From Jason Diamond in The Paris Review:

“Marquee Moon,” the fourth song, and last track on the first side, is all the proof you need to make a lot of overblown claims for the album’s legacy. Verlaine and Lloyd are unrelenting as they duel, leading up to a bridge whose huge solo is made even larger by the tiny twinkling of a piano key. And again, we have Verlaine spinning a decadent Lower East Side fairytale, filtered through the mind of somebody influenced by too much French poetry. This all goes on for a few minutes, and then there’s this gap where the band really does get into Grateful Dead territory, just messing around with their instruments, keeping the beat going, finally building it to a crescendo that leads them back to where they started, reciting the poetry I would rip off nearly twenty years later…