Remembering writer, music journalist, critic, and musician Leslie Conway âLesterâ Bangs (December 14, 1948 â April 30, 1982), who died 40 years ago today.
âO.K., Iâm a rock critic. I also write and record music. I write poetry, fiction, straight journalism, unstraight journalism, beatnik drivel, mortifying love letters, death threats to white jazz critics signed âThe Mau Maus of East Harlem,â and once a year my own obituary (latest entry: âHe was promisingâŚâ).â -LB, 1980
âScared, excited, sour, friendly, homely, cuddly, beat, weird, goofy, defenseless, guileless, seamless, motivated, skillful, old-fashioned, unreasonable, moralistic, angry, benign, phenomenally intelligent, and all lit up, [Lester] wished sometimes that he could disappear from the face of the earth and was all too aware what a waste that would be.â -Robert Christgau
âAnd the whole purpose of the absurd, mechanically persistent involvement with recorded music is the pursuit of that priceless moment. So itâs not exactly that records might unhinge the mind, but rather that if anything is going to drive you up the wall it might as well be a record. Because the best music is strong and guides and cleanses and is life itself.
âSo perhaps the truest autobiography I could ever write, and I know this holds as well for many other people, would take place largely at record counters, jukeboxes, pushing forward in the driverâs seat while AM walloped you on, alone under headphones with vast scenic bridges and angelic choirs in the brain through insomniac postmidnights, or just to sit at leisure stoned or not in the vast benign lap of America, slapping on sides and feeling good.â -LB, June 1971
âI hate the Led (I hope their plane crashes en route to Detroit).
I hate the way you intellectualize every time I tell you I miss you.
I hate missing you so fucking bad.
Love, Lesterâ (1976)
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