THE LESTER MANIFESTO

Lester Bangs was a self-determined savant, so destined for genius that he invented entire constellations where a man of the reasonable talents it takes to be the Best Rock Writer Ever might be a star. Lester Bangs was an invention of the critical intelligentsia; the Illuminatic losers (and Patti Smith) who spent their days selling Mink DeVille’s reputation door-to-door, looked like Elvis Costello in their dreams, and needed a saint/scapegoat for their nascent profession so badly that they deified the first of their ilk to do what rockers do every day (die). Lester Bangs was a clown, in the tragicomic sense. Like Pagliacci if Pagliacci’s doctor was also Joey Ramone’s stepfather, and the great clown found a workaround—from seeing himself every night—by imbibing enough Romilar cough syrup and root beer to ensure the kind of blackouts that made every morning in the bathroom mirror as thrilling as a curtain rising for the first time.