I WOULD NOT have admitted it to anyone at the time, even to myself, but from about 1971 to 1977 my favorite writer was Lester Bangs. My official answer to that question in those years would have been James Joyce or William Burroughs, but Bangs was the writer I devoured and re-devoured, whose sentence rhythms I walked to, whose pronouncements I took as gospel. I subscribed to Creem for most of that period mainly in order to get my monthly dose of Lester Bangs.
Bangs wrote record reviews, mostly rock although he was perhaps more interested in avant-garde jazz, and articles about rock musicians. I don't think he ever published a book, save for a quickie paperback on Blondie. Since his death in 1982, however, there have been two impressive, 400-page anthologies of his work, this one and its predecessor, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, edited by Greil Marcus. Both include some interesting unpublished work (of which Bangs apparently left behind boxes when he died).
What was it in him I was drawn to? I found myself drawn to it all over again reading these pieces, most of which I had read before, many of which I found I had retained phrases from for over forty years.
Bangs was honest, for one thing. His reviews never seemed to be trying to curry favor with the artists being reviewed. He wasn't just a hatchet guy, though. He could be extremely enthusiastic--I don't know how many albums I bought largely on his recommendation, most of which became favorites (the Stooges' Fun House, Roxy Music's Stranded, Patti Smith's Horses)--but he could be brutal, too, especially towards big names he suspected were phoning it in, as the Stones, Dylan, and Lou Reed arguably were in the mid-seventies. And he could be illuminating about bands most critics took as jokes (e.g., Black Sabbath).
He had a wide frame of cultural reference that he could invoke without ever sounding particularly pretentious. He could be savagely funny. He had a talent for letting a sentence loose to roam whither it would (this may have had something to do with his fondness for speed).
Above all, I think, you had the feeling he cared. Not that he was incapable of cynicism, snide dismissal, posturing of various kinds, self-parody. But he seemed genuinely pissed when a big name was cruising on his reputation and genuinely excited when he discovered something new and vital.
Morthland's book includes among its previously unpublished pieces some written when Bangs was only 20, before he started reviewing, and some from the latter days, when Bangs's drink and drugs consumption was taking its toll. These pages were as brilliant as the rest, I thought--Bangs found his voice early and still had it at the end.
Library of America...how about it?
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