One
of the most anxiously awaited books of the last few years here at the I-94 (second
only to Ben Edmonds' long-vetted MC5 bio "No Greater Noise") is Jim
DeRogatis' biography of the faux-Beat Romilar-swilling pride of El Cajon, California,
the daddy of us all, immortal rock scribe Lester Bangs. It's here now and it
doesn't disappoint, either (see my review elsewhere
on the Bar). A native New Jerseyite and author of "Kaleidoscope Eyes: Psychedelic
Rock from the '60s to the '90s," Jim graciously took time off from his
responsibilities as pop music critic of the Chicago Sun-Times (not to
mention occasional side work for Penthouse and World of Wrestling, among
other I-94 approved publications) to join me at the Bar to talk about the book
and its subject. (To learn more, check his website.)K: When and how did you first get exposed to Lester's work?
J: I was too young to read Lester during the Creem days -- I came to Creem shortly after he left, in 1976 or '77, when I was 13 or 14-years-old. His name was constantly being evoked in reviews and features and the letters columns, so it intrigued me. I was a precocious kid, so I read the Village Voice and encountered him there, but I really connected with his work in this magazine called Music Sound Output, which only lasted a couple of years. Lester wrote for them from the beginning through his death, doing a regular column in which he not only burned his bridges with various factions of the music industry, but he tried to nuke the whole thing! These were really powerful and prescient columns -- predicting the trend toward home-recording, for example, or decrying the sad state of radio programming, or predicting that in the future no good music would come from Los Angeles or New York or Nashville, it would come from towns away from the industry's center, places like Austin and Seattle. And this was in 1980 and '81!
K: You tell in your preface about how you interviewed Lester when you were a senior in high school, a couple of weeks before his death, because your journalism teacher wanted you to write about a "hero." What did Lester mean to you at that time?
J: I wanted to be a rock critic, I admired the goal of writing about music that inspired you or railing against stuff that you bought that was a hype, and it became clear to me from reading Lester in the Voice and Music Sound Output and (whenever I could find old back issues) Creem that Lester was the best at what he did. I took the hero part of it somewhat skeptically -- those were my teacher's words, not mine -- but I wanted to meet this guy who'd done this amazing writing, because when you read him you felt as if you were involved in this intense discourse with your best friend, sitting there on the couch raving about records you loved and ranting about stuff you hated. And that was pretty much what Lester was like in person, too, during the hours that we spent together.
K: Today, Lester seems to be pretty generally recognized as "America's [I'd make that 'the world's'] greatest rock critic" (as you subtitle your book). What do you think set him apart from his contemporaries?
J: Well, the subtitle actually undersells Lester's talents -- "America's greatest rock critic" is like saying "Ethiopia's best chef" or "the Sahara's best swimmer." He was one of the best writers of his generation, period. But I can't underscore enough that it wasn't only based on that funny, fluid, Beats-on-acid (or Romilar or speed) prose style. That was vastly entertaining, sure, but what keeps people coming back to "Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung", the 1987 anthology of his work, what prompts people to quote him in their email signature files, and to read his biography, is the fact that he had these great, probing philosophical insights in his work. There was real content, stuff that made you think, and much more so than more serious peers like Greil Marcus or Robert Christgau. I don't know who ever said that the class clown couldn't also be an intellectual.
K: Why do you think his stature and influence have been so enduring?
J: In part because he is dead -- it is much easier to become a rock icon when you are no longer around to refute or piss on the myth; just ask Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, et. al. -- but also of course in no small measure because of the quality of that great body of work, as I was just saying.
Q: How do you think he'd feel about the attention that continues to be paid to his work?
J: Look at the quotes in my book from our interview, two weeks before he died. He was intensely wary of becoming a parody of himself, a cartoon caricature, a Charles Bukowski or a Hunter S. Thompson. He wanted to do good work, and the image-mongering -- having to be "Lester Bangs, Great Rock Critic" -- interfered with that. So I bet he would have mixed feelings, even while he would be extremely grateful that people are still reading him. And whatever he'd be doing, I'm fairly sure it would be surprising us and confounding expectations.
K: What's your favorite piece of his writing, and why? (If that's too hard, maybe pick three or five!)
J: The last piece I read. And the next one I'll go back to. (Though it may be a while; I need to recover from five years' immersion in more or less non-stop Bangs.) But if I HAVE to pick: "Psychotic Reactions." Or the Clash piece. Or "New Year's Eve."
Q: How do you feel about the direction "rock journalism" has taken since his passing? How would you categorize the state of rock writing today?
J: I don't know what you mean; rock criticism has never been better! Two thumbs up! Way, way up! Six stars on a five-star scale! Happy happy happy! Buy buy buy! Fill in the name of the artist here! Anyone will do! They're all great! Lotsa hype is good hype! Pseudo-intellectual hype is even better! Get a thesaurus! And some Foucault! Happy happy happy! Hype hype hype! We are all just adjuncts of the machine, and goddamnit we love our jobs! What the hell is the matter with you to suggest otherwise?
K: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Okay! Point taken! Uh, some of the advance publicity I read (newsgroup chatter etc.) indicated that you really "dished the dirt" on certain facets of his life (his hygiene, his chemical consumption) -- a perception which was NOT borne out by reading the book. (Sorry, Victor Bockris you're not.) Lester always seemed to keep few secrets from his readers. How do you think he would feel about the way you've portrayed him?
J: I have no idea what Lester would think; that's a game I refused to play throughout working on the book, because it's foolish. He was an extremely brilliant and complex and contradictory son of a bitch,and it would only be disrespectful to second-guess him on anything that happened after he died. (Like, what would Lester think of MTV? Would he have liked Nirvana? Whatever.) But you're right -- he kept very few secrets from his reader, he let it all hang out, let it all blurt, in the manner of his heroes the Beats, showing us warts and all, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And so I never felt voyeuristic or parasitic prying into his personal life, because he wrote about all the stuff that everyone told me about, in the interest of sharing with his readers. I never, ever set out to dish dirt -- I hate the very idea of it -- I just set out to tell the story as clearly and concisely as possible.
K: In researching your book, was there anything you discovered about him which surprised you? (I was amused by the fact that Barry Kramer paid for a therapist for the Creem staff -- although on reflection, it makes perfect sense!)
J: I was never really surprised, because I did not go in with any concrete preconceptions. That was an advantage I had in not really knowing him well, just having met him enough in one intense burst to get my own impression, but without clouding everybody else's. I had no agendas, I tried to be open to wherever the story took me, and so was rarely surprised but consistently intrigued and fascinated.
K: A corny question, maybe: Do you see Lester Bangs as being more a man of his times, or a timeless individual?
J: I think he was extremely plugged into the zeitgeist of the times. Chronologically, he was a Boomer, but he was not really spiritually one of them -- he fit much better with the generation that followed the '60s, and since many of those attitudes still prevail today (in Generation X at least, not so sure about Y) he remains very timely (or at least relevant, to those of us who care).
K: Did you see the interview with Dave Marsh in Here 'Tis #9? In speaking of you, he said, "I'll always be grateful to Jim because...I never thought I was very important to Lester and he [you] made it clear to me that Lester felt otherwise." Care to comment on that?
J: I think that Dave, like a lot of people in Lester's life, learned a lot of stuff about him in my book for the first time. That's a strange feeling -- you know, he was there, but in a lot of ways I know Lester better than he did, or at least I came to know more SIDES of Lester than he did -- and I took that as a compliment that meant I did my job well.
K: So much of Lester's work remains unpublished (for example, the novel "Drug Punk" that you describe in the book). Do you think any of this material will ever see publication? Likewise, do you think we'll ever see a more complete compendium of his published work than Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung? What's your take on John Morthland?
J: Lester's literary executor, John Morthland, does indeed hope to do another anthology. He is an excellent editor and journalist and critic, as well as having been Lester's closest friend, and I know that his heart is in this project, so I can't imagine that it would be anything less than extraordinary. I hope that my book (which is a biography, not an anthology, and so there were very different goals) will work with whatever John does and with Psychotic Reactions as part of a continuous loop, each informing the other to preserve the prose and the ideas of a very important writer.
K: Were there any stories that didn't make it into the book that you'd be willing to share?
J: I love the one about Jon Langford wanting to meet Lester on the Mekons' first trip to America. He stood on the corner in New York and yelled up at the window in the middle of a raging blizzard and Lester lowered his speaker down from his fifth-floor apartment. The key was taped to the top and the stereo was playing the Mekons' first single. I also regret that I didn't include the fact that two of Lester's friends, Becky Tyner and Georgia Christgau, loved this man enough that they were moved to name their daughters after him. I tried hard to portray that magical quality that made people love Lester, it was part of this crazy mix along with the wild stuff, and that's the sort of thing that speaks to the depth of people's feelings for him.
K: Finally, because we're in a Bar, what do you like to drink?
J: I'll take a Cosmopolitan, please.