But perhaps more so, Bangs shared similarities with Hunter S. Thompson. Bangs’ rambling, ranting, invective-ridden prose (often coloured by drugs) resembled Thompson’s gonzo exercises, and they both shared a cultivated iconoclasm, confident in their writing, their drugs, their drink, their Search….

I must say that I tired of Bangs’ style—all spit and scream and cavernous, delirious insight. I also tired of Lou Reed featuring in every second fucking article, and (like Thompson) the continual self-reference and the drugs and the drugs and the drugs… but then I would come across something like this:

You always wonder how you will react to these things, but I can’t say that I was surprised when NBC broke into the “Tonight Show” to say that John Lennon was dead. I always thought that he would be the first of the Beatles to die, because he was always the one who lived the most on the existential edge, whether by diving knees-first into left-wing adventurism or by just shutting up for five years when he decided he really didn’t have anything much to say; but I had always figured it would be by his own hand. That he was merely the latest celebrity to be gunned down by a probable psychotic only underscores the banality surrounding his death.
Look: I don’t think I’m insensitive or a curmudgeon. In 1965 John Lennon was one of the most important people in the world. It’s just that today I feel deeply alienated from rock ‘n’ roll and what it has meant or could mean, alienated from my fellow men and women and their dreams and aspirations.

Clear and quick like a cool stream, and smart to boot. When I discovered Bangs’ review of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks any thought that Bangs was a gibbering anarchist with no heart and amphetamine-charged antennae shifted: Bangs’ was a talented, gibbering anarchist, with a great heart and amphetamine-charged antennae:

Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks was released ten years, almost to the day, before this was written. It was particularly important to me because the fall of 1968 was such a terrible time: I was a physical and mental wreck, nerves shredded and ghosts and spiders looming and squatting across the mind. My social contacts had dwindled to almost none; the presence of other people made me nervous and paranoid. I spent endless days and nights sunk in an armchair in my bedroom, reading magazines, watching TV, listening to records, staring into space. I had no idea how to improve the situation and probably wouldn’t have done anything about it if I had.
Astral Weeks would be the subject of this piece—i.e., the rock record with the most significance in my life so far—no matter how I’d been feeling when it came out. But in the condition I was in, it assumed at the time the quality of a beacon, a light on the far shores of the murk; what’s more, it was proof that there was something left to express artistically besides nihilism and destruction.

Here Bangs is at his best—it sounds like he’s breathing. He’s also reassuringly instructive: “…it was proof that there was something left to express artistically besides nihilism and destruction”.

Bangs was a guy that wrote rock reviews. He was talented, intelligent, and when the ego and the drugs and the spleen didn’t crack the fabric, he was a superb writer. His machismo and obsession with Lou annoys me, sure, but the antennae never stopped searching—I can see him swaggering around the streets of Detroit with his earphones blaring (Metal Machine Music), taking it all in: the dirt, the hypocrisy, the shadow, but also, when he was very, very good, the light.