Early Rock and Roll With a Message.

Shock-rock star Marilyn Manson has developed a following as a cross-dressing, anti-Christ. He's been likened to Alice Cooper for his ghoulish theatricality. He's also been the subject of Senate subcommittee hearings, and his concerts have been banned. His 1996 album "Antichrist Superstar" was a hit. He's written his autobiography "The Long Hard Road out of Hell" (Regan Books) about his childhood as Brian Wagner in a dysfunctional home in Canton, Ohio.

Rock critic Greil Marcus. Dutton books has just issued a third revised edition of Marcus' 1975 classic analysis of rock and roll in America, "Mystery Train."

Writer Timothy Ryback. He's just written a book chronicling the history of rock music in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In the book, "Rock around the Bloc," RYBACK shows how rock music has been a presence there from the mid-1950's beginning with the Elvis Craze, and continuing with Beatlemania, and punk and heavy metal music. The rock movement spawned officially sanctioned bands as well as underground groups. Ryback says the recent events in Eastern Europe were foreshadowed in 1988 when government policy on rock bands were loosened there.