Lester Bangs Waxes on the ‘State of Rock’

Somebody ran this Lester Bangs tidbit on YouTube through my Facebook ‘Home’ the other day. Since then I`ve watched it twenty times or so, and am really getting` a BANG out of it! Lester casually CRUCIFIES Rock Stars with the greatest of ease. He hammers nails into Jethro Tull, Bryan Ferry and most of all, Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Trying to find a date, but I would guess around 1973 or 1974, maybe later? It`s when he was working as an editor at CREEM.

Excellent paisley shirt, you can`t find em like that anymore. In the last segment he speculates about the condition of Rock, its health or lack of. This was a recurring theme with Lester. That is: exactly where were we (this would be in the mid-`70s, people) in the Rock Continuum? Why wasn`t a savior coming along at that time? As Lester says, “you had Sinatra in the `40s, Elvis in the `50s and The Beatles in the `60s.” What would the next Renaissance look like?

When you come to the 1970s, nada? Emptiness. It`s interesting to think on why this condition existed. Of course, you have to chew on every word of Lester Bangs that you can find, if you want the answers. Let`s see, what was so bad about Jethro Tull, Lester? Students, turn to page 128 in your Bangs Reader, Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung. A piece called Jethro Tull in Vietnam…