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By Andrew Lapointe
Rock critic Jim DeRogatis is the author of Kaleidoscope Eyes: Psychedelic Rock from the ’60s to the ’90s, and Let it Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs. He's also written for Penthouse, Spin, Guitar World, Salon.com, and spent eight disheartening months of his life at Rolling Stone. However, he considers his current position as music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times to be his best job.
In a recent telephone interview, Jim expressed his thoughts and opinions about the music industry, Napster, Lester Bangs, and what he thinks is the best definition of rock 'n' roll. Andrew: What do you think is the origin of
rock journalism?
Jim: Well, you know, I traced it out pretty
much in Let It Blurt. The thing at this point is that it's become a
career path--perhaps not the most respectable career path in the world, but
a career path nonetheless--and what's easy to forget is that through the
first 10 years of rock 'n' roll's history, there was no serious criticism or
journalism about it. Rock sprung up in the mid '50s, and it wasn't until
1966 or '67 that anyone seriously began to criticize this music and to write
about it with journalistic standards and critical standards. There were only
fan magazines with pictures and reprinting the lyrics of songs, and really
no serious writing about it. It wasn't until Paul Williams and
Crawdaddy! in '66--with Richard Meltzer contributing to that, as
well as Jon Landau--that any serious writing about rock 'n' roll music
started to happen. And [Jann] Wenner had some knowledge of that and ripped
it off. I mean, he saw that model and Rolling Stone kind of sprang
from that. Basically all rock journalism springs from that model of
Crawdaddy!, and its editor, Paul Williams, deserves a lot more
credit.
But for 10 years, the music existed in a
complete vacuum, and then for almost 10 years--a little less than 10 years,
from 66' until the early '70s--it was people doing it because they had this
burning desire to write about the music, this passion to write about the
music. There wasn't any money and nobody took it very seriously and the only
places publishing things were either what today would be called fanzines,
which is how Crawdaddy! started or Greg Shaw's Bomp!
magazine, or small, small alternative rags that hardly paid anything, which
is how Rolling Stone started. And Creem, which was a
magazine that I obviously spent a lot of time looking at and thinking about
and researching because of the Bangs book. And it wasn't until the mid '70s
when magazines started to pay money that it started to be possible to be a
rock critic as a career path. That's sort of where Almost Famous
picks up, when the young Cameron Crowe approaches Lester Bangs. That's when
it had started as a path you could follow to fame and fortune, relatively
speaking. But when Lester started down that path and when a lot his
peers--Richard Meltzer or Nick Tosches--started down that path, it was just
out of the desire to write about this music that they loved, and they had
things to say about it that they just HAD to get off their chests.
Andrew: So, in your mind, define what good
rock 'n' roll is.
Jim: I remember being 17 years old and
sitting there and asking Lester that question. And I write about it in
Let It Blurt, and I have the interview I did with Lester up online,
and he paused for a really long time, and I remember that surprised me. I
mean, it seemed to me that he would have had that answer on a cue card, you
know, on an auto-pilot tape ready to play whenever anybody asked him. But he
paused for a really long time and it took a long time to answer it, and
finally he said something, and I think it's the best
definition of rock 'n' roll I've ever heard, and that's: "Rock 'n' roll is
something that makes you feel alive." Now, I think that that is really broad
and you could stop and say, "That doesn't mean hardly anything!" I mean, any
great piece of art, a painting, or a piece of classical music, or a sunset,
can make you feel alive. Even if you're talking about it in extra-musical
terms, I think you could look at rock as being a certain attitude, and still
it's very wide-ranging--I mean it could go from Nirvana to Van Morrison,
Public Enemy to the Flaming Lips, and what do any of those things have in
common? But you kind of know it when you hear it, when you encounter it. I
think it's a sort of an uncensored outpouring of emotion.
The part that Lester said, something that
makes you feel alive, I think as I've narrowed it down in my own critical
career, I've come to think of it as a spontaneous explosion of personality.
It's not something that you need to go to Juilliard to study for 10 years in
order to be able to play it, it's just this serendipitous outpouring of your
soul into this music on stage or on album. And I think that some people have
enough personality to make one great 2-½ minute single-"Louie Louie" is a
great single and the Kingsmen never really did anything else and it doesn't
matter because that's brilliant and that's as good as rock 'n' roll gets.
But the Rolling Stones had an incredible 10 or 15-year run, from the
beginning through Some Girls in 1978, of just amazing rock 'n' roll
music, and obviously they had a lot more personality to pour into those
grooves! But you know, it really doesn't matter, they're both brilliant and
they're both great rock 'n' roll and I think they both come from the same
place.
Andrew: Define bad rock 'n' roll.
Jim: I think bad rock 'n' roll is anything
that lacks that soul or where that personality is somehow censored or
tailored or filtered through something that's less than honest, less than
immediate, less than passionate, less than soulful. That's not authentic.
You know, there's this bugaboo of authenticity in critical discourse. And
your egghead critics get all hung up on authenticity, pro or con, and that
goes back to the blues, the 85-year-old black blues guy sitting on the porch
picking his guitar being the "real deal." Never mind that he's got a
Cadillac and he's married to a 22-year-old white girl! We think of Nirvana
as being authentic because [Kurt] Cobain was a lower middle class kid from
Aberdeen, the middle of nowhere, and he was poor and hungry and slept under
a bridge, blah blah blah. On the other side, the Strokes are not authentic
because they're rich kids who grew up on the upper East Side of New York.
All of that's bullshit, I don't think any of that matters. I mean Chuck D.
made great rock 'n' roll; he was a middle class kid who went to college on
Long Island. He's been one of the best expressions of black rage in this
country that we've ever heard. It's not hypocritical of Him; it's not
hypocritical of Ice Cube to have been expressing what it was like to be a
gangster on the streets of L.A. if he really wasn't. I don't think that
that's authentic, but I do think you can sense an authentic personality, an
authentic expression of passion and soul. I think that that's true of the
Strokes--I mean, I listen to the Strokes and I hear them having something to
say, and it has nothing to do with where they're from, who they are or how
they grew up, it's something to do with them giving me a slice of their
personality--their soul if you will--in an uncensored manner as directly as
possible.
And you can certainly play roles in rock
'n' roll, you can adopt personas, as Lou Reed has or Iggy Pop or arguably
Kurt Cobain--I think he was a guy who wore a lot of different hats. And
that's not what I'm talking about. But I mean when you pick up the guitar
and approach that microphone, are you filtering this in some way? Are
pretending to be something you aren't? Or are you slicing open a vein and
letting it flow? And I'm completely willing to admit that that's 100%
subjective! I may hear the Strokes as the most genuine expression of rock
'n' roll spirit that I heard last year, and you may think that I've
completely been had! I don't think that my opinion is necessarily any better
than yours or any better than some cab driver out there on Michigan Ave. in
Chicago, as far as judging whether this music moves me emotionally. Now, I
do think that I know a lot more about rock history and I've interviewed far
more people than you or the cab driver has. All that stuff--my musical
knowledge is greater, I've made records, I've toured in bands, I'm in a band
now, and I play the drums. All that stuff, I have over you, perhaps. I have
a lot more experience--I have a lot more records!
But as far as whether this piece of music moves me emotionally, I never look down on anybody else's opinion. If a 14 year old girl comes to me and can make the case about some
Britney Spears song moving her to tears, or making her life better, filling
her with joy, if she honestly feels that emotion, then God bless her! I
mean, that's what all of us are trying to find in life, those reasons for
living, those pieces of art that make our life better, that connect with us.
I think that's wonderful, as long as she can make the case. But if she's
just buying that Britney Spears record because it's the hip new sound that's
been sold to her, along with her Abercrombie & Fitch clothing and her Sony
PlayStation and her Starbucks, then that's a horrible con, and it's as bad
as being raped. I just think that's horrible.
Andrew: So what attracted you to magazines
like Creem in the beginning when you were younger?
Jim: I never started reading Creem
until well after Lester's heyday. I came to Creem much later. And
still, it had this irreverent attitude; it didn't take anything too
seriously, especially not itself, or the musicians, even when it was clearly
a musician that the editors and the writers worshipped. It was never
super-serious or sanctimonious, it was never trying to sell me anything, it
was as snotty and loud and fun and liberating and scary and exciting and
sexy as the music itself. And that's what I think good rock writing should
be, I think it should have the same spirit as the music that it's purporting
to cover.
Andrew: Was rock journalism something that
was popular to kids your
age at the time?
Jim: No, I think it's only ever been
something that geeky kids who have no life are drawn to! [laughs] That was
certainly me. I think that it's always been something for the kid who feels
like he's sort of outside. And I guess that's another common denominator in
a lot of the great rock 'n' roll that I love. It doesn't have to be, but I
often find that it's music that's made by people who are unique individuals
and feel like they don't fit into the mainstream, that they're sort of
standing outside looking in. And sometimes that can go over the top and it
can be kind of obnoxious, like Billy Corgan--you know, like, "Nobody loved
me and now I'm cool, so fuck you!" That kind of attitude, I don't always
like that but, but I do feel that rock is often music made by people who
feel that they're square pegs in a round hole, and I think those are the
kind of people who tend to read about it, too. I remember talking to Kurt
Cobain about Lester Bangs and Creem magazine and both resonated
with him as well. He was a kid who felt like he didn't fit in Aberdeen,
everybody was running around playing sports and shooting guns--that wasn't
him, and in rock 'n' roll he found a community that was an alternative, that
would accept people who were different. And he found that through great
writing, whether it was people like Lester Bangs or the fanzines of his day.
That's how he connected with people who were like him.
Andrew: Why did Lester believe the notion
that rock was dead?
Jim: Well, I think that in '73 and '74, it
was becoming obvious that rock had been seriously co-opted by the
corporations, that it would become a big business and it had lost a lot of
its spirit. It was the era where that was happening for the first time. It
was a huge impact to Lester to see the Rolling Stones, when they toured for
the first time after Altamont and supporting Exile on Main Street,
which is a great album. But suddenly there were crowds and crowds of
hangers-on whose only job was to keep the Stones separated from the fans,
and here was this cult of celebrity invading rock 'n' roll, where the people
on stage really thought they were better than the people in the audience.
And I think that hadn't been the case in the '60s. I mean, rock wasn't big
enough for that to actually be the case before. And you know, suddenly it
started to become the case, it started to become all very professional, and
the danger of that is that suddenly its going to become mere entertainment.
Going to a rock show is going to be not much different than going to see the
Ice Capades. I think that was a harsh realization for Lester, and he hated
that notion. But that doesn't mean that that's the only way it is. I think
that you can see a genuine sense of community in rock at lots of different
points in its history. A certain scene explodes, and before the vultures of
the music industry descend, things can be pretty utopian. I mean, certainly
it felt that way in Seattle in 1989, or in New York in 1974 or '75, or in
London in '76, or in the early hip-hop or rave or indie-rock or alternative
scenes. I've seen it several times myself, and it really comes down to when
there's no fake, arbitrary walls thrown up between the audience and the
performers, because all great rockers try and break down those barriers. But
when the fame, the fortune, and the celebrity start to become more important
than that ideal of community, that's when rock 'n' roll starts to lose
something.
Andrew: There seems to be something about
meeting infamous writers or performers like Lester Bangs, and despite their
reputations as egotistical SOBs, they turn out to be kind and easygoing like
that.
Jim: I would disavow yourself of that notion
pretty quickly! Because one of the first things you learn when you start to
do interviews with a lot of people whose music you admire is that often
times people who make great music are really horrible people. Sometimes
people who are the nicest people don't make music that's particularly
exciting at all. Don't ever think that just because you like somebody's
music, you'll like them as a person. I have to say that Lester Bangs was on
a short list of rare exceptions of people whose work I really, really
admired and who turned out to be wonderful human beings. That's been the
exception, not the rule.
Andrew: But what I mean is that, just people
like Lester, who has this reputation as an SOB, and when you meet him it's
different from what you hear.
Jim: Well, it depends on whose doing the
defining, you know? If you ask certain people in the New York media
establishment about Jim DeRogatis, they'll tell you I'm an opinionated
asshole who just loves to piss people off, that I'm arrogant, I'm obnoxious,
I'm a prick, and I'm really mean to people. And what they're saying is that
I'm mean to phonies like them who are all about politics and not about good
music or good journalism. And I've certainly had my run-ins with those
people. I think people who would have described Lester as a prick often were
trying to sell him something that he didn't want to buy. Also, with Lester
it was kind of complicated. He was an alcoholic, he had some severe problems
emotionally, he was a drug addict, and I think there were times when he was
raging out of control and he was a raging asshole. I know myself, I suffer
from a little foot-in-mouth disease, and sometimes I say stupid things, but
never really from a position of malice. If I'm trying to say something nasty
to somebody, I generally say it to their face in a public forum and all in
the interest of having a debate. I think that if we don't care enough about
this music to argue about it, then why the hell have we devoted our lives to
it? That's my approach, and one of the things that broke my heart when I was
at Rolling Stone for eight months is that I'm supposed to be at the
top of my game at this magazine, the pinnacle of music journalism, I'm the
deputy music editor, and I could never get anybody involved in a good fight
about music, or even a conversation!
Andrew: It wasn't really about that? They
didn't give a shit about the music?
Jim: It wasn't about that at all, it was
about climbing some career ladder. I'll never forget, late on a Friday
afternoon, we were the only two people in the office. David Fricke had that
Husker Du live album that came out a couple of years ago, and he was playing
it in the office, and I ran out and said, "OH MY GOD! HUSKER DU I REMEMBER
THE FIRST TIME I SAW THEM LIVE...THEY'RE THE GREATEST BAND EVER!!!" And he
just looked at me and he didn't say a word. He didn't say a word, and to
myself, I just said, "O.K., fuck you!" And I'll never forget the guy with
the red hand cart going through the aisles, stopping at everybody's office,
and handing them cash for the piles of CDs! These guys were selling these
discs that they had never even listened to, and they didn't even leave the
office to do it. Talk about not giving a shit about the music!
Andrew: How did Bangs influence you? What
impression did
he make on you as a young writer?
Jim: Well, I never wanted to write like
Lester. I knew that he had
a very unique voice that came from being who he was. So the goal wasn't to
write like Lester, it was to uphold what I think were his more important
core values. I got the sense when reading him that he was being 100% honest
with me, that this guy would not lie to me, even when it was making him look
bad. There are certain things he confesses in some of his pieces that are
pretty embarrassing, that make him seem like less of a good person, and all
of us have those things. Or he'll admit that, "I first thought this about
this record, but now I realize that I was completely wrong!" I think all of
those things are part of his strength and evidence of his honesty--that he's
not trying to shill me this product, that's he's trying to tell this to me
as straightly and as honestly as he possibly can. And that's what I've tried
to take from Lester and incorporate into my own style, my own voice. It
probably took me a very long time; maybe some people think I don't have my
own voice even now!
But one of things that really bothers me
is when I go to some of these rock critic gatherings like South By Southwest
and I talk to people, I talk to my peers, I talk to other critics, the
things that they say on panels and in the hallway are completely different
from the things that they've written! Even when I'm inconsistent, I'm at
least being consistent in my inconsistencies! The things that I'll say to
you, between us if we were having a beer at a bar, are the same things I'm
going to write in my columns. And I think that that's important. I feel I
owe readers my unflinching honesty, and I think that every writer worth his
or her salt has in their heads an ideal reader, the person on the other end
who's reading this, and you're writing for them to some extent. And I think
the reader who's in my head is pretty much who I was when I was 17 and first
reading rock writing myself. It's this kid who's obsessed by this and he's
got $20 in his wallet, and then, I would have been able to go to J&R Music
World and buy four albums, but now, you've got $20 in your wallet you're
going be able to buy one CD! But that means everything, and that's really
important, and I'm not going to advise myself to spend that $20 on a piece
of crap. I'm not going to sell myself a bill of goods.
Andrew: So you have to be more conscientious
now?
Jim: As far as what?
Andrew: As far as what you choose as music
and what you're putting money towards?
Jim: Well, one of the things about being a
rock critic is that you'll never have to buy any records any more! But I
think there is even more at stake today. One of the reasons that the
major-label industry so fears Napster is that they know they won't be able
to "get" people anymore. I mean, every music fan that I've talked to who has
been a devotee of Napster, when it was an album that they really loved, they
wanted to go out and buy it even if they already downloaded it. They wanted
all the art work, they wanted the lyrics, they wanted the real pressing.
Very rarely did they NOT buy something; it was only the stuff they were
lukewarm about or really turned out not to like, or they liked one song on
an album. I think the real reason the industry fears the internet so much is
that they know that they have to present quality music or people are not
going to buy it! And rather than the simple solution--O.K., give us good
music and we'll pay for it!--they'd rather continue to sell us manufactured
crap. As a result, they certainly don't want us to be able to download it
and sample it and hear it for free on Napster before we spend our money on
it! They want to be able to con us.
Andrew: What is your next book about?
Jim: I am working on a book that's a lot
more personal, and which I tend to have a hard time synopsizing neatly,
except to say that it's sort of "Everything I know about life I learned by
playing in rock bands," though that's certainly not the title (and it's a
sentence that won't appear in the text). But essentially, the same basic
impulse that had me writing about records in fanzines, and buying them
obsessively, and playing them on college radio has always prompted me to
make music as well--I always say I'm a drummer, not a musician--but I've
made records and done tours and played in a ridiculous number of bands
through the years, like 20 or more. Rock critics always get this
thing--"You're just a frustrated musician"--which is nonsense, because I've
NEVER been frustrated, I've always enjoyed playing music, and not with any
sort of career goals in mind, but just because I can't imagine NOT playing
music. And I suppose at heart this book will be the answer to the question,
"Why?"
Andrew: What are you're future career plans?
Jim: Whenever I see a question like that, it
always comes as a bit of a surprise, because I'm like, "Oh, I guess I have a
CAREER!" Which is not something I run around thinking about! But I consider
the rock critic position at the Chicago Sun-Times to pretty much be
the best job in the world, and I can't imagine another city where I'd want
to live. I do plenty of freelance work for some publications that I love and
am proud to write for--Spin, Penthouse,
Salon--and I am about to start a monthly column for Modern
Drummer. I have a radio show with Greg Kot, "Sound Opinions," the
world's only rock 'n' roll talk show, which airs every Tuesday from 10 to
midnight on one of the Midwest's best rock stations, WXRT-FM, and we've been
doing that for three years, and have some pretty high hopes for syndicating
it. (It's also up on the web at www.soundopinions.net.) Basically, I'm doing
exactly what I want to do already, and can't see myself stopping any time
soon. So how's that for a plan?
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