran rock and roll lover you’d imagine a glory-day’s Creem and Rolling Stone journalist would be, just riffing on Detroit and Iggy and Mitch Ryder within twenty seconds of making my acquaintance. He sat down beside me on the lobby couch and shot right into a conversation, whatever the hell he and I felt like talking about then and there: Detroit Unions, civil rights heroes who’d mentored him out of a hicksville upbringing on the outskirts of Pontiac. As a twenty-year old he’d lived in a house with Lester Bangs, their wild man energies banging around the premises and on one occasion combusting during a living room wrestling match incited by their disagreeing views on the merits of the first Black Sabbath record.

This stuff pours out of Dave. He tells a great yarn.

He talked on our way into the studio, and as the engineer was getting the levels, and as his intro music was playing, and when he got the cue—1, 2, 3, you’re on—he talked right into the first sentence of the radio show, and it was all interesting. It went like that, talking about the book and mostly about whatever crossed Dave’s mind, because the guy just rolls with it and it’s uniquely fun to be around. Much gratitude that Dave liked the book and invited me into his radio zone. Tuesday night, NYC.

Grande Ballroom