Lester Bangs: Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung

Until his death aged thirty-three in 1982, Lester Bangs wrote wired, rock 'n' roll pieces on Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, and Kraftwerk, as well as Lou Reed. As a rock critic, he had an eagle-eye for distinguishing the pre-packaged imitation from the real thing. Written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his hallucinatory hagiographies and excoriating takedowns reveal an iconoclast unafraid to tell it like it is.

To his journalism he brought the talent of a great renegade Beat poet, and his essays, reviews and scattered notes convey the electric thrill of a music junkie indulging the habit of a lifetime.

As Greil Marcus writes in his introduction, 'What this book demands from a reader is a willingness to accept that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but record reviews.'

Bangs was one of the best writers ever to appear on newsprint ... when he died, American culture lost one its most astute, ornery, funniest and most soulful observers ― New York Times

Still a byword for rock writing at its most unrestrained and passionate ... his two posthumous anthologies ... attest to his brilliance -- John Harris ― Guardian Published On: 2009-06-27

A superb collection ... wild and funny and unpredictable. Lester Bangs was a great American writer who happened to write about rock 'n' roll ― Rolling Stone