7 Non-Musicians Who Changed Pop Music Forever

2. Lester Bangs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOqo6scHOwc Not to harp on something that we've already discussed, but have you ever noticed how conservative most rock critics are? I'm not talking about politics, of course (since most music critics/journalists are liberal); rather, I'm talking about writing styles and tastes in music. If you're not sure what I mean, just sample the work of the current Rolling Stone columnists. The articles, while informative, are predictable in regards to which artists they revere. They gush over the musicians you would expect them to gush over and rip on the musicians that everybody else is mocking. Reading such stuff can get wearing. Barry Kramer felt the same way about rock journalism. He founded his own music magazine, Creem, as retaliation against such stodgy journalism. He, along with his intrepid group of editors (Tony Reay, Charlie Auringer, and Dave Marsh), crafted the "anti-Rolling Stone" magazine, covering all the styles of music that Rolling Stone had been slow to pick up on and introducing radical pop-music-oriented ideas. Kramer, Reay, etc. amassed a crew of writers who shared their unique tastes and opinions. Their greatest coup, however, was in hiring Rolling Stone cast-off Lester Bangs. Bangs had been fired from Rolling Stone because of a scathing review he had written which attacked the psychedelic band Canned Heat. Such behavior was typical of Bangs, who never let the bandwagon dictate his opinions. Over the course of his career, Bangs worshiped at the altar of bands who weren't getting the attention they deserved (The Velvet Underground, Iggy and the Stooges), while ripping into more-acclaimed groups Black Sabbath, for instance). The best of Bangs' articles, however, was written after he had left Creem and moved to The Village Voice. Said article was his obituary for Elvis Presley, titled "Where Were You When Elvis Died?" The article is Bangs' most pot-stirring. In "Died?", Bangs accusing Elvis of losing respect for his fans during the later phase of his career. However, he also takes the time to acknowledge Elvis' amazing stage presence and the force he could still command (when he wanted to) as late as the early 1970s. Bangs also mourns the one thing that only Elvis represented: he was the only singer that all pop-music fans seemed to like. Bangs states that any togetherness that existed among the pop-music loving masses died along with the King. The article is stirring and thought-provoking, like most of Bangs' work. Unfortunately, Bangs died young, much like the rock stars he wrote about. He died at the age of 34 after overdosing on a mixture of Darvon, NyQuil, and Valium. Happily for us rock fans, however, Bangs' legacy will live on, due to Philip Seymour Hoffman's brilliant portrayal of the man in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous and the collections of Bangs' work that are being published.