“There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child. By abuse, I do not mean sexual abuse; I mean he was used brutally and callously for money, and clearly imprisoned by a tyrannical father. He had no real childhood and spent much of his later life struggling to get one. He was spiritually and psychologically raped at a very early age – and never recovered. Watching him change his race, his age, and almost his gender, you saw a tortured soul seeking what the rest of us take for granted: a normal life.”
- Andrew Sullivan, “Thinking About Michael,” The Daily Dish, 2009

“The jerk of the knee always short-circuits critical engagement. I detest cabaret and Broadway nearly as much as Marsh does; yet I treasure those two Beatle recordings. I don’t care for the songs themselves — versions by others bore me stiff — but I love what the Beatles do with them. Their wintry ‘Taste of Honey’ tastes more like quicksilver, with its minor key, bitter guitar, and eerie third-person backing vocals. ‘Till There Was You’ has not only a vocal of surpassing freshness from Paul, but one of George’s loveliest guitar solos. Both are expressions of Beatle identity and cultural affinity as integral and unphony, I would argue, as anything they recorded in the early days. The fact that Marsh’s hatred of the songs’ generic origins precludes any consideration of them as Beatle performances points to one of his limits as a critic: to him, the mere entertaining of non-rock material proves the sin of inauthenticity.”
- Devin McKinney, “Dullblog Book Report: The Beatles’ Second Album by Dave Marsh,” hey dullblog, 2008

“My problem [with the word 'rockism'] is more personal: I can’t tell if I’m a rockist or not, or whether a lot of other rock critics are rockists or not (Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus, Richard Meltzer, Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, Chuck Eddy), and I think the confusion is in the concept, not in me. My problem with the antirockists was their tendency to externalize ‘rockism’ as some foreign body that needed to be defeated — or, if internal, as something that needed to be outgrown — rather than as cultural processes that we participate in. And authenticity… I may hate the noun form, but I find the adjectives — ‘real,’ ‘actual,’ ‘authentic’ — absolutely crucial, and the tensions they signal are as alive and burbling and googooing now as the day they were born.

“So, although I think we’d be better not to saddle ourselves with the word ‘rockism,’ the conversation needs to continue. Nothing’s been laid to rest. The issues are as alive now as in 1965 when fans booed Dylan for going electric, or in 1971 when Lester Bangs wrote ‘James Taylor Marked For Death,’ or in 1985…”
- Frank Kogan, “Rockism And Antirockism Rise From The Dead,” Las Vegas Weekly, 2008

“Rockism isn’t unrelated to older, more familiar prejudices – that’s part of why it’s so powerful, and so worth arguing about. The pop star, the disco diva, the lip-syncher, the ‘awesomely bad’ hit maker: could it really be a coincidence that rockist complaints often pit straight white men against the rest of the world? Like the anti-disco backlash of 25 years ago, the current rockist consensus seems to reflect not just an idea of how music should be made but also an idea about who should be making it.”
- Kelefa Sanneh, “The Rap Against Rockism,” New York Times, 2004

“I quit smoking cigarettes recently and I’ve been making do with Gummi Bears, the patch, and tons of righteous weed. So between Kid A, Madonna, and that new Doves album, I’ve been enjoying a summer of love in my mind. The Doves’ mantras of desolation are even trippier than the first couple Cranes records (though maybe not as lysergic as prime Swans or Ravens), Madonna’s new one makes the 13th Floor Elevators sound like the Weavers, and Kid A doesn’t have a thought in its head, always a plus with stoner rock. (Laddish punter Nick Hornby recently lambasted Radiohead for making an album only 16-year-olds could enjoy because apparently adults who have to work and buy food don’t have time to be “challenged” by rock records. What seems to be lost on Hornby is that the biggest challenge most listeners would have with Kid A would be getting the plastic wrap off the CD. I hope somebody bought Mr. Hornby some Lucinda, Victoria, and/or Dar Williams records for Christmas.)”
- Scott Seward, Snowplow You Bad Elephant!, Village Voice (2000)