Lester Bangs

Lester Bangs, (1949 - April 30, 1982) was an American music journalist, author and musician. He died in New York City of an overdose of cold medication, possibly unintentional.

Bangs was an extremely influential voice in music writing from the end of the 1960s until his death in 1982. Bangs started out writing as a freelancer for Rolling Stone in 1969, and later worked for Creem Magazine, The Village Voice, Penthouse, Playboy, New Musical Express and many others.

His ranting style, similar to Hunter S. Thompson's gonzo journalism, and his tendency to insult and become confrontational with his interview subjects made him distinctive. His style also got him fired from Rolling Stone by Jann Wenner in 1973 for being "disrespectful to musicians." Bangs himself claimed his influences were not so much predecessors in journalism as it was beat authors, in particular William S. Burroughs.

Lester Bangs, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, appears in Cameron Crowe's autobiographical movie Almost Famous (2000), about a young music journalist who gets an assignment from Rolling Stone in the 1970s and who considers Lester Bangs his mentor and inspiration.

Jim Derogatis's biography of Bangs is titled Let it Blurt (ISBN 0767905091).

Bangs (along with underground comic book artist Dori Seda) was the inspiration for the story Dori Bangs, written by SF author Bruce Sterling in 1989. Sterling speculated on what Bangs' life might have been like if he had lived longer.

Lester Bangs is often credited with inventing the term "punk"; for example, in his 1971 essay Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung he comments: "... 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". Certainly "punk" was a word that Lester Bangs used frequently. For example, he wrote an autobiographical novel titled "Drug Punk" in 1968 -- this is unpublished, but excerpts can be found in the collection Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste (ISBN 0-375-71367-0). Another example can be found in his earliest published work, the 1970 article The MC5: Kick out the Jams (also in the same collection): "Never mind that they came on like a bunch of sixteen-year-old punks on a meth power trip ...". What Bangs actually meant by "punk" might be debated, but it's clear that he was an advocate for an attitude toward music that that later punk rockers could easily sympathize with. Another quote from the Psychotic Reactions article:

It wasn't until much later, drowning in the kitschvats of Elton John and James Taylor, that I finally came to realize that grossness was the truest criterion for rock 'n' roll, the cruder the clang and grind the more fun and longer listened-to the album would be.

And further:

... it was just that he couldn't stand ineptitude of any kind in music, which was perfectly reasonable, while I dug certain outrageous brands of ineptitude the most!

This essay can be found in a collected volume of the same title: Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (ISBN 0679720456). Here's a quotation from another article collected in that volume, A Reasonable Guide to Horrible Noise (1980):

Look at it this way: there are many here among us for whom the life force is best represented by the livid twitching of one tortured nerve, or even a full-scale anxiety attack. I do not subscribe to this point of view 100%, but I understand it, have lived it. Thus the shriek, the caterwaul, the chainsaw gnarlgnashing, the yowl and the whizz that decapitates may be reheard by the adventurous or emotionally damaged as mellifluous bursts of unarguable affirmation.