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Until an afterword that indulges in some posthumous speculation, a justifiable polemic against the current state of music journalism and a consideration of whether Bangs wanted to die, the book walks a steady and confident line, avoiding moralization and judgment. DeRogatis keeps literary analysis to a minimum, and makes a virtue of what might have been seen as an oversight. In the preface, DeRogatis disputes an obituary writer's assertion that "if all you knew about Lester Bangs were articles that he wrote ... you knew him quite well," and provides enough information about Bangs' love life, minor arrest record, psychiatric treatment and prostitute pals to draw extra-literary conclusions about what came out of his typewriter.

Still, other than a premature and ignominious death, it's not much of a story, insignificant beyond the tiny universe of Bangs fans and devout rock mediaphiles. DeRogatis is both, twin dedications that date back to 1982, when a high school journalism assignment led DeRogatis to interview Bangs, who dropped dead two weeks later. DeRogatis went on to become an editor at Rolling Stone and is now the prickly and high-minded pop music critic of the Chicago Sun-Times. (He's also a good friend, whose strong opinions and devotions I have not always shared.) Journalism has always been one of his beats, and an avowed goal of this book is to fit Bangs into the context of the rock press by providing some history of it.

Those of us who have been part of that history will undoubtedly read this book differently -- especially since DeRogatis exercises some of his own journalistic grudges in "Let It Blurt." He finds fault with the selections made for "Carburetor Dung," suggesting that the book's editor, Greil Marcus, and his crony, Village Voice senior editor Robert Christgau (the self-professed "Dean of American Rock Critics," described by Bangs in 1974 as "a pompous asshole"), had their own agenda. (For what it's worth, Christgau merits five citations in the index of "Carburetor Dung.")

In the book's afterword, DeRogatis quotes Vanity Fair media critic James Wolcott as saying Christgau and Marcus were jealous of their colleague "because Lester really reached readers ... Bob and Greil have their followers but they don't have the intense fandom that Lester had ... You can't imagine, like: 'Jeez, I wanna hang out with Greil Marcus.'" And as a carrier of the same self-expression torch that led Bangs to be barred from Rolling Stone's pages, DeRogatis undoubtedly enjoyed recounting Bangs' disillusionment and criticisms of the magazine, where he had his own unhappy experience.

They're not the only ones in these pages with unhappy experiences. DeRogatis interviewed me for "Let It Blurt," and used an anecdote about a Ramones feature Bangs wrote in late 1978 for Trouser Press, a magazine that I co-founded. As DeRogatis reports, Bangs resold the story to England's weekly N-M-E, where it appeared first. We never asked him to write for Trouser Press again. Luckily. DeRogatis writes that Bangs "disliked Trouser Press and the New York Rocker ... and considered them havens for young careerists and shills for the industry." (Bangs' scorn did not, however, prevent him from quoting several interviews from the New York Rocker for his Blondie book.)

It is no surprise that Bangs inspired others to become rock journalists; it's a drag how many of them practiced the self-referential tale telling that was, for him, a medium for incisive criticism, not a substitute for it. (That makes it all the more surprising at the tone of this biography, which has none of the drooling anti-hero worship that might be expected from a Bangs acolyte.)

The historical tragedy, as DeRogatis notes, is how Bangs and his kind were marginalized and then ostracized by the explosion of music journalism they engendered. As Bangs discovered at the increasingly "professional" Rolling Stone, freewheeling first-person hysteria was fine until people started to take rock criticism seriously as a business. Once mainstream media got into the act, the self-invented extremists got pushed off the stage.

What was once garret zealotry -- practiced by idealists driven to spew, destroy and proselytize -- is now well-paid product-shilling, adult-dream celebrity worship written by well-funded content providers, pushed by powerful flacks and neutered by timid editors. Even the largest and most established music magazines lack the spine to disagree with their readers. So Bangs died in vain. At least he didn't live to be disgraced by it.

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I bought a Rolf Harris album off Lester Bangs once. It was at some record convention in New York, and I remember thinking it odd that a big-time rock critic -- something I myself hoped to be one day -- would be selling his records. It also bothered me a bit that "L. Bangs" was scrawled in ballpoint pen on the back cover, but I had never heard the original version of "Sun Arise," a cool song Alice Cooper had covered, and I had bought a 45 of the oddball Australian's "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" as a kid, so the buck or three seemed a worthwhile investment. It was.
salon.com | April 4, 2000

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