Anthony DeCurtis, part 2

By Steven Ward

Steven:    In regards to your anti-Bangs essay for Rolling Stone.com, did you ever feel like, maybe this is something I should not do? Or did you do it because no one else was saying anything negative about him?

Anthony:    I'm curious, why would you think that I might think twice about writing it? I'm curious about your perspective on that.

Steven:    Well, the guy is so liked. I mean, I've read everything there is to read about Lester and your essay was the first time I ever read anything negative about him.

Anthony:    Well, that's why I wrote it. That was the reason to do it. Not to sound crass, but I felt like at this stage in my career I could write it. If I really thought it was going to have a terrible impact on my career, I probably would have kept it to myself. It wouldn't have been worth it. I must say, though, that his popularity, so to speak, is something that has always mystified me. But I'm not the only one who feels that way. I swear to God this is true--a stranger stopped me on the street at 1 a.m. to thank me for writing that piece, and I've gotten many similar responses--"Thank God someone finally said it."

Steven:    Why do you think Lester's writing touched a nerve with so many though?

Anthony:    First, the autobiographical aspect--the fantasy about his life has overwhelmed the writing itself. I remember once reading a piece by Barney Hoskyns, a very underrated writer by the way. Barney was writing about Gram Parsons in Mojo. Gram was supposed to produce a Merle Haggard album at one point and it never worked out. So critics speculated that maybe Merle Haggard didn't want Gram to produce it because he thought Gram was "too wild." This, to Merle Haggard, who had been in prison and was a pretty tough guy and for whom Gram Parsons was probably just some two-bit drug addict punk.

There's a parallel here. Lester Bangs seems a "wild guy" to a lot of the sheltered, geek-type people who tend to grow up to be rock critics. He does not seem that wild to me, and his various antics never impressed me. I grew up in a pretty tough neighbourhood and somebody like that seems to me to be a dope. All the silly excesses, to me, seemed not only not cool, but something that would get you smacked down. I just don't think it's a great act of rebellion to walk into a party and knock over the fucking punch bowl. That just seems stupid. Rock critics tolerate that in Lester Bangs--they're even titillated by it. But if some rock star did it, they would think, "Aw, fuckin' millionaire thinks he can do anything he wants." But if Lester did it, it's cool. As for the writing, I don't like the adolescent snottiness--which, unfortunately, has come to be what most rock writing is about. Writing with that kind of aspiration to stupidity does not make sense to me, maybe because I always wanted to be older when I was a kid. I was trying to figure out what someone like Don DeLillo was thinking about. I like some of Bangs' sources but I don't think Kerouac was trying to write like a kid. As for why it's so influential, well, I think that's because it looks easy. Most of Bangs' imitators aren't even as good as he is, but it's still easier to attempt that gonzo style than to actually learn how to write well.

Steven:    What about Meltzer? Was he the same for you.

Anthony:    Pretty much the same. There's the same goofiness, which I really can't stand, though I did occasionally enjoy the lunatic aspect of his writing. He seems smarter than Bangs to me. Bangs I found useless most of the time. I read him in the Voice, so maybe I missed his good stuff, which people say was in Creem, which I didn't read.

But one impression about my anti-Bangs piece that I would like to correct is that I actually do think Jim DeRogatis did a good job with his book on Bangs. I'm not a big fan of Jim's but I think he was fair-minded in his presentation of Bangs. Whether he knows it or not, I think the book paints a damning portrait. Jim didn't hold back unflattering information just because he happens to worship Lester Bangs.

Steven:    When I first asked you about this interview and you checked out rockcritics.com for the first time you said something very similar to what Stanley Booth said when he first looked at it, you said It's intriguing but kind of scary. Do you think it's crazy for people to be fans of rock critics and rock writing itself?

Anthony:    I have a certain amount of ambivalence about doing this. Not this interview, but about the world of rock criticism that I'm inevitably a part of. If there's a situation where there's going to be a bunch of rock critics, I generally try to avoid it. Like South by Southwest for example. I went once.

Steven:    Didn't you answer a question given to you there while you were on a press panel about how people in their 40s or 50s could not write about rock effectively without being in a mosh-pit or something.

Anthony:    I actually wasn't on the panel but someone told me about it. The people on the panel were completely defensive, saying, "Well, I stood near the mosh-pit once" or whatever. The correct answer would have been, "What the fuck does that have to do with writing?" It's ridiculous. The people in the mosh-pit can write from the perspective of being in the mosh-pit and I'll write about the perspective of having seen Jimi Hendrix play in a club the size of my living room. You bring the experience you bring. I'm not devaluing the experience of being in the mosh-pit--though it's the last place I would ever care to be--but it does not have anything to do with your ability to write.

All of this is an example of why I'm ambivalent. I've been doing this work almost all my adult life and in many ways I'm a champion of it. But at the same time the warped purism of so much of it really annoys me. It's incredibly stupid. So when I looked at your site it reminded me of walking into a bar in Austin during SXSW, and finding at least half a dozen people I would actively try to avoid in New York.

On the other hand, to read something like your interview with Paul Nelson, who had a big impact on me, or J.D. Considine, that was a real treat. It was even kind of moving. And it certainly was exciting to think that somebody would read an interview like that with me. Very often people do not take what rock critics do seriously. So the fact that someone is, is exciting.

Steven:    All these years of writing about music, has it ever taken the joy out of just listening to music for the fun of it?

Anthony:    No. I remember when I got my job at Emory in 1979. I was in my late 20s. It was the first time in my life I could go into a record store and pull out a bunch of stuff and not have to go through "Which ones do I have to put back now because I can't afford to buy them all?" That was the first time I thought, "I'm making money now. I can buy all of these." Being a rock critic holds that same kind of thrill. There still is the excitement of getting the music I want on a daily basis and getting to listen to whatever I want.

But it is a job. When I was teaching literature, I couldn't always read what I wanted to because I had to read the stuff I was teaching or working on. So I have to be responsible to listen to the things I have to listen to for work. There are always things I wish I could just put on because I feel like listening to it--like the new Radiohead album, which I was listening to tonight. But that said, I never, never, never make myself listen to music. I never do that thing where I force myself to listen to everything just to keep up or something.

Steven:    Were you surprised when you met guitarist Peter Buck and found out that he was an actual fan of rock criticism outside of what critics had to say about R.E.M and have you met other musicians who are fans of rock writing?

Anthony:    Not to the degree that Peter is--but I also met him before R.E.M. ever had a record out. He's a rare case. One thing he said to me was, "If I go out to clubs to hear music, which I do all the time, who's likely to be there? Music critics. Not people in bands." Essentially that's true, so I think he feels he has a lot in common with writers.

Steven:    What was it like to work as a staffer at Rolling Stone?

Anthony:    It was something that transformed my life. Rolling Stone as a magazine made a huge impact on me as a kid. To this day, Rolling Stone is my first priority in terms of my various commitments. It's still the biggest thrill to write for them.

Steven:    The magazine takes a lot of shit from rock critics today. It's not like it used to be, or whatever.

Anthony:    Oh yeah. When I would be on panels at conferences and the panel was supposed to be an hour and a half about the future of rock criticism or something, that subject would get discussed for 90 seconds and the rest of it would be about who was on the cover of Rolling Stone that month and why. It's like the New York Times. Everyone criticises it to death, no one says anything decent about it. And when you're working at a place that gets that big and has a powerful impact in a world where not many things do, you are set up for that sort of relentless attack. Rolling Stone is not perfect. There are dubious things that go on there that trigger a lot of the criticism. But it was over-criticised before I got there and it probably always will be. It's funny because I would read screeds about the magazine and think to myself, "But I just got clips from this writer a month ago." Jealousy is definitely a factor--I'd think, "That person just wants my job." I've written for Rolling Stone for nearly 20 years now, and there was always a sense you were not going to get the gold watch there. You stay there for as long as it makes sense and then you move on. But I was on staff for nine years. I made a good living there, and I'm still on the masthead and I continue to do a lot of work there. They pay well, and it's amazing to feel that you put a piece out and people actually read it. I mean, I've written in a million places, and the only time I get a bigger response is when I write for the Sunday New York Times. Other than that, it's Rolling Stone.

As for being on staff there, I worked really hard. Despite its being perceived as a glamour pit, everyone works really hard there. Do I get upset when Christina Aguilera is on the cover every other issue, yes. But in every one of those issues do I think there are things in the magazine that are great and that no other music magazine would do, yes. Absolutely. I just think of the celebrity pieces as the price you pay for actually having an audience. Unlike most rock critics, I never had the fantasy of being a bohemian, maybe because I grew up in a working-class family. The idea that I would be poor and starve for my art did not hold the slightest allure for me. I always wanted an audience and I wanted to write in big places and be successful. Rolling Stone was the place to do that. I should also mention that the magazine has a wall full of national magazine awards. It's serious, quality stuff. It's relentlessly attacked, but I still think it's the best music magazine out there, all in all.

Steven:    J.D. Considine said something interesting to me. He said there were no new, younger critics out there that he was scared of. Are there any new young writers that you like or scare you?

Anthony:    I would not say scare. I've always felt that the more people that wrote well, the better off I would be. Neil Strauss is interesting. He always has a fresh take. He's a good writer. He can report stories and do profiles.

Steven:    He was attacked in the Rock Critical List.

Anthony:    That is really a whole other story. That was fucking ridiculous. The person, who wrote it--Charles Aaron by most accounts, though he denies it--was so childishly vindictive. Nothing is good. Everyone is an asshole. Everyone is a sellout. It was absurd. The truly perfect thing about it is that half the people he attacks are his best friends.

Steven:    So Neil Strauss...

Anthony:    Yes. These people are not all youngsters, and I'm leaving out a lot of people--like Alan Light, for example--who are primarily editors now. But Ann Powers is interesting. Lorraine Ali at Newsweek is someone I like a lot. Elysa Gardner. David Fricke. Tom Moon. I like Anthony Bozza at Rolling Stone--he's got a smart, lucid style. David Prince at Spin. Matt Diehl. I always read Jon Pareles at the New York Times with pleasure.

Steven:    What about J. D. Considine? He is a guy I like because he concentrates on writing about music instead of going on and on about the lyrics.

Anthony:    I'm certainly guilty of that--and I do like J.D.'s writing a lot. The most common suggestion I get from editors after I've turned in a piece is, "Can you say something about the music?" The music is really an afterthought to me--not as a listener, but as a writer. It's harder for me to write about music, because my training is as a literary critic. I love language. So the music part of it is difficult. Why is a sound compelling? That's tricky. It's tough to get at.

Steven:    What advice would you give someone today who wanted to write about music for a living?

Anthony:    Find a place to do it. College newspaper, local weekly, the internet, wherever you can get experience. Get your stuff out there. Work on your writing is the other advice. Rock critics all have taste. They like what's good, mostly. But you need to be able to put words together. One of the most thrilling realisations of my life was when I knew that I had the ability to express in writing any idea that came to my mind. Popular music was the least of it--that ability was liberating for every aspect of my life. Clearly a critic is responding to the music. Now find a language to make that response compelling to people.

Steven:    A new question I'm going to start asking critics. Captain Beefheart. Fan or non-fan?

Anthony:    Non fan.

Steven:    I don't believe it

Anthony:    (Laughing) Why?

Steven:    To be a rock critic, you have to love the Velvet Underground and Captain Beefheart.

Anthony:    I love the Velvet Underground. Captain Beefheart is corny avant-garde. Bloops, squawks and bleeps. Sorry. I'm afraid not.

Steven:    What would be your choice for Greil Marcus's Stranded 2000. By the way, he's not putting one together, as far as I know.

Anthony:    Blonde on Blonde. It's a cliched rock critic answer, but I love it. I've never heard that record without finding something new. That album would do me on a desert isle. I could happily listen to it once a day for the rest of my life.

Back to part 1 of Anthony DeCurtis interview