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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
Jim DeRogatis' solid new biography argues that "America's greatest rock critic" spawned a generation of self-absorbed hacks -- and a neutered music press that wouldn't have a place for him anymore.
Apr 4, 2000 | There are two ways to recall Lester Bangs -- if anyone outside a small circle of friends still does -- and both of them are accurate. The man boldly called "America's Greatest Rock Critic" in the subtitle of Jim DeRogatis' fine biography, "Let It Blurt," is revealed within its pages to be a clumsy emotional mess, a difficult and unhappy person equally allergic to bathing, self-discipline and romantic stability. Whether clouded or aided by the self-destructive habits that ultimately led him to leave this world in a New York apartment in 1982, Bangs was a man whose writing talent was not always in control or on display. Hell, even the editor of "Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung," the 1987 anthology of Bangs' work that is now the only place to confront it, admits in his introduction that "Lester often wrote poorly, passively ... quoting lyrics rather than saying what he thought."
Curious? From a 1974 Bangs piece for Creem that has so far eluded republication: "The first time I saw Wet Willie I got excited as all hell. You would too if you were in Macon, Ga., whooping it up deep Friday night down at Grant's Lounge call of the wildest bar this side of the frontier."
But when his insights matched his energy in the '70s, Bangs could be a revelation. At his best, Bangs was one of the few rock journalists -- but by no means the only one -- who could make you feel the urgent need to hear a record you hadn't known existed, or convince you that you understood the person who recorded it.
For my money, he was no Nick Kent (see his book of collected writings, "The Dark Stuff," for evidence), Nick Tosches ("Unsung Heroes of Rock and Roll" or "Hellfire") or -- when he still deigned to write about music -- Richard Meltzer, the one predecessor Bangs acknowledged as an influence. But he rarely failed to entertain, and often did a lot more in a critical realm that was still being mapped and explored for what it could add to the noise of rock 'n' roll. "Let It Blurt" largely leaves the task of fitting Bangs into the critical pantheon to those who A) give a damn and B) are willing to do independent scholarship -- which safely describes its probable readership.
For a time, Bangs' intelligence, imagination and outsize personality -- as established in Rolling Stone, amply demonstrated in Creem and then buried in the Village Voice -- made him as big a media star as many of the musicians he wrote about. Yet he came across in print as a pal on a rant about some record he'd been spinning obsessively for a week -- or a musician he'd been talking to. Injecting himself into his stories let Bangs measure and describe his unmediated responses, sharing the awe and wonder he felt at the magic he heard.
As an interviewer, Bangs swapped fandom's geeky subservience for loyal opposition. He was the courageous emissary who kept readers in touch with their increasingly remote idols. Always ready to call their bluffs, Bangs faced his subjects -- like Lou Reed, with whom he conducted a lengthy and highly amusing pissing contest -- as a peer and expected them to do the same. But after a while, Bangs' Dutch courage became journalistic shtick. As he once observed, "I didn't contrive an image for myself, although for a while in every story it seemed like, 'Lester Bangs Gets Drunk and Insults Another Pop Star.'" (It's hard not to see parallels with Andy Kaufman, who also lived and created without ever noticing the line between acting genuinely weird and being irresponsibly obnoxious.)
As Creem often noted in a small ad seeking contributors, "Nobody who writes for this rag's got anything you ain't got, at least in the way of credentials." Bangs' dowry was fealty to the Beats, who inspired his personal voice and speed-fueled meanderings, and a love of jazz, a clear template for the free-form riffage of his careening literary improvisations. DeRogatis dryly questions the legend of Bangs writing a book about Blondie -- 96 slapdash pages of photos and profile that read like an interminable fanzine ramble -- in one weekend by raising the possibility that it may in fact have taken twice that long.
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Bangs was the precociously creative son of a devout Jehovah's Witness, raised in abject cultural poverty in Southern California. The discovery of music and Romilar cough syrup was his distinctive prescription out, and his underground railway was a freelance gig reviewing records for the fledgling Rolling Stone. He finally landed a staff job with the Michigan-based Creem, where he wrote hyperbolic articles like "My Night of Ecstasy With the J. Geils Band" (which involved getting onstage with the band to type a supposed review in real time and full audience view) and "I Saw God and/or Tangerine Dream." In the late '70s, he moved to New York, wrote for various publications, started a band, spent time in Texas and then came back north and died from what DeRogatis details as an unintended overdose of painkillers.
