For the uninitiated, Lester Bangs (1948-1982) was a music journalist who used to write for Rolling Stone and Creem Magazine. Often referred to as the Gonzo of music journalism for his ranting style of writing, Bangs is considered one of the icons of the new wave of journalism along with Hunter S Thompson. Though fired from Rolling Stone for being “disrespectful to musicians”, Bangs became famous for the exact reasons that got him fired.
Even today, twenty-eight years after he died of a drug overdose, Bangs is considered one of the most influential voices in music criticism and one that charted, if not defined, the aesthetics of heavy metal and punk. Vying for the place of the best writer in America, Lester Bangs became famous (or notorious as some might argue) for breaking out of the established norms of music criticism. While all others wrote about rock, Bangs used rock to write about everything that was going on around him and anything else that randomly came to his head.
Call it his genius or twisted sense of humour, Bangs’ review of Alice Cooper concluded with the dismissal that he was just a “tragic waste of plastic”; or his infamous interview with Lou Reed — Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves (or how I slugged it out with Lou Reed and stayed awake). That was Lester Bangs for you — unpretentious and free of the prissiness and ponderousness that characterizes most music writing today. Perhaps that’s why he’s still the best and perhaps that’s what we, the ‘music critics’ of today, need to learn to do. As he said in one of his interviews: “Being a rock critic, the impetus for me and a lot of people I knew was just that we really love rock ‘n’ roll and wanted to talk about it.” With this in mind, I begin.