Lester Bangs on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks
That last post got me thinking about Lester Bangs, who was one of the great rock critics and a remarkable writer in his own right. Lester’s been dead for a really long time now — almost thirty years, Jesus Christ — but his voice is still relevant if you’re one of the sad few people who still care about rock and roll.
You should read Lester. Start with his book Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, which is a collection of his work edited by (also amazing) critic Greil Marcus. When you’re done with that, check out Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader. It’s not as essential, but there’s still a lot of amazing work in it.
When you’re finished with those, check out Jim DeRogatis’s Let it Blurt, an excellent biography of the man. (Jim was the last person to interview Lester before his untimely death in 1981, aged 33).
But if you don’t want to take a chance spending your hard-earned cash on nothing more than my say-so (and shame on you!), start here: Lester’s review/appreciation of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, which is one of the finest pieces of writing on pop music ever set to paper. This is the reason I bought Astral Weeks, and discovered that Van Morrison wasn’t just slow-dancing music for aging yuppies…and, in the process, finding one of my essential albums of all time.
There has never been another Lester Bangs, which is probably a good thing; the man despised sentimentality, and would abhor the notion of someone trying to be him. (As his friend/enemy/inspiration/nemesis Lou Reed once said, “I do Lou Reed better than anybody“.) But it would be nice to find more writers who were equally as passionate about their subject matter, and equally unafraid to not look cool. Because — as Philip Seymour Hoffman said, portraying Lester in the great Cameron Crowe film Almost Famous — writers aren’t cool. They don’t have to be.
Tags: awesomeness, history, lester bangs, rock criticism
