Mainlines, Blood Feasts,
and Bad Taste:
A Lester Bangs Reader
Edited by John Morthland
Anchor Books, 432 pages, $23
It was a hot summer night in 1971, maybe 1972. On stage at Detroit's Cobo Hall, Boston's J. Geils Band was performing its usual tight, R & B-soaked set before a typically rambunctious crowd. But on this night, at this moment, there were not six band members, but seven. Stage left sat a chair, a desk and an Underwood typewriter. And there, a large, jovial-looking, long-haired fellow was beating on the keyboard for all its worth -- presumably, in time to First I Look at the Purse, or whatever song the band happened to be playing.
Most in the audience probably had no idea the person at the typewriter was Lester Bangs, already foremost among his generation of rock critics. And while J. Geils, Peter Wolf and company may have found it all riotously amusing, they had, in fact, precipitated an incident fraught with meaning and symbolism. Because when Lester Bangs wrote, he wasn't necessarily writing prose per se, but the literary equivalent of rock 'n' roll itself -- noisy, cocky and choked with rhythm and attitude. It took us all a few years to realize, but Bangs had just as much right to be in the spotlight as any of the rockers he wrote about.
He died in 1982, likely from an unintentional overdose of Darvon and Valium. Like a lot of hard-living, scuffling writers, he went too young and died a relatively poor man. And while he was admired in his time, the years since have only added to his reputation. He's been recalled in popular songs (for example, Lester Knew, by Bob Seger, and It's the End of the World as We Know it (And I Feel Fine), by R.E.M.) and he was portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical film, Almost Famous. He has been the subject of a comprehensive biography by Chicago Sun-Times journalist Jim DeRogatis, and his work is now regularly analyzed in university pop-culture courses. It is rare for an issue of Mojo magazine to appear without his name being mentioned.
In 1987, a first overview of Bangs's prose, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, was published. This second collection was assembled by Bangs's long-time friend and contemporary rock writer, John Morthland. And while Psychotic Reactions published most of Bangs's longer, better-known pieces, this one fills in the gaps, pulling the best from hundreds of shorter pieces, reviews and opinion pieces that Bangs cranked out, primarily between 1969 and 1982.
Influenced by the Beat poets, particularly Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, and an admirer of radical poet Charles Bukowski, Bangs wrote in the stream-of-consciousness style favoured by Kerouac. But he quickly developed his own voice -- brash, profane, witty, in-your-face, uninhibited -- similar to Hunter S. Thompson's gonzo brand of participatory journalism, although Bangs was less egocentric and more thought-provoking. He was widely imitated, but no one ever got it right.
Interestingly, the manic approach that Bangs showed the J. Geils audience that summer night was much the way he always wrote. Hopped up on speed, dozy on downers, cranked on lager or perfectly straight (which was probably more often than his reputation would suggest -- he abused his body, but took his writing seriously), the man wrote with a furious intensity, sometimes for hours at a time, and often through the night. It was this manner of approaching his work that determined his intense, passionate style.
Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste will be a treat for readers unfamiliar with Bangs, but it will also be a revelation for those who consider themselves fans. There are nearly five dozen pieces collected here, including many short reviews from journals such as Creem, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Brash and profane he certainly was.
Writing (favourably) about Anne Murray's 1973 release, Danny's Song, he said, "Anne Murray is the real thing when it comes to popular music of quality and significance . . . a hypnotically compelling interpretrix with a voice like molten high school rings and a heavy, erotic vibe. What Anne Murray is about, make no mistake, is S-E-X with a capital X. Maybe you're scoffing right now, you can't feel her vibe because you're so burnt out and jaded and steeped in sleaze that it takes the sight of . . ." (here Bangs went on to mention Linda Lovelace, some donkeys and Henry Kissinger to complete his analogy).
In some ways, though, Bangs was caught up by his own reputation. Like many rock bands that almost seem to copy themselves stylistically, Bangs continued his brash-and-profane style later into life, when what he wanted, ironically enough, was to be taken more seriously as a writer. There are several pieces here that show just how good he could be as a Tom Wolfe-inspired rock-critic type. See, for example, Innocents in Babylon: A Search for Jamaica Featuring Bob Marley and a Cast of Thousands, for what is probably the best insight ever written into Marley and the whole Island Records scene, or Bob Dylan's Dalliance with Mafia Chic: He Ain't No Hoodlum, He's Misunderstood, for Bangs's well-researched critical analysis of Dylan's song Joey (about "Crazy Joey" Gallo) on the Desire album.
Also included in this anthology are Bangs's legendary encounters with Lou Reed, his revelatory and comically unsympathetic interview with Jimi Hendrix (who had been dead for some years) and, for real Bangs scholars, examples of his early pre-fame writing.
Bangs's writing may offend some, but it will more often delight and astound, and, fortunately (or unfortunately), leave the reader hungering for more.
Alan Niester writes on pop music for The Globe and Mail.