Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs (December 14, 1948 – April 30, 1982)[1] was an American music journalist and critic. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines and was also a performing musician.[2][3] The music critic Jim DeRogatis called him "America's greatest rock critic".[4]
Early life
Bangs was born in Escondido, California. He was the son of Norma Belle (née Clifton) and Conway Leslie Bangs, a truck driver.[5]: 3–4 Both of his parents were from Texas: his father from Enloe and his mother from Pecos County.[6] Norma Belle was a devout Jehovah's Witness. Conway died in a fire when his son was young. When Bangs was 11, he moved with his mother to El Cajon, also in San Diego County.[7][8][9]
Bangs became a freelance writer in 1969, after reading an ad in Rolling Stone soliciting readers' reviews. His first accepted piece was a negative review of the MC5 album Kick Out the Jams, which he sent to Rolling Stone with a note requesting, if the magazine were to decline to publish the review, that he be given a reason for the decision; no reply was forthcoming, as the magazine did indeed publish the review.
His 1970 review of Black Sabbath's first album in Rolling Stone was scathing, rating them as imitators of the band Cream:
Cream clichés that sound like the musicians learned them out of a book, grinding on and on with dogged persistence. Vocals are sparse, most of the album being filled with plodding bass lines over which the lead guitar dribbles wooden Claptonisms from the master's tiredest Cream days. They even have discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitized speedfreaks all over each other's musical perimeters yet never quite finding synch—just like Cream! But worse.[12]
Bangs wrote about the death of Janis Joplin in 1970 from a drug overdose: "It's not just that this kind of early death has become a fact of life that has become disturbing, but that it's been accepted as a given so quickly."[13]
In 1973, Jann Wenner fired Bangs from Rolling Stone for "disrespecting musicians" after a particularly harsh review of the group Canned Heat.[5]: 95
Creem magazine
Bangs began freelancing for Detroit-based Creem in 1970.[10] In 1971, he wrote a feature for Creem on Alice Cooper, and soon afterward he moved to Detroit. Named Creem's editor in 1971,[14] Bangs fell in love with Detroit, calling it "rock's only hope", and remained there for five years.[15]
Bangs died in New York City on April 30, 1982, at the age of 33; he was self-medicating a bad case of the flu and accidentally overdosed on dextropropoxyphene (an opioid analgesic), diazepam (a benzodiazepine), and NyQuil.[22][23]
Bangs appeared to be listening to music when he died. Earlier that day, he had bought a copy of Dare by the Human League, an English synth-pop band. Later that night, a friend found him lying on a couch in his apartment, unresponsive. "Dare was spinning on the turntable, and the needle was stuck on the end groove," Jim DeRogatis wrote in Let It Blurt, his biography of Bangs.[5]: 233
Writing style and cultural commentary
Bangs's criticism was filled with cultural references, not only to rock music but also to literature and philosophy. His radical and confrontational style influenced others in the punk rock and related social and political movements.[10] In a 1982 interview, he said:
Well, basically, I just started out to lead [an interview] with the most insulting question I could think of. Because it seemed to me that the whole thing of interviewing as far as rock stars and that was just such a suck-up. It was groveling obeisance to people who weren't that special, really. It's just a guy, just another person, so what?[24]
A performer with his own band, he also appeared on stage with others at times. On one occasion, while the J. Geils Band were playing in concert, Bangs climbed onto the stage, typewriter in hand, and proceeded to type a supposed review of the event, in full view of the audience, banging the keys in rhythm with the music.[25]
In 1979, writing for The Village Voice, Bangs wrote a piece about racism in the punk music scene, called "The White Noise Supremacists", wherein he re-examined his own actions and words, and those of his peers, in light of some bands using Nazi symbolism, and other racist speech and imagery, "for shock value". He came to the conclusion that generating outrage for attention was not worth the harm it was causing fellow members of the community, and expressed his personal shame and embarrassment about having engaged in these racist behaviors himself. He praised the efforts of activist groups like Rock Against Racism and Rock Against Sexism as "an attempt at simple decency by a lot of people whom one would think too young and naive to begin to appreciate the contradictions."[26][27]
In 1977, Bangs recorded, as a solo artist, a 7" vinyl single named "Let It Blurt/Live", mixed by John Cale and released in 1979.
In 1977, at the New York City nightclub CBGB, Bangs and guitarist Mickey Leigh, Joey Ramone's brother, decided to form a band named "Birdland". Although they both had their roots in jazz, the two wanted to create an old-school rock-and-roll group. Leigh brought in his post-punk band, The Rattlers (David Merrill on bass; Matty Quick on drums). On April Fool's Day 1979, the band snuck into Electric Lady Studios for an impromptu late-night recording session; the studio was under renovation but Merrill was helping and had the key. Birdland broke up within two months of the recording. The cassette tape from the session became the master, mixed by Ed Stasium and released by Leigh in 1986 as "Birdland" with Lester Bangs. In a review of the album, Robert Christgau gave it a B-plus and said, "musically he always had the instincts, and words were no problem."[28]
In 1980, Bangs traveled to Austin, Texas, where he met a surf/punk rock group, The Delinquents. In early December of the same year, they recorded an album as "Lester Bangs and the Delinquents", titled Jook Savages on the Brazos, released the following year.
In 1990, the Mekons released the EP F.U.N. 90 with Bangs's declamation in the song "One Horse Town".
Bangs is a character in the short story "Dori Bangs" by Bruce Sterling in which Sterling imagines what would have happened if Lester hadn't died young and had instead met the artist Dori Seda.
Bangs is the subject of the song by Scott B. Sympathy "Lester Bangs Stereo Ghost" on the 1992 album Drinking With The Poet.
of Montreal mention Bangs in their 2003 song "There Is Nothing Wrong With Hating Rock Critics."
The Ramones name-check Bangs in their 1981 song "It's Not My Place."
In the 2000 movie Almost Famous, directed by Cameron Crowe (himself a former writer for Rolling Stone), Bangs is portrayed by actor Philip Seymour Hoffman as a mentor to the film's protagonist William Miller. Bangs is also a major character in the 2019 stage musical version, in which he was played by Rob Colletti.
^Bangs, Lester (2003). Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. Anchor Books. pp. 8, 56, 57, 61, 64, 101 (reprints of articles originally published in 1971 and 1972 and referring to garage bands such as the Count Five and the Troggs as "punk"); p. 101 (associating Iggy and Jonathan Richman of the Modern Lovers with the Troggs and their ilk as "punk"); pp. 112–113 (describing the Guess Who as "punk"—the Guess Who had made recordings as a garage rock outfit in the mid-60s, such as their hit version of "Shakin' All Over" in 1965); p. 8 (general statement about "punk rock" (garage) as a genre: "then punk bands started cropping up who were writing their own songs but taking the Yardbirds' sound and reducing it to this kind of goony fuzztone clatter ... oh, it was beautiful, it was pure folklore, Old America, and sometimes I think those were the best days ever)"; p. 225 (reprint from an article originally published in the late 70s refers to garage bands as "punk"
^Marsh, D. Creem. May 1971 (review of live show by ? & the Mysterians Marsh describing their style as "a landmark exposition of punk rock.").
^Punk: The Whole Story. ed. M. Blake. 2006 Mojo Magazine, 2006. In the opening article, "Punk Rock Year Zero," the writer and former member of early Sex Pistols lineup Nick Kent discusses the influence of Lester Bangs on punk concept and aesthetic.
^Gray, M. (2004). The Clash: Return of the Last Gang in Town. Hal Leonard. p. 27 - Gray discusses how in the early 70s, while his mother was living overseas (in Detroit), she would send Mick Jones (later of the Clash) copies of Creem magazine, and how writings by Bangs and others using the term punk rock influenced him.
^Gere, Charlie. (2005). Art, Time and Technology: Histories of the Disappearing Body. Berg. p. 110.
May 13, 1980 Interview with Lester BangsArchived 2013-01-20 at the Wayback Machine by Sue Mathews of ABC Radio (Australia) Complete transcript plus MP3 stream of the interview.
