Book review:
Jim DeRogatis -
Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs by Graham Johnston
No one hates music quite as much as the zealous music fan and nothing can annoy the music fan with a similar intensity as music. In fact, I spend an unhealthily large portion of my time being pissed off about some form of music or another. Lester Bangs neatly conveyed this reality in his statement to the Village Voice's critics' poll in 1981, expressing his deep frustration with what was happening at that time in the music scene:
"Almost all current music is worthless. Very simply, it has no soul. It is fraudulent, and so are the mechanisms which perpetuate the lie that anybody else finds it vital enough to do more than consume and file or 'collect' (be the first on your block). New Wave has terminated in thudding hollow Xeroxes of poses that aren't even annoying anymore. Rap is nothing, or not enough. Jazz does not exist as a musical form with anything new to say. And the rest of rock is recycling various formulae forever. I don't know what I am going to write about - music is the only thing in the world I really care about - but I simply cannot pretend to find anything compelling in the choice between pap and mud." (DeRogatis, 2000, p222)
Still today, I thank my stars that I was completely oblivious to what was going on in the music world in 1981 (I was only 9 years old). But Lester's comments ring true at more or less any time when critics overlook qualities such as passion, virtue or innovation to fulfil their need to create a non-existent scene or to trumpet vapid egos as superheroes, just to give themselves something to write about. If you can sell an idol to your readers then you can then sell them your writings about that particular bluffer for some time to come. What would Lester have made of the British music press' dim-witted lauding in the early 1990s of such tiny-talents as Suede and Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine? Even post-punk and post-acid house, we are still having crap foisted on us by writers and critics who seem to listen with their stomachs rather than their hearts.
The beauty of Lester Bangs' writing is evident not just in the fluid and illuminating quality of his prose, but in the fact that he was never scared to speak his mind, often bellowing it in the reader's face. He wrote exactly what he felt at the time, stupid and uninformed as it may occasionally have been, but always redeemed himself by ripping his own words apart, publicly changing his mind in print and rethinking his strategy. Thus, the Lester Bangs' story is littered with contradictions. The same man who got it worse than wrong when he stated that Curtis Mayfield was just worthless "nigger music" was later able to write a piece as vibrant and challenging to the racists in the music world (his past-self included) as The White Noise Supremacists which is available in his classic anthology, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung.
This engaging biography discloses considerably more about Lester than we may previously have known, despite the revealing nature of his own writings. He was born into a family theologically divided by religion, with a strict Jehovah's Witness for a mother while his father found the hard-boiled lifestyle a little too dour. It was a lifestyle which would unintentionally (and possibly inevitably) foster a predilection towards insubordination in a young boy denied Christmas presents:
"Like many witnesses, she didn't value education beyond learning to read the Bible; she sent her son to school only because the law demanded it. In addition to attending services on Sundays and Bible studies several nights a week, Leslie [Lester's birth name] often joined his mother in the "preaching work". They knocked on the doors of non-believers and marched in the streets wearing placards bearing apocalyptic slogans such as 'What is your destiny?' and 'Do you know what time it is?'" (DeRogatis, 2000, 11)
Unsurprisingly (when gifted with hindsight), the stringent upbringing produced a rebellious and free-thinking youth, ready to question any form of authority. He later stated, "I quit the Jehovah's Witnesses because I thought disease in any form more worthy of a life's devotion." Instead of placing his faith in God, Lester placed it in sex, amphetamines, hallucinogens, cough medicine, alcohol and rock and roll.
Lester's high school graduation photo
Lester Bangs, hero to many writers (both aspiring and established) and rock and roll fans, was a chaotic fuck-up with a very special acute talent and an alternately endearing and noisome personality. Let It Blurt chronicles Lester's fruitless struggle to find and maintain an anchored sexual relationship and his eventual saggy decline into becoming a speed-freak Homer Simpson, often taking up residence on friends' sofas as the ultimate immovable nightmare-houseguest:
"He swallowed the ephedrine-coated wicks and stayed up speeding all night, flipping channels on the TV, cranking music on his walkman, and chowing down on corn chips and bean dip. Erlewine tried to ignore the ruckus and get some sleep, but when Lester started flicking bean dip at him, he decided he'd had enough. He got up and punched the noisy son of a bitch. "He didn't think anything of it," Erlewine said "I really couldn't tell if he was trying to get a rise out of me or if he was just that screwed up." (DeRogatis, 2000, 197)
Considering he always felt the rock critic was a form of non-sexual prostitution, it is not that surprising that Lester spent a portion of his latter years hanging out, platonically, with prostitutes who he seemed to have a great deal in common with. His friend and fellow writer John Morthland commented: "The thing with the prostitutes that always got to me was that he always talked about how these women were basically happy - they were making good money, they took care of themselves, they liked their job - but they never seemed happy to me. They were always drinking a lot and taking Quaaludes and what-have-you with liquor." (DeRogatis, 2000, 219) Lester would have found himself in perfect company.
This is a tragic story, not merely because we preconceive any story which ends with a young death as a tragedy, but because Lester, again like Homer Simpson, is a figure that reflects our more wayward characteristics back to us, and I wouldn't wish that role on anybody. The tragedy is alleviated somewhat by the fact that Lester will always be remembered for his prodigious talents as an inspired visionary writer (a talent which never publicly dimmed), rather than his habitual drug use and consequent isolation and loneliness. DeRogatis tells Lester's fascinating and often moving life story with a quiet detachment, never excusing his subject's behaviour, but always humanising it. Thus, we come away with an impression of a sensitive and troubled artist with a tremendous talent and an ability to move his readers often even more than the music he was writing about. We can be sure that he will never be forgotten.
Endnote: Inspired by Lester's all-night speed-fuelled marathon writing sessions, this review was written under the influence of codeine, albeit suggested by my dentist to alleviate the throb of the wisdom-tooth I had pulled this afternoon.
Many thanks to Jim DeRogatis for the photographs.
- Graham Johnston