VaGUE MAGAZINE

Count Five, seen here losing out to Frank Langella for the title role in Dracula, hit it big in 1966 with “Psychotic Reaction,” a direct steal from the Yardbirds which current psychedelic band Television have been known to massacre.

THE ROOTS OF ROCK

By Lester Bangs

ll right, all right, I’ll do it. I’ll finish off the job of turning punk (ethos, music, style, lifestyle; you name it into an academically definable commodity so they can hold seminars on it in liberal Jr. colleges and so it can be recognized as nothing more than a tucking formula just like everything eke; I’ll give you whatever you want. I’m just a freelance hack writer which is merely a synonymn for just another tucking hooker, plus which I didn’t have many scruples in the first place or I wouldn’t have gotten so deeply involved in the earlier punk scam and been so closely identified with it that you would ask me to write this article, plus which I need the money from the San Francisco dillettames who run this magazine.
Speaking strictly historically, since when did San Fran have anything to do with punk rock anyway? S.F.’s involvement with the movement now reemerging under the “New Wave” umbrella dates back to when Rolling Stone made the mistake in December, 1968, of putting Rob Tyner of the MC5 on their cover when they hadn’t even seen or heard the group vet. Imagine Jann & Co.’s embarrassment when the album came out. The first thing I ever had published in a real live check-paying magazine anywhere was my review of the MC5’s Kick Out the Jams in Stone. I had bought it on the basis of aforesaid feature, and thought it was a plate of crap. Now I think it’s great, of course, but then again now I would like it even if I still thought it was a plate of crap. The point of all this is crucial to this whole article: WE PUNK ROCK FANS LIKE SHIT Qt ‘A SHIT. The dirtiest word in the Anglo-American lexicon to us is “competence.” What has always made rock ‘n’ roll the quintessentially democratic, ultimately all-American artform is THAT IT TAKES NO TALENT WHATSOEVER. Any kid with the nerve and a guitar can get up and do it. Punk in general is a reductio ad absurdam, if you like, of that principle, which, restated in terms Leslie Fiedler if not Rolling Stone could understand, means that this is not music at all in the first place, but rather an attitude. It’s a way of carrying yourself, of walking and talking and acting and even tucking. Like I’m starting my own band now, as everyone in the Free World who is sick of the Eagles and Frampton and disco etc. should be doing this very moment, and at one of our preliminary rehearsals there’s this groupie cum porno actress there who says she knows a guitarist out on Staten Island, who “is really competent.” It sounded like she said “He eats dogshit three meals a day and plays guitar like Divine twangs her butthole.” She even wrote down his name and phone number on a piece of paper: “John—535-4067—COMPETENT GUITARIST.” Get that! Now do you think there’s a chance in hell I’m gonna call that guy? I’d rather have my landlord’s bitchily virginal repressed Italian old maid sister—at least she’s got her nasty disposition and general frustration going for her.


Count Five, seen here losing out to Frank Langella for the title role in Dracula, hit it big in 1966 with “Psychotic Reaction,” a direct steal from the Yardbirds which current psychedelic band Television have been known to massacre.
THE ROOTS OF ROCK By Lester Bangs ll right, all right, I’ll do it. I’ll finish off the job of turning punk (ethos, music, style, lifestyle; you name it into an academically definable commodity so they can hold seminars on it in liberal Jr. colleges and so it can be recognized as nothing more than a tucking formula just like everything eke; I’ll give you whatever you want. I’m just a freelance hack writer which is merely a synonymn for just another tucking hooker, plus which I didn’t have many scruples in the first place or I wouldn’t have gotten so deeply involved in the earlier punk scam and been so closely identified with it that you would ask me to write this article, plus which I need the money from the San Francisco dillettames who run this magazine. Speaking strictly historically, since when did San Fran have anything to do with punk rock anyway? S.F.’s involvement with the movement now reemerging under the “New Wave” umbrella dates back to when Rolling Stone made the mistake in December, 1968, of putting Rob Tyner of the MC5 on their cover when they hadn’t even seen or heard the group vet. Imagine Jann & Co.’s embarrassment when the album came out. The first thing I ever had published in a real live check-paying magazine anywhere was my review of the MC5’s Kick Out the Jams in Stone. I had bought it on the basis of aforesaid feature, and thought it was a plate of crap. Now I think it’s great, of course, but then again now I would like it even if I still thought it was a plate of crap. The point of all this is crucial to this whole article: WE PUNK ROCK FANS LIKE SHIT Qt ‘A SHIT. The dirtiest word in the Anglo-American lexicon to us is “competence.” What has always made rock ‘n’ roll the quintessentially democratic, ultimately all-American artform is THAT IT TAKES NO TALENT WHATSOEVER. Any kid with the nerve and a guitar can get up and do it. Punk in general is a reductio ad absurdam, if you like, of that principle, which, restated in terms Leslie Fiedler if not Rolling Stone could understand, means that this is not music at all in the first place, but rather an attitude. It’s a way of carrying yourself, of walking and talking and acting and even tucking. Like I’m starting my own band now, as everyone in the Free World who is sick of the Eagles and Frampton and disco etc. should be doing this very moment, and at one of our preliminary rehearsals there’s this groupie cum porno actress there who says she knows a guitarist out on Staten Island, who “is really competent.” It sounded like she said “He eats dogshit three meals a day and plays guitar like Divine twangs her butthole.” She even wrote down his name and phone number on a piece of paper: “John—535-4067—COMPETENT GUITARIST.” Get that! Now do you think there’s a chance in hell I’m gonna call that guy? I’d rather have my landlord’s bitchily virginal repressed Italian old maid sister—at least she’s got her nasty disposition and general frustration going for her.
The Shadows of Knight played old blues standards in adenoidal neoersatz-Yardbirds style.	They like competence in San Francisco, though—look how long they’ve supported the Dead, who are actually incompetent on purpose which could almost make them punks except that they’re sentimental about it, and punks are never sentimental, only hostile or confused. Frisco critics and opinion moulders in general always dumped on the instrumental talents in the original Big Brother & the Holding Company, who were about the only group (except the Flamin’ Groovies) from that decade-old farce who had anything to do with what’s going on now, and that was only because Jim Gurley—l think it was Jim Gurley—was from Detroit. One of them was from there anyway, what difference does it make—all hippies look the same—but the point is that true to his Motor City roots he played like an absolute slob, real raw and rangy and grating,
a more than passing affection for feedback and general proclivities in the direction of offensive noise, which has never been something that San Franciscans in general or R. Stone poobahs in specific have been particularly anxious to sanction. So they (the Stone boys and confreres) dumped all over Gurley & Co.—”Oh, Janis is such a one of the all-time greatest blues singers since Betsy Smith or whatever that old black bitch’s name was; she should dump those chumps and get a tight soul backup.” Which as history recalls was exactly what she did, resulting in albums like Kozmik Blues, wherein she revealed herself as an even more stridently talentless non-entity than we’d all suspected before.
These are the Sonics, from the great Northwest. All kinds of rock critic/archivists think they were hot patootles. The author of this article thinks they blew. The original MC5 in full glossalalial spew.
Page 2

THE ROOTS OF ROCK

Page 2