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LET IT BLURT: THE LIFE & TIMES OF LESTER BANGS, AMERICA'S GREATEST ROCK CRITIC
Jim DeRogatis
Broadway Books
$15.98 paperback, 331 pages
(April/May 2001)
Lester Bangs, whom Jim DeRogatis hails as rock & roll's greatest critic, is one of those post-mortem success stories whose popularity has jumped about three notches since he drank and drugged himself to an inevitable early death in 1982. So it goes with American bohemians, whom we've always appreciated more six feet under than when they were living and breathing and causing their own particular ruckus.
Bangs was a master of ruckus; his primary strategy for interviewing rock stars such as Lou Reed and countercultural icons like Charles Bukowski was to insult them to the point where ego is forsaken in favor of just hanging on for dear life. His verbal bouts with Reed, one of the most egotistical artists alive, are near legendary. The fact that Bangs thought Reed was a genius apparently didn't stop the writer from bashing the former Velvet Underground frontman on a regular basis. DeRogatis' talent for retelling these amusing, sometimes harrowing stories is keen indeed.
He asserts that Bangs got away with such behavior because he was truly a pioneer in his field, getting in on the first wave of true rock criticism in the '60s, which meant he could pretty much make it up as he went along. (Before then it was middle-aged men in suits with no clue asking the dumbest interview questions imaginable.) Bangs wrote for New Musical Express, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone (back when it was musically relevant), and many other lesser rags. But his true literary home was Creem magazine-his from-the-street commentary blared from its pages like heavy metal from shitty speakers. Bangs' manic, though highly unbalanced critiques, often punctuated with surprisingly deft philosophical asides, could be both powerful and funny as hell. Any journalist daring to write like Bangs these days would probably get canned in five minutes.
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Most of the book is based on eyewitness accounts, since DeRogatis, then a high-school senior, interviewed Bangs only once, shortly before the writer's death. Given DeRogatis' attention to detail and adroit choice of material, you wouldn't guess his contact was so limited. He paints a fascinating, and I'm told fairly accurate, portrait of the disturbed writer, tracing a life that was in large part formed by a troubled childhood-characterized by the violent death of his alcoholic father and the fanatical behavior of his Jehovah's Witness mother-from which he never fully recovered. DeRogatis traces Bangs' self-styled bohemian high school years; his obsession in equal measures with drugs and rock & roll (the chubby critic didn't get much sex) as a young adult; his infatuation with punk music, which he was one of the first to champion; and his final disillusionment with the music scene in general. Through it all, Bangs drinks like a fish and writes like a fiend-simultaneously self-destructing and creating what DeRogatis considers great art.
As pop critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, you'd think DeRogatis would engage in a little more criticism of his own. He serves both as cheerleader for Bangs' over-the-top writing and as apologist for Bangs' shortcomings as a critic. When Bangs loved an album, like the Stooges' Raw Power, he wrote as if nothing in the world could be better. And when he disliked something, like the first MC5 record, there was no insult too strong for the sorry heap of shit on his turntable that he was forced to endure (Bangs changed his mind about the MC5, incidentally, but by then the damage had been done). In short, the man overwrote, going with whatever amphetamine-fueled emotion happened to strike him at the moment. It may have worked for Kerouac in On The Road, but is it really the mark of a great critic? Maybe. But DeRogatis skims over this nagging question like a dazed groupie too infatuated with his subject to question his abilities.
Ultimately, DeRogatis fleshes out Bangs' rollercoaster rock-&-roll life in compelling detail, warts and all, while shedding too little critical light on what made Bangs so interesting in the first place: his writing.
-Michael Koster
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