Lester Bangs: Still Erupting, 75 Years Later

A Napalm Appreciation of the Sultan Of Schlock, the Poet Laureate of Punk, and the Patron Saint Of Rock Journalism (and my literary role model).

The Greatest Rock Journalist Who Ever Lived dwarfs The Future Of Rock ‘n’ Roll, sometime in the mid-’70s. (photographer unknown)

“If Lester Bangs were here, he’d say we’ve been hearing this shit for years….”

– something I swear I read on a Flaming Lips inner sleeve in the late ‘80s

Christmas 1981, my mother gave me a copy of The Rolling Stone Illustrated History Of  Rock ‘n’ Roll (as it should have been called; the House Jann Built used the ampersand between “rock” and “roll,” like the squares they were). For the last six months, I’d been shoplifting Creem and Trouser Press from H.E.B.’s magazine racks, and understood THAT was more my idea of rock journalism than the staid hippie mag. But I’d noticed some guy named Lester Bangs reviewing things like an album by someone named Lydia Lunch called Queen Of Siam, and a live album by some ex-New York Dolls called The Heartbreakers, which he likened to “The Yardbirds running over a barnyard fulla chickens with a bulldozer. But a relaxed bulldozer.” Or some such words to that effect.

A quick scan of the Contents page reveals Lester wrote five chapters for the Rolling Stone book, including treatises on garage punk, The Doors, bubblegum and heavy metal. But it was a solitary passage within his magnum opus on The British Invasion that made me fall in love with Lester Bangs. Right at the climax of a paragraph on Hamburg, Germany proving to be a crucible for Liverpool bands, Lester ejaculated: 

“...(R)ock ‘n’ roll at its core is merely a bunch of raving shit, its utterly hysterical transience and intrinsic worthlessness the not-quite-paradoxical source of its vitality.”

The same way seeing The Clash made a punk rocker (and punk rock musician) outta me, that one sentence made a rock journalist outta me. And made Lester Bangs my role model, the way Johnny Thunders taught me how to play guitar.

There were loads of others: I’d already read Tom Wolfe’s The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamlined Baby and The Catcher In The Rye. In the years ahead, Hunter S. Thompson, Terry Southern, Nik Cohn, Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Jim Carroll, Jon Savage and Kickboy Face all had a substantial impact on me, on how I wrote, how I lived. But in that one sentence, this man with this strangely onomatopoeic name, born in Escondido, California in 1948, defined what I loved about rock ‘n’ roll, and articulated it with a vocabulary my 16 year old self did not yet possess. Same as the punk records I’d been so earnestly listening to for a couple of years articulated my world view, and also educated me about it. 

I had no idea he would be dead just four months later, at the age of 33. If not for a bad flu and too much of the opioid analgesic dextropropoxyphene, the benzodiazepine known as diazepam, and NyQuil, I might have been able to personally thank him for my rockcrit Damascene moment. Sure, it was all an accident. But from all accounts, Lester was a pro at over-the-counter drugs. You’d’ve thought he’d have known.

Today, December 14th, 2023, my rock journalism tutor — the man who supposedly once wrestled an alligator while wearing a tutu — would've turned 75. 75 years of a life lived at warp speed, a life soundtracked by feedback and fury, a life that exploded onto the page like a cherry bomb in a mosh pit.

Lester Bangs wasn't just a rock critic, he was a cultural supernova. He didn't review albums, he dissected souls. He didn't write prose, he painted sonic landscapes with a bottle of Thunderbird for a brush. His words crackled like overdriven amps, bled like cheap tattoos, and soared like Iggy Pop on a sugar high.

He was the poet laureate of punk, the guy who saw the safety pins and ripped jeans and declared, "This ain't just noise, kids, it's the goddamn revolution!" He championed The Velvet Underground when they were just a blip on the radar, hailed Patti Smith as the queen before she even had a crown, and declared The Stooges the missing link between Chuck Berry and the apocalypse. His was likely the first print usage of the term “punk rock,” in his epic two-part review of The Stooges’ Fun House, “Of Pop, Pies and Fun,” that sprawled across the November and December 1970 issues of Creem, where he truly built his legend and legacy. In his quickie 1980 biography of Blondie, his three page history-of-punk essay “In Which Another Pompous Blowhard Purports to Possess the True Meaning of Punk Rock” is the best distillation of our reason for living: 

“For performing rock ‘n’ roll, or punk rock, or call it any damned thing you please, there’s only one thing you need: NERVE. Rock ‘n’ roll is an attitude, and if you’ve got the attitude you can do it, no matter what anybody says. Believing that is one of the things punk rock is about. Rock is for everybody, it should be so implicitly anti-elitist that the question of whether somebody’s qualified to perform it should never even arise….Rock ‘n’ roll is not an ‘artform’; rock ‘n’ roll is a raw wail from the bottom of the guts. And like I said, whatever anybody has called it, punk rock has been around from the beginning — it’s just rock honed down to its rawest elements, simple playing with a lot of power and vocalists who may not have much range but have so much conviction and passion it makes up for it ten times over. Because PASSION IS WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT —  what all music is about.”

He wasn't afraid to get dirty. He wallowed in the muck of bad music, gleefully exposing its fetid underbelly. He reveled in the contradictions, the dissonance, the glorious, messy humanity that pulsed through every power chord and drumbeat. He was the Gonzo Gonzo, the Hunter S. Thompson of rock criticism, snorting speed and chasing ambulances, always searching for the next sonic detonation to blow his mind.

But Bangs wasn't just about the noise. He had a heart the size of Texas (or maybe Detroit? THAT’S a big city, right?), overflowing with empathy for the outcasts, the weirdos, the misfits who found solace in the howl of a distorted guitar. He saw the beauty in the broken, the poetry in the chaos, the hope that flickered even in the darkest corners of the dankest rock club. (Or maybe his bedroom, or office at Creem? His slobbery was of Herculean proportions.)

His writing wasn't just about music, it was about life. It was about the joy of a perfect riff, the heartbreak of a bad breakup, the existential dread that lurks at the edge of every Saturday night. He wrote about records like they were sacred texts, about concerts like they were religious experiences, about hangovers like they were Dante's descent into hell.

He was a walking paradox, a guy who could quote Nietzsche and then puke on your shoes. He was a walking contradiction, a teddy bear with a switchblade, a saint with a six-pack. He was Lou Reed’s biggest fan, who engaged in epic verbal brawls with his hero in Creem, because he felt betrayed by Reed’s seeming drive to trash his own talent and legacy. His national magazine debut was a famously negative review of the MC5’s Kick Out The Jams in Rolling Stone. He’d revise his opinion in Creem two years later. He was the best kind of hypocrite, the kind who forced you to confront your own hypocrisy. Lester hated as eloquently, as poetically, as he loved.

And that's why we still celebrate him, 41 years after his last cigarette. Because Lester Bangs wasn't just a rock critic, he was a mirror held up to the soul of rock 'n' roll. He showed us the beauty and the ugliness, the hope and the despair, the laughter and the tears. He reminded us that music is more than just entertainment, it's a goddamn life force.

So raise a glass of Pabst, crank up Iggy Pop, and let the spirit of Lester Bangs erupt in your living room, preferably to this playlist assembled by Creem of Lester’s favorite music. (And yes, that playlist’s been my soundtrack, as I furiously try to scribble out this tribute, so I can post this before his 75th birthday is over, so I can get back to working on the two books I am now furiously trying to finish.) Let his words ignite your synapses, let his passion shake your bones. Let him remind you that rock 'n' roll ain't dead, it's just waiting for the next Gonzo wave to come along and set the whole world on fire.

Happy birthday, Lester. You beautiful, messy, magnificent bastard.

With Love and Napalm,

TIM

P.S. And if you haven't already, go read Psychotic Reactions and Carburetors. It'll change your life. Or at least give you a hell of a hangover.

And remember, pilgrims, this ain't over. The Bangsian flame still burns. Keep the fire alive!

P.P.S. If you're looking for more Bangsian wisdom, check out these gems: 

• Perfect Sound Forever: A Final Chat With Lester Bangs by his biographer Jim DeRogatis — Parts One, Two, Three and Four

• Perfect Sound Forever: Brian Eno: A Sandbox In Alphaville (a previously unpublished Lester piece)

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