http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_03_004703.php
This is what happens when you send people your stories for "approval." In a strange way, it's one of the more interesting things I've read in a while. Thing is -- they're both wrong. The journalist in question is too assuming, and Richard Hell kind of a dick for caring. At least for caring this much.
― sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 07:08 (nineteen years ago) link
HELL REPLIES: "Fuck you, you tit-muncher, when there are compliments to be handed to me I'll hand them myself."
― The Obligatory Sourpuss (Begs2Differ), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 07:14 (nineteen years ago) link
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 07:17 (nineteen years ago) link
― sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 07:19 (nineteen years ago) link
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 07:19 (nineteen years ago) link
― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 07:23 (nineteen years ago) link
― brianiac (briania), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 07:49 (nineteen years ago) link
― Stormy Davis (diamond), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 07:56 (nineteen years ago) link
― noizem duke (noize duke), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 08:22 (nineteen years ago) link
As a rebuttal, the whole thing is at least less annoying and self-important than Dave Eggers' assholish takedown of the kid who asked him about staying "real."
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 09:33 (nineteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 09:34 (nineteen years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 11:17 (nineteen years ago) link
i liked the piece -- i have only a very dim idea of who the hell richard hell is, so it's kind of even funnier. clearly hell thinks he's a legend. it's funny because although you can pull it apart, the intro was pretty standard stuff; it's just that you don't usually see the response of the quote-unquote artist.
when people here review music, do they ever think what the artist will think of their review? should they?
― NRQ, Tuesday, 8 March 2005 11:51 (nineteen years ago) link
― A Viking of Some Note (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 15:36 (nineteen years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 15:40 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 15:48 (nineteen years ago) link
― S!monB!rch (Carey), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 15:52 (nineteen years ago) link
better still: the entire nytimes!!
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 15:53 (nineteen years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 15:57 (nineteen years ago) link
But I've never seen actual editing notes by an interview subject before. This is pretty revolutionary...
― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:01 (nineteen years ago) link
and yeah don't let a guy see your work like that, of course. wouldn't any artist take advantage of you giving them that much slack?
― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:04 (nineteen years ago) link
"All this writing of yours is presented as if you're a person called upon to make judgments from some position of earned respect. That's not who you are. You're a callow kid."
"You're being an asshole by exercising some grotesquely deluded misapprehension that your role in this includes some call to fucking critically assess my skills."
"An incomprehensibly self-satisfied fool."
― the gotterdammerung, Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:04 (nineteen years ago) link
― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:11 (nineteen years ago) link
this guy's little interview is no WAY in the same league chutzpah-wise (= callow deluded asshole-wise if you like)
if he'd said somethin that really rocked hell on his heels wd hell have responded so brutally? (or wd he have liked that?)
(lydon for example LIKES it when his interviews start to fite back: he stops playing kneejerk headfuck and switches his brain on)
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:12 (nineteen years ago) link
― dave q (listerine), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:17 (nineteen years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:18 (nineteen years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:19 (nineteen years ago) link
if you're determined to go on with the process, I'd suggest you write a new slightly more appropriately humble intro, and I'd do the work I'd need to on the interview proper over the weekend when I can find the time.
I'D DO THE WORK I'D NEED TO ... so let me get this straight: you interview hell, and he then offers to edit the transcript down to a publishable piece? are there any other interview subjects who offer this service?
― fact checking cuz (fcc), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:20 (nineteen years ago) link
I think you're on to something, actually -- what maybe bugged Hell most was the way the kid was so nice during the interview and *then* wrote an introduction that was snarky and judgemental. It felt to Hell (and to me) like he was being snarky and judgemental for its own sake, which is just intellectually lazy.
I don't know the guy who wrote this personally, but I do know that he's 21 years old, cocky as hell (haha), and probably really deserving of being taken down a notch. That email probably bruised his ego more than he would ever admit. The fact that he let it see print, though -- that's remarkable. "Hard knocks" indeed.
― sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:22 (nineteen years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:22 (nineteen years ago) link
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that. Seemed kinda off the map to me.
― sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:23 (nineteen years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:23 (nineteen years ago) link
― miccio (miccio), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:23 (nineteen years ago) link
― S!monB!rch (Carey), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:31 (nineteen years ago) link
Apparently, Pete Astor from the Weather Prophets wrote him for the words to one of his songs "Time", and got a handwritten reply with them, which eventually made a b-side.
― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:45 (nineteen years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:45 (nineteen years ago) link
This is stupid, in case not everyone realized this.
― sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:47 (nineteen years ago) link
― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:48 (nineteen years ago) link
― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:49 (nineteen years ago) link
*thunder and lightning**swirls of electricity play up and down the antennae* *mad pomo laughter*
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:51 (nineteen years ago) link
― debden, Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:52 (nineteen years ago) link
― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:52 (nineteen years ago) link
― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:52 (nineteen years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:53 (nineteen years ago) link
"My laughter is a pastiche of all modernist laughter."
― sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:56 (nineteen years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:57 (nineteen years ago) link
― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:57 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:58 (nineteen years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:59 (nineteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 17:18 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 00:14 (nineteen years ago) link
― thegotterdammerung, Wednesday, 9 March 2005 00:25 (nineteen years ago) link
Cause "the kid" sent it to him for approval or something?
― dan. (dan.), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:14 (nineteen years ago) link
I like this, too, for many reasons cited already, esp. Mark S's.
― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:39 (nineteen years ago) link
And why shouldn't he?
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:43 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:49 (nineteen years ago) link
― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:51 (nineteen years ago) link
You call that "shunning"? Writing a blistering, preening, epic email to some poor college kid? I call it massive insecurity combined with outsized self-importance, both of them rendered ridiculous by citation of the Flaming fucking Lips.
(sorry, not trying to hijack the thread. i'll take my eggers anger elsewhere.)
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:57 (nineteen years ago) link
― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:59 (nineteen years ago) link
― don, Wednesday, 9 March 2005 02:09 (nineteen years ago) link
― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 02:20 (nineteen years ago) link
― don, Wednesday, 9 March 2005 02:27 (nineteen years ago) link
― VegemiteGrrl (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 04:49 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 13:56 (nineteen years ago) link
"Open up, kid, you got a significant cultural impact comin' to you!"
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 14:03 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 14:04 (nineteen years ago) link
there are (arguably) harsh things a snot-nosed unearned-attitude kid might see and say that no one else ever had, but this is hohum-received-wisdom-pts-43654-9
and this still strikes me as more "tough love" than tantrum
― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 14:12 (nineteen years ago) link
aw, don't pull back the curtain, wiz!
― Ant Honey Miccio (miccio), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 15:15 (nineteen years ago) link
― miccio (miccio), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 15:15 (nineteen years ago) link
― Momus (Momus), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 15:33 (nineteen years ago) link
― Momus (Momus), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 15:39 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 16:17 (nineteen years ago) link
― i can take it or leave it, Wednesday, 9 March 2005 16:30 (nineteen years ago) link
― VegemiteGrrl (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 18:29 (nineteen years ago) link
― roger adultery (roger adultery), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 18:56 (nineteen years ago) link
― don, Thursday, 10 March 2005 01:15 (nineteen years ago) link
It's gotten to where just the name does it: Lester Bangs. It makes me happy. It's like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Of course, even apart from the guy it signified, its perfection of pure form is stunning, but what it evokes as the signifier of the person is even better. I think of his innocence and goodwill first, and his compulsion to talk about whatever was going on and to figure out what mattered (starting from music) and it makes me sorry I can't call him up. It's strange. I didn't even like him very much when he was alive. Just five or six years ago when his biographer was asking for stories about him I told him that when I knew Lester I didn't take him very seriously or pay very much attention to him. That though doubtless my distaste was partly that of the junkie for the lush, I mostly thought he was a buffoon. Lester was this big, swaying, cross-eyed, reeking drooler, smiling and smiling through his crummy stained mustache, trying to corner me with incessant babble somewhere in the dark at CBGB's, 1976 or so. He was sweet like a big clumsy puppy, but he was always drunk and the sincerity level was pretty near intolerable. Now I miss him.
Of course it's easier to like a good-hearted, hardworking dead person, the extremely edited Lester, than the obliviously intrusive physically present one, but Lester has made way more friends than most since he died. Posthumously, he's become the noncharismatic Elvis of rock writers: obscene provocateur and polite mama's boy, vulnerable and egotistic, trashily prolific and artistically transcendent, anti-drug and full-time addict (who died young that way); but most of all forgiven everything and adored by his fans while being the most popular model for those who would essay his trade. Well maybe that's a little strained; probably Jack Kerouac would be a better comparison, if not as much fun. Because Kerouac actually did influence Bangs a lot and the appeal of Lester shares a lot with Kerouac: that innocence and goodwill and drive to describe and be true to what matters in life. People like a writer's writing because they like the writer's company. Writing is intimate and finally what draws you to an author's work is the shape of the mind and quality of feeling you find there, and Lester, like Kerouac, reads like a real good friend to a lot of people.
I have to interrupt and confess how I'm struggling to resist taking revenge on rock critics. I was a musician and I've thought a few times of rating the critics the way they do the artists. But I'm really really going to try to restrain myself. How petty would that be, if I were to go after them? Not only have they generally been real good to me but my life is more fun than theirs. I must try to be large I must try to be large. I don't want to be a jerk. I'll just say that I believe Lester deserves his supreme popularity (he liked me the most).
But I've got to go after the self-importance of the best-known worst of them a little. The rock writers, naturally, want to believe that their genre, like say the movie criticism of the Cahiers du Cinéma writers such as Godard and Rivette, is sometimes actually the work of important artists. In fact Greil Marcus, in the introduction to Bangs's previous collection of rock journalism, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1987), wrote, "Perhaps what this book demands from a reader is a willingness to accept that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but record reviews." (That line is typical of the way Marcus ruins good things by laying the burden of his pretentiousness on them.) And it's true that writers as good as Patti Smith and Nick Tosches wrote about pop music seriously, with full respect, and really well. But I don't see much justification for a line like Marcus's about Lester. Lester was lovable and perceptive, but the writing is wired thinking-aloud; it's pure process, and my feeling is that Lester had too many blind spots and neuroses for writing that depends so much for its value on the shapeliness of his mind and reasoning. As with Kerouac, you go to Bangs's work to be refreshed with your pleasure in the characteristic beauty of his mission and mind, to be reminded of the presence of a certain being that inspires and provokes. But it hardly matters what pages you read—all the appeal is in the tone and ethical/aesthetic values, and you get them immediately, so a little goes a long way.
Nevertheless, of all the most highly regarded rock journalists (say Tosches, Robert Christgau, Marcus, and the execrable and excremental Richard Meltzer) Lester was the only one who valued self-doubt and who actually seemed to like the music more than he liked himself. Lester was a critic who reserved the right to be wrong, which seems to me admirable. Like many rock writers Lester took extreme stances, but unlike the other most flamboyantly contrary of them, he didn't paint himself into a minuscule corner of supported music, and he didn't go sour with cynicism and resentment (or maybe he did a little toward the end—1982 for Lester—when punk seemed to end up genuinely, fatally, hopeless). Lester was large and he was interested in doing what was right—which sometimes entailed willfully offending those whose values he opposed—not merely being right in his taste and musical standards. He wanted to learn. What's appealing about him is the same thing that he valued in the music he wrote about: the life in it—engagement with and responsiveness to the world. To put a positive spin on the spew-and-rant factor, he didn’t care about beauty except as flow. He wanted everything included. He was confrontational but it came from goodwill, from his belief that feelings—sensitivity to what's going on—are what matter and that if you're going to really notice things, really perceive, there's going to be a lot of sadness and horror and filth as well, so to some extent they're a necessary part of beauty. Basically, Lester always wanted people to care more. That could be really tedious, but when the examples of things due more loving regard are such as White Light/White Heat and Raw Power and Pangaea, it gets interesting.
If you like Lester, you'll like this new book. It's a lot like the other one but it has more Miles Davis and Rolling Stones than Lou Reed and Iggy and some big chunks of autobiographical writings.
― lovebug starski (lovebug starski), Thursday, 10 March 2005 01:21 (nineteen years ago) link
― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 10 March 2005 01:43 (nineteen years ago) link
Ah, Hell has just become a god for me.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 10 March 2005 01:45 (nineteen years ago) link
― don, Thursday, 10 March 2005 01:45 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 10 March 2005 01:52 (nineteen years ago) link
― miccio (miccio), Thursday, 10 March 2005 04:33 (nineteen years ago) link
― don, Thursday, 10 March 2005 04:38 (nineteen years ago) link
― firstworldman (firstworldman), Thursday, 10 March 2005 05:21 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 10 March 2005 14:56 (nineteen years ago) link
― Tonal Scope, Thursday, 10 March 2005 15:28 (nineteen years ago) link
― don, Thursday, 10 March 2005 16:46 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 10 March 2005 17:01 (nineteen years ago) link
― Pete Scholtes, Thursday, 10 March 2005 22:35 (nineteen years ago) link
― don, Thursday, 10 March 2005 22:40 (nineteen years ago) link
― Pete Scholtes, Friday, 18 March 2005 03:13 (nineteen years ago) link
― don, Friday, 18 March 2005 06:11 (nineteen years ago) link
richard hell is great
― cool app (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, 20 May 2009 18:25 (fourteen years ago) link
this is also a good thread
i'd like to note that Hell didn't like Meltzer at least partly because Meltzer didn't like Hell. (Unsure whose dislike came first.) Meltzer wrote in at least one essay if not more that one of Lester's unsupportable tenets was using Richard Hell as an example of anything positive. Sounded like a personal vendetta.
Meltzer's written plenty of crap over the years, but when he's on his game, he's as strong and thorough as any first-rate writer. Hell? I can't say. Blank Generation, the album, is a masterpiece. But I've never been inclined to read his prose. I might be missing something here. Am I?
My own extremely limited experience with both of them was completely cordial. I didn't ask them to share a room.
― OCONDOR (Pt.1), Thursday, 21 May 2009 01:30 (fourteen years ago) link
A good complement to this one is Prindle's interview w/ Hell:
http://www.markprindle.com/hell-i.htm
― Mark, Thursday, 21 May 2009 05:10 (fourteen years ago) link
Speaking of musicians taking apart poor journalists:
There's trainwrecks, there's horrible uncomfortable trainwrecks, and then there's Mark's interview with HR of Bad Brains. Awesome!
― Mr. Snrub, Thursday, 21 May 2009 18:41 (fourteen years ago) link
the chapter Hell wrote in Rock & Roll Cagematch about the Stones vs. Velvets was pretty good.
― Italics in Baltimore (some dude), Thursday, 21 May 2009 18:45 (fourteen years ago) link
Xgau on Hell's autobio, and Hell's whole thang---really rich: http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Rock-Roll/Richard-Hell-The-Thrill-Seeking-Years/ba-p/10073
― dow, Saturday, 16 March 2013 23:49 (eleven years ago) link
And speaking of rich, leave us not forget Hell on Bangs upthread: terrific!
― dow, Saturday, 16 March 2013 23:52 (eleven years ago) link