Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangswas an American music journalist, critic, author, and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines and was known for his leading influence in rock music criticism; Jim DeRogatis has called him "American's greatest rock critic"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth14 December 1948
CountryUnited States of America
rocks world glimpse
(Punk rock is) lunging after some glimpse of a new and better world.
teenager thinking uprising
That's one reason why it's pretty worthless, I can't totally buy it, if you think about it, it's things like the Phil Spector records. On one level they were rebellion, on another level they were keeping the teenager in his place.
art rocks rock-and-roll
. . . rock and roll, as I see it, is the ultimate populist art form, democracy in action, because it's true: anybody can do it.
air hands fists
It's much easier to wear a Chairman Mao button and shake your fists in the air and all that, then to actually read the Communist manifesto and things like that and actually become involved in politics.
hate playing-jazz stanley
I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.
always-believe left
I've always believed the New Left is rank.
thinking littles lifestyle
The extravagant and ostentatious lifestyles that pass for charisma in a time when almost anybody talks about charisma but if you think about it there's precious little to be seen.
thinking care facts
In fact I think now we've reached a point now, where the powers that be really have sort of vested interest in all of us being stoned out as much as possible all the time so we don't know what's going on, and we don't care.
girl country men
I think that if most guys in America could somehow get their fave-rave poster girl in bed and have total license to do whatever they wanted with this legendary body for one afternoon, at least 75 percent of the guys in the country would elect to beat her up.
liars singers great-liar
All blues singers are great liars.
rocks rock-n-roll groups
The Mekons are the most revolutionary group in the history of rock 'n' roll.
different form dies
Nothing ever quite dies, it just comes back in a different form.
hate hero thinking
... the twin concepts of nihilism and the antihero have had it. What began with The Wild One and James "nobody understands me" Dean, ran with increasing vehement negativism up through the Stones and Velvets and Iggy ... [I]t may be time, in spite of all indications to the contrary from the exterior society, to begin thinking in terms of heroes again, of love instead of hate, of energy instead of violence, of strength instead of cruelty, of action instead of reaction.
rocks arise should
Rock is for everybody; it should be so implicitly anti-elitist that the question of whether somebody's qualified to perform it should never even arise.