Lester Bangs Quotes

Quotes about:

Art Punk Writing

Music, you know, true music not just rock 'n' roll, chooses you.

Lester Bangs

Rocks, Rock N Roll, Knows

26 Copy quote
They wouldn't be heroes if they were infallible, in fact they wouldn't be heroes if they weren't miserable wretched dogs, the pariahs of the earth, besides which the only reason to build up an idol is to tear it down again.

Lester Bangs

Dog, Hero, Idols

Lester Bangs (2013). “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll”, p.253, Anchor

55 Copy quote
The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.

Lester Bangs

Art, Mistake, Firsts

Lester Bangs (2013). “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll”, p.115, Anchor

46 Copy quote
Good rock 'n' roll is something that makes you feel alive. It's something that's human, and I think that most music today isn't. ... To me good rock 'n' roll also encompasses other things, like Hank Williams and Charlie Mingus and a lot of things that aren't strictly defined as rock 'n' roll. Rock 'n' roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's a way of doing things, of approaching things. Writing can be rock 'n' roll, or a movie can be rock 'n' roll. It's a way of living your life.

Lester Bangs

Attitude, Writing, Thinking

33 Copy quote
Style is originality; fashion is fascism. The two are eternally and unalterably opposed.

Lester Bangs

Fashion, Two, Style

29 Copy quote
Don’t ask me why I obsessively look to rock ’n’ roll bands for some kind of model for a better society. I guess it’s just that I glimpsed something beautiful in a flashbulb moment once, and perhaps mistaking it for prophecy have been seeking its fulfillment ever since.

Lester Bangs

Beautiful, Rocks, Looks

20 Copy quote
The only questions worth asking today are whether humans are going to have any emotions tomorrow, and what the quality of life will be if the answer is no.

Lester Bangs

Quality, Asking, Answers

23 Copy quote
Look at it this way: There are many here among us for whom the life force is best represented by the livid twitching of one tortured nerve, or even a full-scale anxiety attack. I do not subscribe to this point of view 100 percent, but I understand it, have lived it. Thus the shriek, the caterwaul, the chainsaw gnarlgnashing, the yowl and the whizz that decapitates may be reheard by the adventurous or emotionally damaged as mellifluous bursts of unarguable affirmation.

Lester Bangs

Views, Anxiety, Nerves

21 Copy quote
I'm not saying that all college students are subhuman - I'm just saying that if you aim to spend a few years mastering the art of pomposity, these are places where you can be taught by undisputed experts.

Lester Bangs

Art, College, Years

Lester Bangs (2013). “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll”, p.331, Anchor

25 Copy quote
Nothing ever quite dies, it just comes back in a different form.

Lester Bangs

Different, Form, Dies

"Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

8 Copy quote
The whole point of American culture is to pick up any old piece of trash and make it shine with more facets than the Hope Diamond.

Lester Bangs

Shining, Culture, Pieces

Lester Bangs (2013). “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll”, p.460, Anchor

18 Copy quote
I'll probably never produce a masterpiece, but so what? I feel I have a Sound aborning, which is my own, and that Sound if erratic is still my greatest pride, because I would rather write like a dancer shaking my ass to boogaloo inside my head, and perhaps reach only readers who like to use books to shake their asses, than to be or write for the man cloistered in a closet somewhere reading Aeschylus while this stupefying world careens crazily past his waxy windows toward its last raving sooty feedback pirouette.

Lester Bangs

Reading, Book, Writing

24 Copy quote
. . . rock and roll, as I see it, is the ultimate populist art form, democracy in action, because it's true: anybody can do it.

Lester Bangs

Art, Rocks, Rock And Roll

Lester Bangs (1980). “Blondie”, Touchstone

5 Copy quote
Rock'n'roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's way of doing things, of approaching things. Writing can be rock'n'roll, or a movie can be rock'n'roll. It's a way of living your life.

Lester Bangs

Attitude, Writing, Rocks

"Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

14 Copy quote
A hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you might wanta accomplish on your own.

Lester Bangs

Block, Stupid, Hero

Lester Bangs (2013). “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll”, p.253, Anchor

25 Copy quote
The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience.

Lester Bangs

Reality, Sin, Contempt

Lester Bangs (1988). “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung”, Anchor Books

15 Copy quote
At its best new wave/punk represents a fundamental and age-old Utopian dream: that if you give people the license to be as outrageous as they want in absolutely any fashion they can dream up, they'll be creative about it, and do something good besides.

Lester Bangs

Dream, Fashion, People

New Musical Express (December 1977), as quoted in "Various Artists: No Thanks!: The 70s Punk Rebellion" by Eric Carr, pitchfork.com. February 10, 2004.

19 Copy quote
Personally I feel that real rock 'n' roll may be on the way out, just like adolescence as a relatively innocent transitional period is on the way out. What we have instead is a small island of new free music surrounded by some good reworkings of past idioms and a vast sargasso sea of absolute garbage.

Lester Bangs

Real, Past, Islands

Lester Bangs (2013). “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll”, p.74, Anchor

15 Copy quote
Realizing that life is precious the natural tendency is to trample on it, like laughing at a funeral.

Lester Bangs

Laughing, Funeral, Life Is Precious

"Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung" by Lester Bangs, edited by Greil Marcus, Random House/Vintage Books, (p. 222), 1988.

22 Copy quote
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.

Lester Bangs

Rocks, Arise, Should

Lester Bangs (1980). “Blondie”, Touchstone

10 Copy quote
Sometimes I think nothing is simple but the feeling of pain.

Lester Bangs

Pain, Simple, Thinking

Lester Bangs (1988). “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung”, Anchor Books

19 Copy quote
... 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.

Lester Bangs

Hate, Hero, Thinking

14 Copy quote
When kids can't afford to see it anymore maybe we'll have a whole resurgence of garage bands all over America and this New Wave thing will start to mean something on a grass roots level.

Lester Bangs

Mean, Kids, Roots

"Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

64 Copy quote
(Punk rock is) lunging after some glimpse of a new and better world.

Lester Bangs

Rocks, Glimpse, World

6 Copy quote
if the main reason we listen to music in the first place is to hear passion expressed- as i've believed all my life-then what good is this music going to prove to be? what does that say about us? what are we confirming in ourselves by doting on art that is emotionally neutral? and, simultaneously, what in ourselves might we be destroying or at least keeping down?

Lester Bangs

Art, Passion, Doe

Lester Bangs (2008). “Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader”, p.111, Anchor

9 Copy quote

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Lester Bangs

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Born: December 13, 1948
Died: April 30, 1982
Occupation: Journalist
Cite this Page: Citation

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