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Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs during an interview
Born	Leslie Conway Bangs December 13, 1948(1948-12-13) Escondido, California, United States
Died	April 30, 1982 (aged 33) New York City, New York, United States
Occupation	Music critic, musician, author
Nationality	American
Writing period	1969–1982
Subjects	Rock music, jazz
Influenced Cameron Crowe

Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs (December 13, 1948 – April 30, 1982) was an American music journalist, author and musician. Most famous for his work at Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, Bangs was and still is regarded as an extremely influential voice in rock criticism.^[1]

History

Bangs was born in Escondido, California, USA. His mother was a devout Jehovah's Witness; his father died when Bangs was young. In 1969, Bangs began writing freelance after reading an ad in Rolling Stone soliciting readers' reviews. His first piece was a negative review of the MC5 album Kick Out The Jams, which he sent to Rolling Stone with a note detailing that should the magazine decide not to publish the review, then they would have to contact Lester and tell him why. Instead, they published it. (He later became a big fan and friend of the MC5 after moving to Detroit.) In 1973, Jann Wenner fired Bangs from Rolling Stone over a negative review of Canned Heat. Wenner contended that Bangs was "disrespectful to musicians". He moved to Detroit to edit and write for Creem, which is where his legendary stature as a rock critic really began to grow. After leaving Creem, he wrote for The Village Voice, Penthouse, Playboy, New Musical Express, and many other publications.

Bangs claimed his influences were not so much predecessors in journalism as they were beat authors, in particular William S. Burroughs. His ranting style, similar to Hunter S. Thompson's gonzo journalism, and his tendency to insult and confront his interviewees earned him distinction.

Bangs idolized the noise music of Lou Reed,^[3] but he had a complex journalistic relationship with Lou the performing artist, writing several legendary articles for Creem which depicted hilarious confrontational interviews, often reflecting aspects of Bangs' own personality against his difficult interview subject. The essay/interview "Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves" from 1975 is a distinctive example.

Bangs was not only involved as a critic of music but as a musician in his own right. He teamed up with Joey Ramone's brother, Mickey Leigh to put together a New York group named Birdland. In 1980 he traveled to Austin, Texas and met a punk rock group named the Delinquents. During his stay in Austin he recorded an album as Lester Bangs and the Delinquents entitled Jook Savages on the Brazos. It was quoted that, "Lester's album with the Delinquents was the predecessor of so-called alternative-country bands such as Wilco and Son Volt".

Excerpts from an interview with Lester Bangs appear in the last two episodes of Tony Palmer's All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music.

Death

Bangs died in New York on April 30, 1982, overdosing (through drug interaction) after treating a cold with Darvon and Valium. According to the Jim Derogatis biography, Bangs was listening to The Human League's album Dare at the time of his death.

Legacy

• Bangs is mentioned in the 1987 R.E.M. hit "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)".

• Bangs is mentioned again in the Dillinger Four song "Our Science Is Tight".

• Bangs is also mentioned in the 1981 Ramones track "It's Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)" from the album Pleasant Dreams.

• Bangs is mentioned in Of Montreal's "There Is Nothing Wrong With Hating Rock Critics" on the album If He Is Protecting Our Nation, Then Who Will Protect Big Oil, Our Children?.

• Bangs is the subject of "Les Bang", a track by Gumdrops, from their 1996 debut album High Speed... OK?.

• Bangs is the subject of "La Sindrome di Bangs", a song by Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti, an Italian rock band, in their 2007 album "La Seconda Rivoluzione Sessuale"

• Science fiction author Bruce Sterling's story Dori Bangs (published in Asimov's Science Fiction, 1989) was inspired by Bangs (along with the underground comic book artist Dori Seda). Sterling speculates on what Bangs might have done had he lived longer.

• Bangs is depicted by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical film Almost Famous (2000), in which a budding music journalist idolizes him. Bangs acts as a guide for the film's protagonist and a critic of what rock and roll has become by the time of the film. Crowe himself credits Bangs as a mentor during his own years as a rock journalist.

• Long Island punk rock band Ghost of Lester Bangs as well as defunct Kill Rock Stars band Bangs are named after the critic.

• The Buzzcocks' song "Lester Sands" is actually referring to him, dismissing Bangs' criticism as a "drop in the ocean".^[4]

• Bob Seger wrote and recorded a yet-unreleased song about the critic titled "Lester Knew".

• Notorious for applying the term "white nigger" (which originated in Norman Mailer's 1957 essay "The White Negro") as a euphemism for a punk, or more specifically a white social miscreant with questionable or objectionable outward idiosyncrasies, and radical beliefs deemed unacceptable by the status quo. (Conversely, the term now has a different connotation, as "wigger" is used to describe a white individual infatuated with the hip-hop lifestyle). He often referred to himself as the "last of the white niggers", and a famous photograph of Bangs shows him wearing a t-shirt bearing this title.^[5]

• As popular as he was when he was alive, his work has become even more influential in the wake of his death, which has led to the publication of two anthologies of his writing.

• In the tv show The Black Donnellys, the two brothers Tommy and Kevin bet the protection money they have collected on a horse named Lester Bang

Quotes

• "...I'll admit in front that I have a special affinity for things that don't quite fit into any given demarcated category, partly because I'm one of those perennial misfits myself by choice as well as fate or whatever. By profession, I am categorized as a rock critic. I'll accept that, especially since the whole notion that someone has a 'career' instead of just doing whatever you feel like doing at any given time has always amused me when it didn't make me wanna vomit. O.K., I'm a rock critic. I also write and record music. I write poetry, fiction, straight journalism, unstraight journalism, beatnik drivel, mortifying love letters, death threats to white jazz critics signed 'The Mau Maus of East Harlem', and once a year my own obituary (latest entry: 'He was promising...'). The point is that I have no idea what kind of a writer I am, except that I do know that I'm good and lots of people read whatever it is I do, and I like it that way." (Lester Bangs, "An Instant Fan's Inspired Notes: You Gotta Listen", 1980)

• "...I'm really schizophrenic about that, because on the one hand I would say, yes there is, there’s something inherently, even violent about it, it's wild and raw and all this. On the other hand, the fact is that ‘Sugar Sugar’ is great Rock 'n' Roll, and there’s nothing rebellious about that at all. I mean that’s right from the belly and heart of capitalism..." (Lester Bangs in 1980 on the rebellious nature of rock 'n' roll.^[6]

• "What this book demands from a reader is a willingness to accept that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but record reviews." (Greil Marcus, editor of the first Bangs anthology Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, on the second anthology, Mainlines, Blood Feats and Bad Taste. Taken from the cover of the paperback original.)

• "Look at it this way: there are many here among us for whom the life force is best represented by the livid twitching of one tortured nerve, or even a full-scale anxiety attack. I do not subscribe to this point of view 100%, but I understand it, have lived it. Thus the shriek, the caterwaul, the chainsaw gnarlgnashing, the yowl and the whizz that decapitates may be reheard by the adventurous or emotionally damaged as mellifluous bursts of unarguable affirmation." (Lester Bangs, "A Reasonable Guide to Horrible Noise", 1980)

• "I'll probably never produce a masterpiece, but so what? I feel I have a Sound aborning, which is my own, and that Sound if erratic is still my greatest pride, because I would rather write like a dancer shaking my ass to boogaloo inside my head, and perhaps reach only readers who like to use books to shake their asses, than to be or write for the man cloistered in a closet somewhere reading Aeschylus while this stupefying world careens crazily past his waxy windows toward its last raving sooty feedback pirouette." (Lester Bangs, "A Quick Trip Through My Adolescence", 1968)

Selected works

By Lester Bangs

• "The Greatest Album Ever Made", on 1975 Lou Reed album Metal Machine Music^[7]
• Stranded (1979) on Astral Weeks, album by Van Morrison, released in 1968.^[8]
• Blondie (Fireside Book, 1980)
• Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic, collected writings, Greil Marcus, ed. Anchor Press, 1988. (ISBN 0-679-72045-6)
• Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader, collected writings, John Morthland, ed. Anchor Press, 2003. (ISBN 0-375-71367-0)
• The first piece for Rolling Stone^[9]-A Review of The MC5's debut album Kick Out The Jams.

About Lester Bangs

• Let it Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America's Greatest Rock Critic, biography, Jim Derogatis. Broadway Books, 2000. (ISBN 0-7679-0509-1).

Popular works citing Lester Bangs

• Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, biography, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Penguin Books, 1997. (ISBN 0-14-026690-9).

References

External links

• French Audiobook (mp3) : "Iggy Pop, Blowtorch in Bondage" translated in French
• MENTOR. EDITOR. LESTER: A Personal Appreciation by Jeffrey Morgan of Creem.
• A Bangs tribute at Perfect Sound Forever.
• 1980 interview with Bangs posted at rockcritics.com
• Bangs' own section at rockcritics.com.
• Bangs reviews (1979) Van Morrison's Astral Weeks.
• 13th of May 1980 Interview with Lester Bangs Complete MP3 of interview
• Richard Hell remembers Lester Bangs in the Village Voice, August 7, 2003
• Lester Bangs at Find a Grave

From Wikiquote

Lester Bangs (1948-12-14 — 1982-04-30) was an American journalist best known for his rock music criticism.

Sourced

• O.K., I'm a rock critic. I also write and record music. I write poetry, fiction, straight journalism, unstraight journalism, beatnik drivel, mortifying love letters, death threats to white jazz critics signed "The Mau Maus of East Harlem," and once a year my own obituary (latest entry: "He was promising...").
  • "An Instant Fan's Inspired Notes: You Gotta Listen" (1980), from Da Capo Best Music Writing 2000, ed. Peter Guralnick (Da Capo Press, 2000, ISBN 0306809990), p. 100

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Greil Marcus, ed., Random House/Vintage Books, ISBN 0-679-72045-6

• I was in high school (oh, I told you — that was kind of where they put you when they didn't know what to do with you — when you were too big for the Kiddie Kokoons and too young to go out an' hafta assume what we used to call Manhood, which involved going at the same time every day to some weird building and doing some totally useless shit for hours on end just so you could get some bread and have everybody respect you).
  • "Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: A Tales of These Times" (June 1971), p. 7

• Things started to go downhill. Instead of singing about taking tea with Mary Jane and boppin' your dingus on ol' Sweet Slit Annie it was Help me God I don't know the meaning of life or I believe that love is gonna cure the world of psoriasis and cancer both and I'm gonna tell the people all about it 285 different ways whether you like it or not. And Why is there war well go ask the children they know everything we need to know, and Gee I sure like black folks even if my own folks don't and endless vinyl floods of drivel in similar veins. At that point I started to pack in and resort back to my good old ' 66 goof squat rock. I got out records like 96 Tears by Question Mark and the Mysterians, who were mysterious indeed, and re-whooped to jungle juju cackles like "Wooly Bully," which is indescribable and was recorded by a bunch of guys who drove around in a hearse wearing turbans.
  • "Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: A Tales of These Times" (June 1971), p. 9

• The top rockers have a mythic aura about them, the "superstar," and that's a basically unhealthy state of things, in fact it's the very virus that's fucking up rock, a subspecies of the virus I spoke of earlier that infests our culture from popstars to politics.
  • "Of Pop and Pies and Fun" (November/December 1970), p. 37

• By the end of the decade it had become obvious that perhaps the one constant of our variegated and strung-out peer groups was a pervasive sense of self-consciousness that sent us in grouchy packs to ugly festivals just to be together and dig ourselves and each other, as if all of this meant something greater than that we were kids who liked rock 'n' roll and came out to have a good time, as if our very styles and trappings and drugs and jargon could be in themselves political statements for any longer than about fifteen stoned seconds, even a threat to the Mother Country! So we loved and loved and doted on ourselves and our reflections in each other even as the whole thing got out of hand and turned into mud and disaster areas and downs and death.
  • "James Taylor Marked for Death" (1971), p. 66

• The trend toward narcissistic flair has been responsible in large part for smiting rock with the superstar virus, which revolves around the substituting of attitudes and flamboyant trappings, into which the audience can project their fantasies, for the simple desire to make music, get loose, knock the folks out or get 'em up dancin.' It's not enough just to do those things anymore; what you must do instead if you want success on any large scale is figure a way of getting yourself associated in the audience's mind with their pieties and their sense of "community," i.e., ram it home that you're one of THEM; or, alternately, deck and bake yourself into an image configuration so blatant or outrageous that you become a culture myth.
  • "James Taylor Marked for Death" (1971), p. 67

• The extravagant and ostentatious lifestyles that pass for charisma in a time when almost anybody talks about charisma but if you think about it there's precious little to be seen.
  • "James Taylor Marked for Death" (1971), p. 69

• What all this posturing and fake glamor results in is a vast detachment and cynicism on the part of the artists. Since it's impossible to have respect for an audience that'll take just about anything you care to dish out, and the impassive demeanor is so central to the role, a general numbnose is all that can be expected.
  • "James Taylor Marked for Death" (1971), p. 70

• A hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you might wanta accomplish on your own.
  • "Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves" (March 1975), p. 173

• Realizing that life is precious the natural tendency is to trample on it, like laughing at a funeral.
  • "Peter Laughner" (September/October 1977), p. 222

• You see, dear reader, so much of what's doled out as punk merely amounts to saying I suck, you suck, the world sucks, and who gives a damn — which is, er, ah, somehow insufficient.

  Don't ask me why; I'm just an observer, really. But any observer could tell that, to put in in terms of Us vs. Them, saying the above is exactly what They would want you to do, because it amounts to capitulation.

  • "The Clash" (December 1977), p. 225

• The point is that, like Richard Hell says, rock 'n' roll is an arena in which you recreate yourself, and all this blathering about authenticity is just a bunch of crap. The Clash are authentic because their music carries such brutal conviction, not because they're Noble Savages.
  • "The Clash" (December 1977), p. 227

• I'm not saying that all college students are subhuman — I'm just saying that if you aim to spend a few years mastering the art of pomposity, these are places where you can be taught by undisputed experts.
  • "The Clash" (December 1977), p. 235

• The politics of rock 'n' roll, in England or America or anywhere else, is that a whole lot of kids want to be fried out of their skins by the most scalding propulsion they can find, for a night they can pretend is the rest of their lives, and whether the next day they go back to work in shops or boredom on the dole or American TV doldrums in Mom 'n' Daddy's living room nothing can cancel the reality of that night in the revivifying flames when for once if only then in your life you were blasted out of yourself and the monotony which defines most life anywhere at any time, when you supped on lightning and nothing else in the realms of the living or dead mattered at all.
  • "The Clash" (December 1977), p. 239

• In America you can ease into middle age with the accoutrements of adolescence still prominent and suffer relatively minor embarrassment: okay, so the guy's still got his sideburns and rod and beer and beergut and wife and three kids and a duplex and never grew up. So what? You're not supposed to grow up in America. You're supposed to consume. But in Britain it seems there is some ideal, no, some dry river one is expected to ford, so you can enter that sedate bubble where you raise a family, contributing in your small way to your society and keep your mouth shut. Until you get old, that is, when you can become an "eccentric" — do and say outrageous things, naughty things, because it's expected of you, you've crossed to the other mirror of the telescope of childhood.
  • "The Clash" (December 1977), p. 239

• John Lennon at his best despised cheap sentiment and had to learn the hard way that once you've made your mark on history those who can't will be so grateful they'll turn it into a cage for you.
  • "Thinking the Unthinkable About John Lennon" (1980-12-11), p. 299

• A Reasonable Guide to Horrible Noise
  • Title of Village Voice article (September/October 1980), p. 301

• All the proliferating falsifications of what I and everyone I know experienced once in what it is now so convenient to call the "fifties" or "sixties," as if life was really measured or lived in arbitrary decades, when the history books are sold like comix.
  • "Notes on PiL's Metal Box" (1980), p. 314

• It is a fact that nine-tenths of the HUMAN RACE never have and never will think for themselves, about anything. Whether it's music or Reaganomics, say, almost everybody prefers to sit and wait till somebody who seems to have some kind of authority even if it's seldom too clear just where they got it to come along and inform them one and all what their position on the matter should be. Then they all agree that this is gospel, and gang up to persecute whatever minority might happen to disagree. This is the history of the human race, certainly the history of music.
  • "Untitled Notes" (1981), p. 374

External links

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Lester Bangs