Singer/songwriter
Marshall Crenshaw built up an impressive body of work over the course of his career, showing a fine craft for everything he approached while stubbornly following his own creative muse to reach that end. To call
Crenshaw's career "interesting" would be putting things mildly. He starred in several movies and portrayed
John Lennon in the road-show version of Beatlemania.
His songs were featured on several film soundtracks and covered by such diverse artists as Robert Gordon,
Bette Midler,
Kelly Willis, Marti Jones, and
the Gin Blossoms. He assembled a bunch of his like-minded show business acquaintances and issued a book on all the great and lousy rock & roll movies in existence, entitled Hollywood Rock & Roll. He put together compilations of his own for record companies (most notably Hillbilly Music...Thank God! for the short-lived Bug Music label) and contributed chapters to books on vintage guitar collecting. In short,
Crenshaw is a true rock & roll renaissance man while still remaining an everyman.
Born in Detroit and raised in the surrounding area,
Marshall played in a number of different bands in high school, eventually landing in his first professional combo, ASTIGAFA (an acronym for "A Splendid Time Is Guaranteed for All," cribbed from the back of
Sgt. Pepper). Although nothing releasable came from this venture, the experience cemented the basic ingredients of
Crenshaw's style that would surface full bloom at the dawn of his solo career. According to
Crenshaw, "That band really didn't have a high profile in Detroit, but I was using that time, working alone, woodshedding, gathering information. Around '73, I just stopped listening to the radio and just became immersed listening to old 45s from the '50s and early '60s. It seemed to me that there was more immediacy in those records than the stuff that was on the radio at that time." But just as his ears learned to love echoey mono '50s records, his songwriting influences went in an opposite direction: "One batch of stuff that I really feel that I was strongly influenced by was a lot of the R&B-pop kind of stuff that was around in the early '70s. I just love that romantic kind of R&B kind of sound, all those chord changes in those tunes."
Unfortunately, Detroit was not a musical hotbed during the late '70s, so
Crenshaw responded to an advertisement in Rolling Stone and auditioned for the Broadway musical Beatlemania instead. Hired as a
John Lennon understudy,
Crenshaw moved to New York City and quickly found himself in a heady, competitive situation. After completing his six-month "Beatle boot camp" training, he appeared in the show for six months in Hollywood and San Francisco, then finished up his remaining six months with the production on the road. Though he found the show creatively stifling, it made him sit down and figure out what kind of music he wanted to create. After buying a four-track recorder,
Crenshaw began making demos whenever he was home.
Marshall was soon armed both with demos galore and began dropping them off to any show business connection who might listen. Additionally, his younger brother was playing drums in
Crenshaw's trio, which was starting to plug into New York City's burgeoning new wave club scene. An early fan of the trio's music was local scenester Alan Betrock, who had recently launched his own label, Shake Records. It was
Crenshaw's debut single, "Something's Gonna Happen," on Betrock's label that kicked up enough noise to bring major-label interest knocking at his door. Signing with Warner Bros. in 1982,
Marshall recorded five well-crafted studio albums before parting ways seven years later to sign with MCA for one album,
Life's Too Short. During this flurry of activity,
Crenshaw also flexed his acting muscles, portraying a high-school bandleader in Peggy Sue Got Married,
Buddy Holly in La Bamba, and making a guest appearance on the Nickelodeon series Pete and Pete. Emerging from a three-year hiatus,
Marshall then signed with the independent label Razor & Tie and released a live album, Live: My Truck Is My Home, in 1994. A new studio effort,
Miracle of Science, followed in 1996.
The 9 Volt Years, a collection of demos and home recordings, appeared in 1998, and a year later
Crenshaw returned with a new studio album, #447. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide
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