ALong with the bio of Gladstone, I have also been perusing the collection of Lester Bangs' writings, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, edited by fellow critic Greil Marcus. It has been an interesting, enlightening read. On the one hand, I was surprised, and pleased, to read his generally favorable review of Bob Seger's Stranger In Town LP, one of my own personal favorites. I was also surprised and pleased to read a very favorable review of a Barry White concert he attended. His asides against Led Zepelin were more than welcome.
On the other hand, Bangs has a very rigid view that almost, but not quite, renders much of his work a bit unreadable for me. He insists that the best rock and roll is formulaic, simple to the point of not-quite-ready-for-prime-time, centering either on the hormonal demands of adolescent boys, either sexual or socio-political. This viewpoint led him, in a fit of pique, to describe the Emerson, Lake, and Palmer LP Brain Salad Surgery as a "war crime". Pompous, yes. Overbearing at times, it most certainly is. I is not on a scale with the Soviet massacre of Polish military and civilian leadership in 1939 or the genocide in Bosnia. Like all ideologues (including some who visit here from time to time), he just wants to make sure that all that is fits in to the categories of his own experience and understanding. Thus, if a band, such as ELP, wants to insist that it is doing rock and roll even as it loses a full-time guitar player, writes arrangements of classical music, and composes multi-part suites built around science fiction themes, said pieces extending in concert to well over a half-hour, this is somehow not just wrong, but offensive in some moral way.
The problem he finds in his review of Seger's album is simple - he thinks the music doesn't match the intent of the lyrics. The lyrics he interprets as concerning themselves with issues of alienation. The music is straight-ahead rock and roll, aided and abetted most admirably by the rhythm section from Muscle Shoals studios in Alabama. My complaint with the album concerns the muddy production. The opening track, "Hollywood Nights", a true ballad, of a young man who loses his innocence in the Babylon on the Pacific suffers from a lack of clarity in the mix; I'm not sure what the source of this muddle is, because the previous LP, Night Moves, is a textbook case of precise production values. In other words, he wishes that Bob Seger wasn't Bob Seger. He wishes ELP weren't at all, but at least if it were, he wishes it weren't ELP. He wants The Clash to do something different, to echo their best moments, and expound upon them, but only at the expense of their own ideas of who they should be.
Bangs' most notorious piece of criticism was his declaration that Metal Machine Music, Lou Reed's contractual obligation LP that consists of roughly a half-hour of electronic noise, is transcendent - the first true rock masterwork. he problem is that it was nothing of the kind; Bangs' adherence to a rigid ideology led him to ignore the fact that Reed's joke upon his record company and insist, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that it was a serious piece of music.
Alas, it is not. This should be an object lesson to all those who insist that the world conform to their ideologies and prejudices, rather than accepting the world on its own terms. In other words, I would much prefer to accept the fact that some bands and performers are who they are, rather than who I might want them to be. I can accept the Bruce Springsteen is a gifted musician and lyricist while not being a fan. I can appreciate the reasons for Led Zepelin's popularity without believing they exhibit any musical virtues whatsoever (just because I believe in allowing musical groups to be who and what they are does not mean I can't insist that some are simply not worth listening to).
Bangs' was an important voice, but an unfortunately limited one. I do hope there might come a time when his many virtues can be understood with a more careful acceptance of his failings as well.
Virtual Tin Cup
