Lester Bangs Quotes

When kids can't afford to see it anymore maybe we'll have a whole resurgence of garage bands all over America and this New Wave thing will start to mean something on a grass roots level.

The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.

Style is originality; fashion is fascism. The two are eternally and unalterably opposed.

Music, you know, true music not just rock 'n' roll, chooses you.

A hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you might wanta accomplish on your own.

The only questions worth asking today are whether humans are going to have any emotions tomorrow, and what the quality of life will be if the answer is no.

Realizing that life is precious the natural tendency is to trample on it, like laughing at a funeral.

Sometimes I think nothing is simple but the feeling of pain.

The whole point of American culture is to pick up any old piece of trash and make it shine with more facets than the Hope Diamond.

John Lennon at his best despised cheap sentiment and had to learn the hard way that once you've made your mark on history those who can't will be so grateful they'll turn it into a cage for you.

The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience.

Or like in the early 70's when we had the reaction against acid rock and all the fuzz tone, and feedback, and the noise. And you had James Taylor and everyone went acoustic and that.

Rock is for everybody; it should be so implicitly anti-elitist that the question of whether somebody's qualified to perform it should never even arise.

The Mekons are the most revolutionary group in the history of rock 'n' roll.

Sexual chaos reigns currently, but out of chaos may flow true understanding and harmony, and either way Elvis almost singlehandedly opened the floodgates.

I mean the interesting thing I think would be if something happened like, what happened in England where all these kids that all of a sudden can't afford the ticket prices.

All blues singers are great liars.

I mean it's easier to be in a demonstration if it's a trip that's one of the reasons why the whole thing fell apart in 1971, because it wasn't a trip any longer.

Corporations are social organizations, the theater in which men and women realize or fail to realize purposeful and productive lives.

I can guarantee you one thing, we will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis.

Nothing ever quite dies, it just comes back in a different form.

The thing is that, they all had real strong personalities and real distinct identities, and I don't find most of the groups that are coming out now really do.

I'm really schizophrenic about that, because on the one hand I would say, yes there is, there's something inherently, even violent about it, it's wild and raw and all this.

The real question is what to live for. And I can't answer it. Except another one of your records. And another chance for me to write. Art for art's sake, corny as that sounds.

(Punk rock is) lunging after some glimpse of a new and better world.

I've always believed the New Left is rank.

The great thing about The Clash of course is that they keep searching for answers beyond that.

The extravagant and ostentatious lifestyles that pass for charisma in a time when almost anybody talks about charisma but if you think about it there's precious little to be seen.

I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.

I don't see that there are any particular changes in popular music.

. . . rock and roll, as I see it, is the ultimate populist art form, democracy in action, because it's true: anybody can do it.

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.