Banging out criticism: The last of rock's iconoclasts
M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader
John Morthland, ed.
Anchor Books, August 2003
432 pp
If Rolling Stone founder Jann S. Wenner was inducted to the Rock `n' Roll Hall of Fame for his contribution to developing rock journalism -- by printing music industry handouts -- its rock critic Lester Bangs also deserves to be inducted for doing just the opposite as is revealed in Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader, a compilation of his writings.
During his brief life and career -- he died in April 1982 after treating a cold with Darvon and Valium -- Bangs has shown how rock music criticism should claim its integrity against an onslaught from the recording industry and prevent it from becoming a means to dumb and calm down the public's taste for rock `n' roll.
Starting to write for Rolling Stone magazine in 1969, Bangs became a very influential, if not founding, voice in rock criticism, and many rock critics today cite Bangs as their greatest influence.
Bangs has also been name-checked in the songs of some of the biggest rock acts, from R.E.M. to The Ramones and even Bob Seger. His brief life has been immortalized in Cameron Crowe's film Almost Famous, and he has been credited with inventing the term "punk".
Aside from his rambling story-telling writing style, which bore a similarity to gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson and gutter port Jack Kerouac, Bangs was well known for his uncompromising and merciless views on his subjects -- be it record reviews, interviews, travelogues or purely nonsensical pieces.
Almost all rock legends have been brought down by Bangs from their pantheons -- from Jimi Hendrix to punk originator MC5, from Bob Marley to the Sex Pistols and Jim Morrison. None have escaped becoming a target of his derision and mockery. Simply put, he has smashed all idols with his hammer.
Bangs had the tendency to insult and confront his interviewees, a penchant that got him fired from Rolling Stone in 1973, after Wenner's accusation that he was being disrespectful to musicians.
After his Rolling Stone stint, Bangs wrote for Creem, Village Voice and New Musical Express, to name a few, and went on with his crusade.
The only artist to escape his wrath was former Velvet Underground ringleader Lou Reed, with whom he had a steady friendship for years.
When every rock critic in their right minds trashed Reed's commercial suicide album Metal Machine Music as the loudest noise ever put on record, Bangs stood in Reed's defense, claiming the album was the musician's ultimate antisocial act.
"Perhaps I should also mention that I like this record. Why? Because I am an Insect Death buff," Bangs said.
His defense of Reed, Monolith or Monotone? Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, which sits uncomfortably among his regular debasement of every major rock act.
Mainlines, along with Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic, also a collection of his articles for Creem, Rolling Stone and Village Voice and other rock publications, are the only books ever produced by the prolific rock critic.
In Main Lines, readers get a chance to read Bangs' legendary articles in which he trashes rock performers that mattered at the time of his writing.
In The MC5, Kick Out the Jams, his first record review for Rolling Stone, Bangs genially put down the album that later became a template for punk music, saying that "most of the songs are barely distinguishable from each other in their primitive two-chord structures. You've heard all this before from such notables as the Seeds, Blue Cheer and the Mysterians, and the Kingsmen."
In Innocents in Babylon: A Search for Jamaica Featuring Bob Marley and a Cast of Thousands, Bangs went further by deconstructing the myths that surrounded reggae music, and portrayed its Rastafarian prophet Bob Marley as a stoned, if not imbecilic, person.
Apart from saying that reggae was a new money-making machine created by Island Records founder-president Chriss Blackwell, in his stuttered interview with Marley and other sources, Bangs implied that the reggae superstar was basically a businessman- type artist: "Bob (Marley) is very dedicated to music, but when it comes to money, he is not going to let anyone cheat him out of any portion of his equal share."
Such a statement surely came as a shock to Marley devotees everywhere.
He also portrayed Marley, whose father was a white American soldier, as a naive man who believed that all black people in Jamaica should go back to their promised land in Ethiopia -- under the reign of Haile Sellasie.
In other parts of the book, Bangs mocks Bob Dylan's Desire as a shame and a fakeout, while calling Blood on the Tracks little more than mixed-up confusion with regards to romantic obsession.
With such derisive treatment of the creme de la creme of rock, it is (un)lucky that Bangs did not live to witness the current rock scene, which has somehow become filled with a bunch of mediocre performers.