I hitched a ride with my compadre, Ira, to hang out with his friends, Thom and Claire, a duo who once rubbed shoulders with the legendary Lester Bangs in the halcyon days of ‘70s rock. Thom had been Lester’s roommate for a brief period in the early 70s, and they had remained friends throughout Lester’s 33-year life. Did he ever have some great stories? This all happened when Bangs was penning his raw, unfiltered truth for Creem Magazine. He also wrote for The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and other influential rock magazines.
Ira, ever the instigator, roped me into going with the promise of diving into Bangs's mythos via the documentary A Box Full of Rocks—an underground docu I’ve heard a lot of buzz about for years but had never seen. Before this evening, I didn’t know much about Bangs at all.
I remembered Lester Bangs as a controversial character, but I had no idea he was so bright and staggeringly talented. Of course, I was too busy trying to achieve straight A’s in my last two years of high school to pay much attention to rock criticism. I was also embarrassingly too self-important to focus on publications of the whole Village Voice, Creem ilk, although I did have a clue once I left high school.
The docu was a low-fi voyage through Bang’s formative riff-raff years, kicking off in 1960, when he was just an 11-year-old punk, to ‘71, when he hit the Detroit scene like a freight train to join the Creem crew.
Bangs cut his teeth in El Cajon, a SoCal suburb that’s more strip mall than Sunset Strip, about a 15-minute jam from San Diego. In the most unlikely of places, Bangs honed his chops, carving out a rep as a legend.
A Box Full of Rocks was a pilgrimage into the sanctum of Lester Bangs, considered the high priest of rock journalism. This wasn’t a garden-variety rock documentary that had been polished to a sterile sheen in the sanitized halls of music history. Oh, not. This was a raw, gritty, unadulterated journey of a man who was to music criticism what Hendrix was to the guitar.
From the instant the opening credits rolled, I knew I wasn’t just watching a film. I felt dragged back in time to the smoke-filled rooms and ink-stained pages of the 1960s and 1970s. With what must be a mix of alchemy and sheer audacity, the director conjured the spirit of Bangs from the very fabric of rock ‘n roll’s heyday.
Using a collage of grainy footage, crackling audio tapes, and interviews with those who rode the chaotic waves with Bangs, the film captured the tumultuous soundtrack of his life. What makes this documentary resonate isn’t just the tale it tells but the authenticity with which it’s told. It neither glorifies nor vilifies Bangs and presents him in all his complex, contradictory glory.
From his adolescent years, when he was a young rebel finding solace and identity in the burgeoning rock scene of El Cajon, to his seismic shift to Detroit, where he became the throbbing heart of Creem, this film charts an absolute odyssey.
I have to say, though, this is not a documentary for the faint of heart nor for those who like their music history diluted for mass consumption. The charm of A Box Full of Rocks only adds to its credibility, giving it a guerrilla filmmaking vibe that Bangs himself would have tipped his hat to. It’s as if the filmmakers took a cue from Bants’ ethos—eschewing the gloss for the essence, the noise for the note, and the chaos for the core.
The documentary doesn’t just show viewers the rock critic. They meet him, the human, the friend, the iconoclast. It’s a testament to his indelible mark on music journalism and the void his departure created. He ensured his readers knew that rock was more than a music genre. He turned it into a force, a movement, an unyielding spirit that, like Bangs himself, will never fade into the silence.
Greil Marcus, a highly esteemed contemporary music critic and author, often reflected on Bang’s unique approach to music criticism, emphasizing his ability to blend deep personal reflection with a broader cultural critique. Marcus admired Bangs for his “fearlessness and relentless pursuit of the truth in music,” highlighting how Bang’s work transcended traditional music journalism to touch on more profound human experiences and emotions.
Jim DeRogatis, author of “Let it Blurt’ The Life and Times of Kester Bangs, America’s Greatest Rock Critic,” portrayed Bangs as a complex figure who was brilliant but troubled, passionate, but often self-destructive. DeRogatis delved into Bang’s profound impact on music criticism, noting, “Lester treated rock and roll as a matter of life and death becasue to him and his readers, that’s exactly what it was.”
NPR’s ownAnn Powers, a music critic and writer, has admired Bang’s passionate and unruly style, seeing it as emblematic of rock music. She appreciated how Bant’s writing could be both profoundly insightful and wildly erratic, mirroring the music he loved. Powers commented on the authenticity and immediacy of Bang’s work, saying, “He wrote like he was on fire, and that fire spread to anyone who read his words.”
Cameron Crowe, who famously included a character inspired by Bangs in his semi-autobiographical film, “Almost Famous,“ viewed Bangs as a mentor figure in real life (and Thom conveyed this same thing) and in the movie.
Crowe’s portrayal of Bangs, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. highlighted his role as the wise, if somewhat jaded, guide to the young protagonist, encapsulating Bang’s influence on a generation of writers and music lovers.
Crowe has spoken about Bang’s profound impact on his understanding of music and journalism, emphasizing Bang’s authenticity and disdain for pretension.
All of these reflections paint a picture of Bangs not just as a music critic but as a real cultural icon whose work resonated deeply with a wide range of readers and writers. His passionate, sometimes chaotic approach to music criticism challenged conventions and inspired many to see rock music as a serious art form worthy of thoughtful analysis and debate.
Some links of interest:
How Lester Bangs Inspired a Generation of Writers
Lester Bangs on Writing About Music
Lester Bangs : Truth Teller (The New Yorker)
Lester Bangs was an icon rock critic indeed🎶💙