Althouse: "I read the stuff Lester Bangs wrote about me and thought: 'Oh no, I’m a buffoon! But wait: I am a salient blowtorch of nihilism.'"

March 17, 2019

"I read the stuff Lester Bangs wrote about me and thought: 'Oh no, I’m a buffoon! But wait: I am a salient blowtorch of nihilism.'"

"'Cool! Wait, am I cool or not? I’m not sure!' I have one of his books in hardback. I’ve had it for a long, long time. It’s sitting on the shelf along with 'The Andy Warhol Diaries,' the collected works of Allen Ginsburg and a few other books. I look at their spines and think: 'O.K., this is what’s important!'"

Said Iggy Pop, interviewed in "Iggy Pop Is Fine With Being the Godfather of Punk" (NYT).

12 comments:

Wince said...: Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs...

"Iggy Pop. Amen!"; 3/17/19, 6:54 AM
Darrell said...: I sense that Iggy isn't taking the criticism seriously.; 3/17/19, 6:58 AM
rehajm said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/17/19, 7:00 AM
rehajm said...: Hey, I'm salient!!! That's awesome...

He reads books the way all those people who watch Seth Meyers read books...; 3/17/19, 7:09 AM
Henry said...: This reads like fiction. Iggy Pop is real, but who is this character named Lester Bangs? Lester Bangs?

It reads like a Tom Wolf excerpt. The Salient Blowtorch of the Nihilisms.; 3/17/19, 7:35 AM
John henry said...: Is this anything to do with Van Morrison's Bangs Sessions CD?

John Henry; 3/17/19, 7:42 AM
Wilbur said...: I can sleep well tonight, succored by the knowledge that Iggy is fine with it. The Igster.; 3/17/19, 7:46 AM
Kay said...: I prefer Richard Meltzer over Lester Bangs. He didn’t write too much about the Stooges though. It’s gonna be a very sad day when Iggy eventually kicks the bucket.; 3/17/19, 9:58 AM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: s this anything to do with Van Morrison's Bangs Sessions CD?

Bang Records was Bert Berns & co. They really pissed off Morrison (a man who holds grudges for decades) by putting out his album "Blowin' Your Mind" with that title (which he hated) and a psychedelic cover (which he hated) before he was done working on it. Having the hit "Brown Eyed Girl" come out of it didn't mute his ire (and even today he rarely performs the song in concert), but he found that he couldn't leave the label without completing his contract by delivering a set number of additional songs. Thus you have the spectacle of one of the best songwriters in the world trying to write and perform tracks so awful that they barely qualified as "songs" (but did).

Most companies would have buried such tripe, but because Van Morrison, the awful stuff has lived on for decades in various combinations with the good, pre-pissed-off, stuff from Bang.; 3/17/19, 12:12 PM
eddie willers said...: Bang Records was Bert Berns

That intrigued me so I went to Wikipedia and was floored. This guy had his stamp on so many records I remember from that time. How did I not know him?

One was he had rheumatic fever as a teen and felt he was living on borrowed time. And he was. He died in his sleep December 30, 1967 at age 38.

There are a few books and a documentary about him. He was in the middle of it all and I need to know more.

Thanks.; 3/17/19, 1:19 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: Nothing featuring Allen Ginsberg is "what's important". And, until Iggy is in A Band Called Death (or The Seeds playing "Pushing Too Hard") he isn't The Godfather of Punk. He's just another guy the girls liked, which don't cut it for artistic titles.; 3/18/19, 5:19 AM
Jeff Gee said...: 20 years or so ago I read the Legs MacNeil "Please Kill Me" oral history of punk book, which had both lots of stuff about Iggy and plenty of oral-history-ing BY Iggy. I was struck by how sharp, funny, and insightful all of Iggy's comments were, while most of the memories people had OF Iggy were things like him eating his own boogers and swishing his needles around in unflushed toilets to clean them off. I was over 40 when I read it, and aware that we all contain multitudes and so on, but I still found it difficult to-- what do the kids call it? -- "resolve the contradictions." Eventually I decided he grew out of the booger-eating prior to becoming the excellent social commentator. Still later I concluded there were no contradictions and it was possible to be both those guys at the same time. I have mixed feelings about that.; 3/18/19, 10:21 AM