Lester Bangs: Pills And Thrills

ALTHOUGH HIS NAME is already starting to be listed among the ranks of the elite late 20th-century literary trailblazers, Lester Bangs – the fragile-hearted, drunken bozo word-magician who took rock criticism to a giddy height of vicarious readability – had not published a single book of outstanding merit before his death on April 30, 1982, from an accidental drug overdose, at the age of 33. He had put his name to two quickie rock biographies of Blondie and Rod Stewart – both entertaining, but scarcely ground-breaking modern literature – that have long been out of print.