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The Return of the Noise Boys
By Jim DeRogatis, Los
Angeles New Times
Sitting beside his friends
and colleagues Richard Meltzer and Nick Tosches at a Rock Critics
Symposium sponsored by Buffalo State College in the spring of 1974, the late Lester
Bangs was asked by the earnest young audience about the enduring legacy of the music he
loved.
Rock n
roll is the American art form, Bangs declared. Eric Dolphy once said that
music came out of his breath, went through the saxophone, and it was gone. Its true;
its evanescent. Its here and then its gone, and you can never capture it
again!
Im not so sure that
Bangs was rightwould that he were, given the enduring hackism of geezers like
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and the hollow iconography of institutions like the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame. But what he said is certainly true of rock criticism, as I
discovered while researching his biography.
Rock n roll
existed through its first decade without anyone seriously critiquing it. In the 50s,
fan magazines offered photos and lyrics at one extreme while alarmist newspaper editorials
railed about the juvenile delinquent scourge at the other. It wasnt until 1966 when
early practitioners like Meltzer and Paul Williams began to write passionately and
thought-provokingly about the music. For the next decade or so, the nascent field would be
dominated by three critical camps: chin-stroking academics (Greil Marcus, Robert
Christgau, Jon Landau, Ellen Willis), archeologists/historians (Greg Shaw, Lenny Kaye),
and a third group for whom it was anything goes. There were no rules, no money, and
certainly no career opportunities, so writers like Bangs, Meltzer, Tosches, John
Mendelssohn (the self-proclaimed King of L.A.), and J.R. Young (who
specialized in the record review as short story) just ran wild, building on the
stream-of-consciousness spew of the Beats, the literary aspirations of the New
Journalists, and the general Me Decade permissiveness while trying to capture the gonzo
energy of the music in their prose.
The magazines and the music
industry were happy to indulge themfor a time. Then rock became big business, and
the party ended as abruptly as if someone had called the cops. Since then, much of this
writing has gone the way of the wind in Dolphys saxophone. Most American libraries
have a complete archive of Rolling Stone on microfilm, but Jann Wenners rag
was always the least of the pioneering rock journals; it is difficult if not impossible to
find full print runs of Creem, Fusion, Crawdaddy!, or Phonograph Record
Magazine. The Underground Press Archive administered by the University of Chicago
Library Research Center has perhaps half of the early issues of these and other early rock
reads on film, but its the only public resource of its kind. After that, youre
at the mercy of collectors, or youre shit out of luck.
For the simple cause of
historic preservation, then, we should be thankful for two new anthologies from Da Capo
PressA Whore Just Like the Rest: The Music Writings of Richard Meltzer and The
Nick Tosches Reader. But the value of these two hefty tomes (591 and 593 pages
respectively) doesnt end there. For anyone who really cares about rock n
roll as literature and literature as rock n roll, these volumes are destined
for a place on the book shelf next to Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung,
Marcuss posthumous anthology of Bangss work. Taken together, they collect some
of the most brilliant (and brilliantly uneven) writing since the earlier simpatico
trio of Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac, and they serve as a scolding reminder of what
this whole business of rock writing could have been.
The Burroughs,
Ginsberg, Kerouac comparison isnt my own; it was Bangss romantic notion of
what he and his buddies were up to. Meltzer and Tosches scoff at the ideaI
interviewed them both several times while tracing Bangss lifebut they
certainly promoted each others work, and they were never averse to updating Beatnik
antics for hard-rocking times. In 1971, they reviewed the first album by Commander Cody
and His Lost Planet Airmen for Fusion and Rolling Stone under each
others bylines and using each others signature styles, and they were
subsequently banished from Stone for their sin. In 1975, they wrote the
hysterically funny short story, Frankie: Part 1, one of several collaborations
that appear in these collections; around the same time, they were ushered off the
promotional gravy train after literally pissing in the punch bowl at one press conference
too many.
Unlike
California-born-and-bred Bangs, Meltzer and Tosches always had a wiseass New York
edgethey never took things as seriously as their larger, smellier,
heart-on-his-sleeve buddy. You want know-it-all punks? You want sneering class clowns? You
want black-hearted cynics who hold nothing and no one sacred, least of all their rock-roll
heroes (and dont even think about mentioning political correctness)? These
are your boys. Long before Howard Stern first cut the cheese on air, these guys made him
superfluous. (Interestingly, one of the few times they get existentially heavy is when
they memorialize their dead friendboth collections contain sections about
Bangsbut even then they remain refreshingly irreverent and refuse to pander to
simplistic rock n roll mythologizing.)
A native of
rock-rock-Rockaway Beach, Meltzer was attending New York State University at Stony Brook
when he wrote a sprawling, funny, and sometimes inscrutable treatise analyzing rock in
comparison to the rest of the art produced by Western Civilization. In the spring of 1967,
Williams retitled it The Aesthetics of Rock and printed it in the eighth issue
of Crawdaddy!; it was later retooled to become the first bonafide
rock book. Kicked out of graduate studies in philosophy at Yale, Meltzer found
himself with time on his hands and forums eager to publish his rockin ruminations,
hence pieces like What A Goddam Great Second Cream Album, Steve &
Eydie at the Palsy Telethon, and Pythagoras The Cave Painter (a Hendrix
review that prompted Jimi himself to ask, You were stoned when you wrote that, right?). These
stories and 124 more dating from 1967 to 1999 appear in chronological order along with the
forward to the 1986 edition of The Aesthetics of Rock and introductions that give
the back story for most of these piecesanother of Meltzers stabs at a
fractured autobiography.
Ysee, Meltzers
primary subject has always been Meltzer. He contends that rock n roll as he
loved it was pretty much dead by 1968; his response was to dance on its grave and tell us
his own life story. Its certainly more interesting than the tales of, say, Genya
Ravan or Kim Fowley, two of many rockers he sidesteps herein. He prided himself on
reviewing records without cracking the shrink wrap, and of making a Spectacle of himself
in interviews with the likes of Lou Reed. (He irritated Unca Lou two years before Bangs
did.) But even at his most obnoxious, he cared deeply about the words on the page; three
decades later hes still ranting about editors who dared to misplace a semicolon.
Moving out of the
acid-academic phase of Aesthetics, Meltzer began to write like the punk on the
street corner talkedlots of run-ons, truncations, and phonetic spellings like dis
fr instancefollowed by ever-more imaginative experiments like dropping
every third or fourth word in a sentence or cutting and pasting different chunks of story
together to be read simultaneously. Use the word postmodernist in his presence
and hell give you the raspberry or make threatening pro-wrestler moves, but inside
hell be smiling and saying, Kiss my Derrida, Greil Marcus!
From a 1973 concert review:
Neil Young rhymes with real young. Neil Young, however, is 29 years old. At Carnegie
Hall he sang Old Kentucky Home (original version written by Stephen Foster who
got played by Don AmecheNeils favorite actorin the movie). Anybody who
sings Old Kentucky Home is r-e-a-l old (maybe he oughta change his name to
Neil Gold and then he could sing Heart of Gold about himself).
On one level, this is utter
nonsense; on another, its three pretty funny jokes and one curious fact (Ameche did
indeed play Foster, in 1939s Swanee River) in a mere four sentences (mere being
another word Meltzer loves). Finally, underneath all the noise, its actually a
pretty insightful summation of Youngs essential shtick: Here is a rocker
self-consciously embracing an old-time songwriter in a bid for authenticityhe was
anxious to be a geezer 25 years before he actually was onebut hes still eager
to sell records, hence the lame single Heart of Gold (newly rewritten on Silver
and Gold). Nice trick.
Stylistically, Newark, New
Jersey native Tosches has always been more conventional. Hes capable of relatively
straight journalism/history of the sort that Meltzer has rarely attempted, in
addition to sarcastic self-examinationbrutally funny journal entries like
Hillary Brookes Legs and My Overcoat, My Brains, and Me rub
elbows with eloquent and evocative profiles like Screamin Jay Hawkins and the
Monster or the excerpt on Essau Smith from Unsung Heroes of Rock n
Roll. (Both books contain samples from almost all of Meltzer and Toschess
published works, non-fiction as well as novels like The Night (Alone) and Trinities,
in addition to the rock effluviaremember, these are arguments for literary
immortality and/or none-too-subtle advertisements designed to send readers scurrying to
Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com.)
While Meltzer is the ex-Ivy
Leaguer who has spent a career camouflaging his intellect, Tosches is the graduate of the
New York Public Library who treasures his multi-volume unabridged Oxford-American
dictionary. He rejoices in evoking the ornate prose of the Old Testament, the dramatic
arcs of Greek mythology, and the lessons of ancient history. At the same time, hes a
funny motherfucker wholl turn Jersey on ya in a minute, with a sense of humor and a
worldview rooted in his dads shot-and-a-beer bar. As with Meltzer, the
autobiographical introductions are among the books chief joys; its a damn
shame that Bangs didnt have the chance to provide the same for Carburetor Dung.
Prime Tosches, on Jerry Lee
Lewis from an feature that preceded his biography, Hellfire: He looks mean.
But not as mean as last night, when he straightened out that chump in the audience with
one fast, cruel line; when he threw that swaggering record-company lifer from his
dressing-room; when, at nights end, he dared any man present to lift a hand against
him. I tried to talk to him last night, but he was in too dark a mood. Whats
the weather gonna be like tomorrow in China? he asked me. I told him I
didnt know, didnt care; and he snarled his disgust. Where do you wanna
be buried? he asked me. By the ocean, I answered. That was better. He
nodded his indulgent approval. And so it went last night. Toward the end, he would talk of
nothing but the Bible. At the end, he would talk of nothing at all.
Rave on about Scorsese,
DeLillo, The Sopranos. They aint got nothin on Nick.
Make no mistake: These books
also contain a fair amount of barely readable wankery. Meltzer and Tosches own up to this;
they were lucky to be able hone their chops for an interested readership at a time when
writers were still allowed to make a mess on the page, as Tosches says. That
time is now more than two decades gone, long forgotten in an age of two-thumbs-up,
smiley-happy, four stars is never having to say youre sorry, buy! buy! buy! careerist
consumer blurbs masquerading as criticism. Bbbpppttthhh! to all that.
Fittingly, both books end
with brief tastes of novels in progress. Tosches lives in New York, alternates fiction
with fact (like his recent biography of Sonny Liston), and claims not to give a fuck about
rock n roll anymore. Meltzer lives in Portland and protests a la The
Godfather, Part III that he tries to get out but they keep pulling him back in; the
penultimate section of his book contains a bunch of blurbs from The San Diego Reader that
are nominally about upcoming concerts but really address anything but. Both men are full
of shit. They may not write directly about the music, but the energy and spirit of the
best rock n roll permeate everything they do. Over time, these anthologies may
prove to be as evanescent as the scattered works they collect, or they may inspire a new
generation of rock writers to overthrow this sorry business as it currently stands. Either
way, they are whirlwinds well worth riding.
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