Rock critic Dave Marsh has died at 76

Dave Marsh, the rock critic and biographer who wrote some of the earliest and most influential books about Bruce Springsteen, has died at 76. He died August 14 at his home in Norwalk, Connecticut, Rolling Stone reported; Pitchfork said no cause of death had been made public, while the Associated Press reported that his friend Jeffrey St. Clair said Marsh had been suffering from a degenerative brain disease for several years. SiriusXM host Jim Rotolo, his longtime E Street Radio co-host, announced the news himself, writing that Marsh's body of work spanned "some 25 titles."

Marsh was an early editor of Creem magazine and also wrote for The Village Voice, Newsday and Rolling Stone, publishing more than 25 books over his career. His 1979 book Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story was one of the earliest major Springsteen biographies; he wrote the first Rolling Stone cover story on Springsteen in 1978 and had earlier brought critic and future Springsteen manager Jon Landau to his first Springsteen concert in 1974.

Springsteen paid tribute to Marsh in a statement, calling him "soulful, intelligent, heartfelt, opinionated, bruising and often fantastically argumentative," and saying his lifetime of support "meant the world to me." Steven Van Zandt offered his own remembrance, calling Marsh "fearless, relentless, arrogant, everything you'd want in a RocknRoll troublemaker," and adding, simply, "a tremendous writer." SiriusXM's E Street Radio, where Marsh had co-hosted shows for years, said it would pay tribute to him on August 19.

Marsh was as known for his sharp opinions as his advocacy. Reviewing Queen's 1979 album Jazz for Rolling Stone, he wrote that the band "may be the first truly fascist rock band," and he later said he'd done his "share to keep [Kiss] off the ballot" during a 26-year run on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's nominating committee. He could be just as effusive in praise, writing of Patti Smith's Easter that it made her "the most profoundly religious American popular performer since Jim Morrison."

Beyond his Springsteen writing, Marsh also authored the definitive Who biography Before I Get Old: The Story of the Who, compiled the Rolling Stone Record Guide, and wrote The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made. In 1993, he won a Grammy for the album notes he wrote for Aretha Franklin's Queen of Soul, adding to a body of work that began in 1969 at Creem, where he worked alongside Lester Bangs after dropping out of Wayne State University.

He also co-founded the Kristen Ann Carr Fund with his wife, Barbara Carr, after their daughter died of sarcoma in 1993 at age 21; Springsteen played a Madison Square Garden benefit concert for the fund that year that raised $1.5 million, one of several benefit shows he headlined for the cause over the years.

Marsh's writing was celebrated in his own lifetime, too. A 2021 online series called "Land of Hope and Dreams" brought together Springsteen, Tom Morello, Pete Townshend and other artists to mark his work, and a 2023 anthology, Kick Out the Jams, collected 35 years of his music writing. Morello wrote at the time that Marsh had "always been a tireless advocate of justice, human rights, and rock n roll," a description that outlasts him now, in the rock criticism he helped shape.