Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs, who died in 1982, is the most celebrated of the original "Noise Boys" of rock journalism. Some of his greatest pieces — most of them from Detroit's Creem magazine — were collected by Greil Marcus in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. A new anthology, Mainlines, Blood Feasts & Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader, has been compiled by RBP contributor John Morthland and has been published in the summer of 2003. Lester is as yet the only rock critic to have a biography written of him — Jim DeRogatis' excellent Let It Blurt (2000).
65 articles
List of articles in the library
Review by Lester Bangs, Rolling Stone, 5 April 1969
WHOEVER THOUGHT when that dirty little quickie Wild In The Streets came out that it would leave such an imprint on the culture? First the ...
Alice Cooper: Pretties for You
Review by Lester Bangs, Rolling Stone, 12 July 1969
ALICE COOPER IS A West Coast Zappa-sponsored group: two guitars, bass, drums and a vocalist who doubles on harmonica. Echoes of 1967 psychedelia in the ...
The Box Tops: Dimensions, Nonstop, Super Hits
Review by Lester Bangs, Rolling Stone, 27 December 1969
THE BOX TOPS? Are you serious? Those yokel hacks grinding out rattly pop for the tyrannical Top 40? Those squeaky-clean goons in paisley scarves and ...
Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa: Frank Zappa: Hot Rats
Review by Lester Bangs, Rolling Stone, 7 March 1970
THIS RECORDING brings together a set of mostly little-known talents that whale the tar out of every other informal "jam" album released in rock and ...
Amon Düül (I & II): Amon Düül: A Science Fiction Rock Spectacle
Sleeve notes by Lester Bangs, unpublished, 1971
Part One: The Aluminium Revolution IT HAD TO HAPPEN! It's been some seven years now since the impact of American popular music first rebounded ...
Retrospective by Lester Bangs, Excerpts from letters to Charlie Gillett, 1971
CREEM,187 South Woodward Avenue, Suite 203Birmingham, Michigan 48011(313) 642-8833[Autumn 1971] ...
Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band: Lick My Decals Off, Baby
Review by Lester Bangs, Creem, March 1971
GAZING ACROSS pop music's stale horizons, past all the cynical ineptitude, pseudo-intellectual solemnity, neurotic regression and dismal dead-ends for great bands, there is one figure ...
John McLaughlin: My Goal's Beyond
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, November 1971
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN has been around: gigging with Graham Bond in 1966, Jack Bruce in ‘68 and intermittently with Miles Davis since then, he has cut ...
Profile by Lester Bangs, Fusion, 12 November 1971
NICO IS ONE of the true enigmas of our time. Austere, elusive, a tall ghostly woman with an aura of utter loneliness and distance so ...
John Prine: The Troubadour, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, January 1972
EVERYBODY'D BEEN talking about this guy Prine, how he was Kris Kristofferson's boozin' buddy or something, and since I like Kristofferson's Kerouacian American romanticism I ...
Rory Gallagher: Rory Gallagher (Atco)
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, 1 January 1972
‘RORY GALLAGHER, formerly of Taste, is now on his own and happening.’ That's what the ads say, but what do they know? ...
Review by Lester Bangs, Rolling Stone, 17 February 1972
IT WOULD be nice to be able to call it something like The Rolling Stones' Golden Decade, for the Stones have been the most enduringly ...
Bernie Taupin: Bernie Taupin (Elektra)
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, March 1972
ON NEW YEAR'S EVE of 1972 I attended a great party thrown by someone I didn't know and inadvertently fell into a protracted conversation with ...
Jerry Lee Lewis: The Killer Rocks On
Review by Lester Bangs, Rolling Stone, 8 June 1972
THERE'S NOT TOO MANY of those greasy rockers still hanging around from their '50s heydaze good for much more than playing 50 tank towns a ...
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, September 1972
NOBODY LIKES Savoy Brown except everybody. Why? What? Well, you know, you either like 'em or ya don't. If you do, you got no problems. ...
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, 1 October 1972
GOOD FOR SLADE. They made it at last. These guys have been kicking around the Limey lard-tub for a little while now, garnering a fan ...
Overview by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, December 1972
DETROIT, FOUNDED in 1736 by a turncoat (to both sides) halfbreed Indian named Quazimodo from the Kuitee tribe which dwelled circa 1670-1777 on the shores ...
Captain Beefheart: Getting Closer To The Captain: Clear Spot
Review by Lester Bangs, Creem, January 1973
"AND THAT PANTALOONED DUCK / white goose neck / quacked, 'Webcor, Webcor.'" Those are the last lines on Clear Spot, from a song called 'Golden ...
Deep Purple: Who Do We Think We Are!
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, March 1973
HOT DAMN, it's a new Deep Purple album! ...
Jefferson Airplane: 30 Seconds Over Winterland (Grunt)
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, June 1973
WHAT A BUNCHA duds. What a deadass disco. What a waste of space, Mace, grease, you name it. Time was when the Jefferson Airplane were ...
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, June 1973
SAN RA SURE is a good old dog to have around. He's been spooning out this same clank for years, and it's every bit as ...
The Stooges: The Apotheosis Of Every Parental Nightmare
Profile by Lester Bangs, Stereo Review, July 1973
THE BIGGEST TREND on the rock circuit this year is decadence. ...
Report and Interview by Lester Bangs, Let It Rock, October 1973
I'VE NEVER SEEN anything like it, though you may have. The kids come jostling in and pack the halls every time. Two or three thousand ...
The Carpenters: Carpenters: Now And Then
Review by Lester Bangs, Let It Rock, November 1973
WHAT ARE WE gonna do with these two? Look, ain't saying I don't love 'em – they've always been one of my favourite swoontracks, especially ...
Lou Reed: A Deaf Mute In A Telephone Booth
Interview by Lester Bangs, Let It Rock, November 1973
YOU WALK into the dining room of the Holiday Inn filled with expectation at finally getting to meet one of the musical and psychological frontiersmen ...
Live Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, November 1973
I'VE SEEN WORSE towns than Masillon but not many. Gila Bend, Arizona is worse by dint of being the asshole of the world, and I ...
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Live In Europe (Fantasy)
Review by Lester Bangs, Let It Rock, April 1974
I MEAN REALLY, who cares about Creedence anyway? They're dead now, I'd already forgot about 'em till this thing came out. ...
Deep Purple: Monsters of the Deep
Report and Interview by Lester Bangs, New Musical Express, 8 June 1974
I'M SITTING on Deep Purple's jet waiting to take off from Detroit Metro. The accommodations are luxurious and the general mood is a Saturday afternoon ...
How to be a Rock Critic: A Megatonic Journey
Essay by Lester Bangs, Shakin' Street Gazette, 10 October 1974
LATELY I'VE NOTICED a new wrinkle on the American landscape: it seems as if there's a whole generation of kids, each one younger than the ...
The Doors: The End Is Always Near: Dread, Drunkenness and The Doors, Pt. 1
Retrospective by Lester Bangs, unpublished, 1975
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF the Doors should not be underestimated; it has been too often already. When you consider that they represented, in the positivist context ...
The Doors: The End Is Always Near: Dread, Drunkenness and The Doors, Pt. 2
Retrospective by Lester Bangs, unpublished, 1975
HE BEGAN, like all drunks who have arrived at this stage of the movie, to get in trouble. Havoc on planes, arrested in airports. Pulling ...
Lester Bangs: Epistle to a Young Critic: A Letter from Lester Bangs, February 1975
Letter by Lester Bangs, unpublished, 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 ...
Interview by Lester Bangs, New Musical Express, 8 March 1975
"Lou Reed is a completely depraved pervert and pathetic death dwarf — a wasted talent living off the dumbell nihilism of a '70s generation that ...
Kraftwerk: The Final Solution To The Music Problem?
Interview by Lester Bangs, New Musical Express, 6 September 1975
In the beginning there was feedback: the machines speaking on their own, answering their supposed masters with shrieks of misalliance. In the music of KRAFTWERK we ...
Interview by Lester Bangs, New Musical Express, 22 November 1975
In 1975 the economy ground to a halt, the potato crop failed and suicides were more in vogue then ever before. The Faces aren't feeling ...
Review by Lester Bangs, Creem, March 1976
IT HAS BEEN suggested that in my annual regress report to the stockholders, published here last month, I neglected in all five thousand words to ...
Bob Seger: Detroit '77: Seger's Open For Business
Live Review by Lester Bangs, Creem, August 1976
DETROIT– Pontiac Stadium is bigger than the Houston Astrodome. When they have football games here, they seat 80,000. ...
Ian Hunter: Reflections Of A Rock Star
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, September 1976
Ian Hunter: Coping With Modern Day Rock Stardom ...
Bob Dylan: Mother, Old Glory, Apple Pie, Bob Dylan
Comment by Lester Bangs, New Musical Express, 25 September 1976
Lester Bangs pours down like scalding rain on the Dylan documentary due to be screened on BBC2 next Tuesday, and coincidentally (fight fans) on the ...
The Eagles: How The Eagles Cleaned Up the Wild West
Comment by Lester Bangs, Music Gig, October 1976
I HAVE A FRIEND who is the most depersonalized individual I know – her love life is all mixed up, she's running simultaneous scams on ...
The Dictators, The Ramones, Television: The Punk Rock Machine
Report and Interview by Lester Bangs, Screw, November 1976
IT'S A WARM New York night in the spring of 1976, and there are a lot of places that the press moguls who publish, edit, ...
Jonathan Richman: Town Hall, New York City
Live Review by Lester Bangs, New Musical Express, 13 November 1976
THE FUNDAMENTAL things apply, as time goes by. Like Sister Ray, for instance. It had only been out for a couple of years when Jonathan ...
Review by Lester Bangs, Circus, 31 January 1977
I LOVE KISS. They can do absolutely no wrong by my book (Sybil). The reason they can do no wrong is that they can do ...
Steve Harley: Love's a Prima Donna
Review by Lester Bangs, Circus, 31 January 1977
YOU'VE GOTTA FEEL sorry for Steve Harley. Aside from not having as much talent as Arthur Brown, he's really gotten the stult end of the ...
The Sylvers: Something Special
Review by Lester Bangs, Circus, 31 January 1977
WHAT'S WRONG with disco music? All my friends hate it, so I know there must be something good about it. They say it's inhuman; I've ...
Review by Lester Bangs, Circus, 14 February 1977
LIKE MANY OTHER citizens of Lower Manhattan, I feel guilty. The reason I feel guilty is, however, not the same as the other 2,833,756 culpable ...
Allman Brothers Band: The Allman Brothers: Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil, Dollar Gas
Review by Lester Bangs, Circus, 14 February 1977
I MAY BE DEFICIENT but somehow I feel grateful for the existence of this Allman Brothers album. Unlike the sodden Win, Lose or Draw, which ...
Review by Lester Bangs, Circus, 28 February 1977
LET'S SEE, as of now I have written two features on Deep Purple, plus, uh, I reviewed In Rock, Machine Head, and Who Do We ...
Review by Lester Bangs, Circus, 28 February 1977
IDI AMIN, Grand Kleagle of the topographic boil of Uganda, has said, in response to world press canards that he's a mere throwback: "I am ...
Review and Interview by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, April 1977
"I am 25, and I intend to keep playing my ass off when I'm 30 and way past that, too." ...
Valerie Carter: Just A Stones's Throw Away
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, 1 April 1977
VALERIE IS A singer who happens to be very beautiful, with sulky lips and ethereal Emmylou Harris eyes. This bit of good fortune should not ...
Review by Lester Bangs, Circus, 28 April 1977
AS HIS ORIGINAL output grows slighter (in both senses) with each successive album, the case for Rod Stewart as supreme interpreter of other peoples' songs ...
The Beach Boys: Beach Boys: The Beach Boys Love You (Reprise)
Review by Lester Bangs, Circus, 9 June 1977
THE BEACH BOYS present the most convincing argument in our entire culture for never growing up. ...
Captain and Tennille: Come In from the Rain
Review by Lester Bangs, Circus, 29 September 1977
IT'S TOO EASY to be cynical about the Captain and Tennille. People who pride themselves on being hip and chic find it very convenient to ...
Iggy Pop, The Ramones: Iggy Pop: Cobo Arena, Detroit
Live Review by Lester Bangs, New Musical Express, 5 November 1977
Iggy suffers metallic KO, Ramones rule OK? ...
Interview by Lester Bangs, New Musical Express, 8 April 1978
THE KOOK WHO FEEL TO EARTH. ON THE 8th DAY HE BOMBED OUT. ON THE 9th HE WAS RESURRECTED. ...
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, May 1978
Dear Patti, Start the Revolution Without Me ...
The Ramones: Ramones Go Depresso
Interview by Lester Bangs, New Musical Express, 23 September 1978
Hanging out on Second Avenue Eating chicken vindaloo Hanging out all by myself Cause I don't want to be with anybody else I just want ...
Essay by Lester Bangs, Stranded (ed. Greil Marcus), 1979
VAN MORRISON'S Astral Weeks was released ten years, almost to the day, before this was written. It was particularly important to me because the fall ...
8-Eyed Spy, Albert Ayler, James Chance & the Contortions, Miles Davis: Free Jazz/Punk Rock
Essay by Lester Bangs, Musician, April 1980
IN A New York City nightclub, a skinny little Caucasian whose waterfall hairstyle and set of snout and lips make him look like a sullen ...
Profile and Interview by Lester Bangs, The Village Voice, 1 October 1980
He's Alive, But So Is Paint. Are You? ...
The Shaggs: Better Than the Beatles (and DNA, Too)
Retrospective by Lester Bangs, The Village Voice, 28 January 1981
I HAVE BEEN getting whiny letters from a lot of you lately complaining about the general state of the art. "What is all this shit?" ...
The Doors: Jim Morrison: Bozo Dionysus A Decade Later
Essay by Lester Bangs, Musician, August 1981
WE SEEM TO BE in the midst of a full-scale Doors Revival. It had been picking up steam for a while, but when Jerry Hopkins' ...
Sleeve notes by Lester Bangs, ROIR Records, September 1981
OVER THE LAST few years there've been a whole lot of catch phrases bandied about to describe what folks kept insisting was "new" music unlike anything ...
The Mekons: The Mekons Story (CNT) 1982
Sleeve notes by Lester Bangs, CNT Records, 1982
THE MEKONS are the most revolutionary group in the history of rock 'n' roll. They are also the finest artists ever to have graced this ...
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