Somebody asked noted rock and culture critic Greil Marcus on Monday night, If a big art museum puts on a rock 'n' roll photography show, is it still rock 'n' roll?

Marcus, speaking at the Osher lecture at the Holiday Inn By the Bay, barely hesitated. Of course it is, he said, and then quoted from Bob Dylan's "Visions of Johanna":

"Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial."

In this case, we are the judge and jury, he said. It's up to us to decide how we feel about the exhibition and about preserving rock for posterity on the walls of the hallowed museum.

Marcus was in town to talk about the newest show at the PMA, "Backstage Pass: Rock & Roll Photography," on view through March 22.

It's a blockbuster, all right. It's going to be a huge show for the museum, and provide a timely boost to attendance during the long, cold winter. Already, acting museum director Tom Denenberg said, attendance for the first weekend is 100 percent above attendance over for the first weekend of last year's winter show, a sculpture exhibition by Harpswell artist John Bisbee.

But don't read too much into that stat. For one thing, it's only one weekend. And for another, the museum had a series of huge opening events to mark the show. But nonetheless, it's an impressive start, and it bodes well for the exhibition.

Marcus, who began his career at Rolling Stone magazine and has written about rock 'n' roll for numerous magazines and published many books, noted that the show reflects the singular tastes and views of one collector. The entire show -- hundreds of mostly black and white images -- are culled from a single anonymous collector.

So "Backstage Pass" is hardly a comprehensive review of rock history, nor is it intended to be. Instead, it's a highly personalized view of the back-channels of rock, with candid images of performers off stage, back stage and in private moments.

We get Buddy Holly on a bus, dog tired from travels. We get Elvis backstage, stealing a kiss. We get Dylan behind the shades, hiding from camera lenses and staring past the fans.

We get the Stones, the Who, Zeppelin and the Beatles. We get the famous and the infamous.

We get mystery, aura and cool.

Better still, we know the ending to the story. What makes this exhibition compelling, Marcus said, is that many of these photos were made during the evolution of rock -- although a good number come from the 80s and 90s, as well. But regardless, the subjects of these photos had no idea what was ahead of them when the photos were taken.

Elvis was still an innocent kid. Holly had nothing if not his future. "We know how the story told in this picture turns out," Marcus said, showing a photo of Holly riding a bus, not too long before his death 50 years ago next week in a plane crash.

Dylan was the only one who evoked a sense of knowing. Referencing a 1962 image of boyish Bob, staring dead-on into the camera, Marcus said, "He sees his history ahead of him."

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