Gary Marks on ‘I Guess It Never Stops’, ‘Castles’ and Writing Fiction | Interview
Gary Marks discusses two songs written decades apart, his album ‘Crossroads’ and the novel ‘The Dance and the Diamond Sky’.
When I spoke with Gary Marks back in March, he remembered recording ‘I Guess It Never Stops’ in 1988. He wanted to add a synthesizer part to the end of the song, which meant cutting the two-inch recording tape. One wrong move by the engineer and the entire recording could have been lost. Nearly forty years later, he could still recall the session and the musicians he worked with. Marks made his first three albums, ‘Gathering’, ‘Upon Oanda’s Wing’ and ‘Thoughts of Why’, during the 1970s, working with musicians including John Scofield, David Samuels, Art Lande, Paul McCandless and Mark Isham. He eventually stopped touring but continued writing and recording independently. We talked quite a bit about those years in our previous interview. His album ‘Crossroads’, released through Lantern Heights Records for Record Store Day in April 2026, brought together fourteen tracks spanning five decades, including nine previously unreleased recordings. Two of those songs, ‘Castles’, written in 1976, and ‘I Guess It Never Stops’, from 1988, are now receiving renewed attention as singles. Alongside his music, Marks has written more than twenty novels and novellas. Among them is ‘The Dance and the Diamond Sky’, first published in 1988 and revised in 2025. Set in 1969, the book follows a young songwriter named Jackie Rose and his friends as their lives take very different directions. With the two songs and the novel back in the spotlight, I had a few more questions for Gary about his writing and how his views have changed over the years.
“We still get to choose us, or the end of us.”
You wrote ‘I Guess It Never Stops’ nearly forty years ago. When you returned to it, did you feel differently about what you were saying, or do you still see the same problems today?
Gary Marks: My belief then was these were political problems that would probably never go away. But my belief now is—if we don’t evolve into a better country than the one we are now, and we don’t grow into better humans, then everything will go away, including us. Sadly, the political environment is worse now than it was forty years ago. But unlike forty years ago, solutions to all the problems mentioned in my song already exist. We shouldn’t pretend they don’t. So there is our choice in 2026 and beyond: either we work together to apply the solutions, or humanity will eventually be gone. It’s forty years later, things are worse, but even after that many years, we still have time. We still get to choose us, or the end of us.
There’s a line at the end of ‘Castles’ about a lack of compassion bringing down even the most powerful people. What role do you think compassion should play in leadership?
Compassion leads to more insight when it comes to problem solving. For instance, understanding and empathizing with the other side’s views and beliefs leads to a better result than simply reading an intelligence briefing. I’m not saying compassion is always effective in the moment. I’m saying over the longer arc of history, and how leaders will be seen in history, the winners are more aligned with compassion than the ones aligned with starting wars and spreading hatred. And I don’t think it’s been luck that it’s turned out that way.
In ‘The Dance and the Diamond Sky’, Jackie Rose and the people around him have very different ideas about protest and resistance. Have your own views on what makes resistance effective changed since you wrote the book?
I think my perspective has shifted a bit. Because obviously, if we try to solve problems with violence, that violence will be met with violence. Things over time will get worse. And violence will probably also spill over into the culture. On the other hand, political and economic pressure aren’t just “peaceful protests.” Innocent people can die of starvation from those kinds of sanctions. And it invites retaliation. Expanding even further, sometimes even more overt forms of violence might have to be part of the solution if you’re dealing with insanity, and corrupt power-crazed leaders who don’t care about anyone but themselves. As Orson Scott Card once said in his Ender’s Game series, “Pacifism only works with an enemy that can’t bear to murder the innocent. How many times are you lucky enough to get an enemy like that?”
You’ve written more than twenty novels and novellas alongside your music. Does writing fiction give you something that songwriting doesn’t?
They’re very different art forms. When I can’t access one, I’ll often take a break by attempting to access the other. Novel writing is about storytelling and developing characters and scenes slowly over time. Songs are lyrical snapshots, and the music has to be as powerful and important as what the words are saying. So yes, they give me very different ways to explore political and social issues—or whatever else I feel like writing about.
You’ve chosen to bring ‘I Guess It Never Stops’, ‘Castles’ and ‘The Dance and the Diamond Sky’ together ahead of the midterm elections. Is this meant as a warning, or are you hoping it will encourage people to take action?
It’s both a call to action, and a warning about the future. I specifically released all three together before the midterm elections to underscore the fact that America as a system, and as a beautiful fairytale, needs us right now. In fact, it needs us more than at any time since Nixon’s corrupt presidency, and his expansion of the Vietnam War. The country was culturally fractured then, as it is now. But people protested by the millions and eventually changed things for the better. We find ourselves at a similar crossroads in 2026… the same country that needs us, different president, different war. But the best solution remains the same one now as it was then: Vote.
Klemen Breznikar
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