Pasteurized Decadence

Lester Bangs slugs it out with Lou Reed, elsewhere

Darren Tofts

This piece is different from previous séance fictions involving Nick Tosches and Vivian Stanshall, in that I am not in discussion with either of the assembled shades. Instead I am a fly on the wall observer describing the goings-on between the late Lou Reed and Lester Bangs. It is not exactly clear where and when they are, although curiously their discussion and responses to questions are compromised by a loud, monotonous and drone-like sound that uncannily resembles the noise of which they are about to speak. As they converse their “bodies”, such as they are, gently smoulder, letting off a distasteful odour. So for the sake of identification and some modicum of taste, imagine the general hubbub of a downtown bar in which the bedraggled wraiths in question are assembled, a kind of perverse, nether-world version of Max’s Kansas City or CBGB in New York. How raffishly predictable.

Bangs once described Reed as “something that belongs in an intensive care ward”. And if that’s not complimentary enough, it gets better. “[There’s] almost no flesh on the bones, all the flesh that’s there sort of dead, sallow and hanging, his eyes are always darting all over the place, his skull is shaved and you can see the pallor under the bristles…”. With such characterisation tipping the scales on any of Dante’s descriptions of the wasted and moribund denizens of Hell, it’s hardly surprising that Bangs really lets rip: “Lou Reed is my own hero principally because he stands for all the most fucked up things that I could ever possibly conceive of”. Thinking about it, this piece really is as much about Lester as Lou, so let the carnage begin.

Reed: Anyways there’s something I never got about some shit you said about me once.#

Bangs: Oh yeah, what’s that?

Reed: You once described me as a “depraved pervert and pathetic death dwarf, a liar, wasted talent, a huckster selling pounds of his own flesh”. What the fuck did you mean by that?

Bangs: That was about right, given what ya were gorging on at the time. You were a real jerkoff. I mean 75! Busboys at some nightclub you were hustling to get into once told me you looked like a quivering insect, so emaciated you should be in intensive care.

Reed: I was always in intensive care. I didn’t let it show most of the time.

Bangs: Wow, you really did have a rock’n’roll heart. I thought it was all just to impress Andy and the Factory death drones and jackals.

Reed: I survived most of ’em. Don’t forget that.

Bangs: I already had.

Reed: Anyway I don’t wanna talk about Andy.

Bangs: What do you wanna talk about?

Reed: Well your so-called “death drones” shit for one.

Bangs: Why, that kinda rub you up the wrong way?

Reed: Sure.

Bangs: Oh do tell.

Reed: You know how much time I spent at the Factory?

Bangs: Far too much. Anyway I’ve heard enough about those null-node hucksters.

Reed: You’re full of horseshit.

Bangs: Does it show?

*

What follows is the rough approximation of a discussion of Metal Machine Music (1975).

Bangs: The esteem in which your muzak was held always seemed to precede anything you did.

Reed: Muzak. You seem to have already made your mind up.

Bangs: I’m thinking particularly of Metal Machine Music. You probably earned the greatest superlatives for anything you did when you tossed that racket off.

Reed: What do you mean?

Bangs: Oh you have forgotten. Apart from other nihilistic one-liners floating around at the time, it was described as the “worst album by a human being”.

Reed: You really think I took any notice of what anyone had to say about my stuff?

Bangs: I know you didn’t.

Reed: Anyway who said I was a human being?

Bangs: Goddam I’ve never thought of you as a being, let alone human. As it happens I really liked Metal Machine Music. Loved it in fact. And I quote: “As a statement it’s great, as a giant FUCK YOU it shows integrity — a sick, twisted, dunced-out, malevolent, perverted, psychopathic integrity, but integrity nevertheless.”

Reed: Oh yeah right, “the greatest album ever made”.

Bangs: Sure I said that. I also said it was the “greatest record in the history of the human eardrum”. But when it comes to its real impact Billy Altman described it as “nothing more than ear-wrecking electronic sludge, guaranteed to clear any room of humans in record time”.

Reed: I’d happily forgotten that. Thanks for reminding me.

Bangs: I think Rolling Stone even aced that, describing it as “the tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator” and as “displeasing as a night in a bus terminal”. And how can anyone not love the track titles: Metal Machine Music A-1, Metal Machine Music A-2, Metal Machine Music A-3, Metal Machine Music A-4. And they all run for exactly the same time. Who ever said you were out of your mind with symmetry like that.

Reed: Just shut the fuck up Lester.

Bangs: Not just yet. I also described Berlin as a “gargantuan slab of maggoty rancour that may well be the most depressed album ever made”.

Reed: Yeah so nice of Creem to publish that. But you also said it somewhere else. I got over it.

Bangs: Well speaking of elsewhere Greg Kotgave chortled that “the spin cycle of a washing machine has more melodic variation…”

(Reed abruptly gets up and throws his chair into the void, evaporating as so much cigarette smoke and rancour into nothingness).

[Metal Machine Music was ranked number two in The Worst Rock ’n’ Roll Records of All Time, 1991, being pipped from the top spot by Having Fun With Elvis On Stage]

*

Bangs: I admire Burt Reynolds a lot.

Reed: Ahh ok, sure.

Bangs: My favourite film of his is Deliverance.

Reed: Wow, Mr Macho on speed. Who did you want to be in the film?

Bangs: No brainer, Bobby Trippe.

Reed: Funny Ned Beatty kinda looks like you.

Bangs: Nice of you to say.

Reed: Don’t get too excited, I was saying it as a put down.

Bangs: Taken, thanks.

Reed: Anyway your choice surprises me.

Bangs: Really, what’s the problem?

Reed: Well Bobby Trippe, while he survives, didn’t have the happiest of endings.

Bangs: Oh how droll. Poor bastard. On the bad end of some zit grinnin’ hillbilly.

Reed: You want droll? I’m sure you’ve heard the one about your name, Lester Bongs.

Bangs: I was waiting for some bullshit like this.

Reed: Kind of bitchin’ pun really. Appropriate given your notoriety.

Bangs: Notorious, moi?

Reed: What about the English one, Lester Square.

[Silence]

Reed: Your capacity for drinking is legendary.

Bangs: No jive. Who can’t go past a marijuana martini and Dexedrine first thing in the morning?

Reed: Dexedrine, that’s for ADD right?

Bangs: Yeah my attention’s never been better.

Reed: I thought it was normally prescribed for children. Having said that…

Bangs: Man-child, sure.

Reed: I really think you got that round the wrong way.

Bangs: Oh how lacerating Lou.

Reed: Whatever. I’ve heard that when you were born you even exhibited signs of withdrawal.

Bangs: So they say. ’Spose it has to start sometime.

Reed: I guess you’re probably right. Anyway gotta split. I hear there’s some bitchin’ shit going down in the Second Circle. Johnny Thunders and Joey Ramone are gonna be there.

Bangs: Well why didn’t you say so bright boy. Let’s roll to this holocaust.

[As they depart an abrasive noise not dissimilar to a toilet flushing that is on fire can be heard]

*

Praise for Metal Machine Music:

One of the worst albums ever made (Mark Richardson, Pitchfork.com)

In its droning, shapeless indifference [it] is hopelessly old-fashioned (James Wolcott, Rolling Stone)

Bad once, bad twice (Hartford Courant, LA Times)

Made fans and critics wonder if he was just yanking all of our chains (LA Times)

One of rock’s most hated albums (Ultimate Classic Rock)

The spin cycle of a washing machine has more melodic variation (Greg Kott, MusicHound Rock)

Ranked number 4 in Q Magazine’s 50 Worst Records of All Time

Included in The Wire’s 1998 listing of 100 Records that Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)

On release, the album was almost universally panned by critics (John Eyles, BBC Music Reviews)

A gargantuan slab of maggoty rancour (Lester Bangs)

Anyone who gets to side four is dumber than I am (Lou Reed)

Lou Reed’s big “fuck you” to his fans (Joshua Klein, AV Club)

The tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator (Rolling Stone)

For those of you unfamiliar with the album, it’s basically an hour of distortion, feedback and guitar fills that are manipulated to the point of non recognition. A casual listen is something like this: SQUEEAAAARRRRRKKKKKKKK. For 64 minutes (Michael Miller, Observer)

Thanks for calling.

*

#The text in the conversation between Bangs and Reed is drawn from Lester’s 1975 essay “Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves, or, How I Slugged It Out With Lou Reed and Stayed Awake”. This was originally published in 1975 in Creem and later anthologised in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, 1996. The title of this essay is snatched from Bangs’ assertion in that text of Reed’s fall from a “badass” to being “pasteurised”.