Epistle to a Young Critic: A Letter from Lester Bangs, February 1975

Thirty years ago, RBP contributor Susan (then Suzan) Compo was an apprentice punkette and aspiring rock scribe living in Tustin, California. An avid reader of CREEM – the grungey, Detroit-based alternative to Rolling Stone – Compo wrote to the magazine’s reviews editor Lester Bangs, soliciting answers to three questions for a piece she was writing for a student paper. Below is the response she received from icy Michigan. (Precisely what her third question was we’ll leave to your imagination. And hey, who knew Malcolm bleedin’ Muggeridge played such a pivotal role in the evolution in rock journalism?!)