Lou Reed vs. Lester Bangs
"I will use my psychic junkie poet powers to foretell that you will overdose on Davron in the year of 1983."—Lou to Lester, according to The Last Male Poet
Discordia does not, it turns out, hate everything. Every other week, we share a piece of work from an artist who's earned our respect and affection.
There is art that moves us, and there is art that moves with us. This is Fellow Travellers.
Lou Reed vs. Lester Bangs
He was going to kill him. Lou Reed had not slept in four days, and it was going to be about three more to get done what he had to do. Lester Bangs had gone too far this time— even further than when he had referred to Lou as a fat pig. Lou Reed understood that he was a fat pig at the time, but so was Lester Bangs, and this time he was going to die. Lester Bangs was going to die, and Lou Reed was going to kill him. He was going to be murdered by Lou Reed. He understood Lester wrote for a living and was expected to court controversy, but that didn’t matter anymore, because he was going to be dead soon. Lester Bangs was going to be dead, killed by the hands of Lou Reed, who released Rock 'n' Roll Animal in 1974, which everyone agreed was a venerable 1974 live music powerhouse, in which he (Lou Reed) played live, searing rock and roll music and also pretended to inject heroin onstage. But the microphones recording the audience at the concert failed to record, so the applause you hear on the vinyl record is actually John Denver’s audience carefully spliced in, with a specific “flare-up” generated at the specific moment of Lou Reed’s arrival onstage— and now he was going to murder Lester Bangs. Lou Reed would asphyxiate Lester Bangs until he turned purple and died and also rip his tongue out, and then Lou Reed was going to stomp upon Lester Bangs’ fat fingers with his large, engineer-style motorcycle boots. Those fat fingers that typed up all this nonsense that paved the way for all of this violence and terror. Just like how he, Lou Reed, paved the way for generations of music culture via his rock and roll group: The Velvet Underground, sometimes featuring Nico (singular, mono nomic) and Doug Yule. He was going to stomp on Lester Bangs’ fat fucking face. Lester’s bones would crack and splinter, and probably green goo and pus and black ichor and slime would squelch and squirt out from the viscera and torn flesh that would now be all that was left of Lester Bangs’ shattered visage, making the room smell bad and thereafter resemblant to a charnel house. Lou Reed wasn’t exactly sure what it would make the room smell like. What he was exactly sure of was that the deeds he now premeditated to soon commit would far surpass any sadistic impulse he had previously depicted in his gritty yet vulnerable lyrics and songs concerning the denizens of New York City and Soviet-era West Berlin. Lou Reed resembled a vampire. He had not slept in four days and he was going to stay up three more. He was staying up until Lester Bangs was no longer breathing, and no longer alive or with us in the corporeal form. Lou Reed would not rest until Lester Bangs was dead and in hell and if anyone else had a problem with that—even God—then he would go up to heaven and kill God, because he was Lou Reed and Lou Reed said so. He passed up CBGB’s and the Mudd Club. At one point he even realized he was outside of seminal guitarist Robert Quine’s apartment, who he would soon also want to kill— but this was not that time. It was time to kill Lester Bangs, and everyone knew it. It was a hateful thing. It was a hateful thing that Lester Bangs wrote about Rachel, and now he was going to pay the ultimate price. Lou’s motorcycle boot would soon find Lester’s head and stomp his nasal cavity until it caved inwards, as though his motorcycle-booted heel had jammed in ice-crusted snow, but with a sloshy sound of crunching bone and tendon and spinal-column fluid. And then he would pull his teeth out and wear them on a special ring or even a necklace. Maybe his next album would be called: I fucking murdered Lester Bangs and his teeth are around my neck in a necklace. Perhaps they're on a keychain. It's none of your fucking business where Lester Bangs’ teeth are. I’m Lou Reed and I murdered him. Not that Lou was not conflicted. He realized that Lester also wrote how Lou indeed revolutionized a new style of guitar playing, particularly on White Light/White Heat, whose distortion feedback emulated the alto saxophone of Ornette Coleman, which reverberated through the streets of Manhattan in 1959, where it was taken in by a young Lou Reed who had snuck into the Cotton Club. But still, no one reminded Mount Vesuvius about all the virgins that had been microwaved when it started barfing lava and besides he was Mount Lou Fucking Reed. Just then we cut to Lester Bangs. Lester realized that he was sorry, and more importantly he realized that he was in danger. In short, Lester Bangs did not want to die. Lester Bangs was a rock and roll writer who proved that you could take enough cocaine, speed, and cough syrup to write about whatever the fuck you wanted. And here he was living the dream, except that he was about to be murdered by his dearest and most fantasized-about idol. He picked up the phone and began to dial, but just then the door burst open, and an angry Lou Reed entered into Lester's apartment. “Lou, I'm so sorry.” That’s ok, Lester. It doesn't matter. You are going to go to hell now. I'm going to send you to hell. If God decides you should go to heaven, I will go up to heaven and I will kill God as well. I am Lou Reed and I believe this. “I understand, Lou. I understand you can rend my heart and my head with your large boots.” Yes, I'm going to do that, Lester, and then I'm gonna put your teeth on a necklace, and I'm gonna call my next album: I killed fucking Lester Bangs and his teeth are on a necklace Or perhaps it's a keychain. Or perhaps it's none of your fucking business what I do with Lester Bangs' teeth, who I just murdered. “Lou. Please don't. Please. I actually really like Metal Machine Music now. The section around minute 8, on side 3— that's my favorite part.” “Bullshit. You have not listened that far.” “Yes I have. The feedback part where your guitar goes ooo eee ooo eee oooo owowowowo.” “Wow. You really have listened. Alright, just once I will not savage you. But I will use my psychic junkie poet powers to foretell that you will overdose on Davron in the year of 1983, just after being interviewed by an adolescent who aspires to be a rock journalist as well, as well for some retarded reason he will make your biography.” I have not read the biography of Lester Bangs, but I have read some collection of his published and unpublished writings and reviews. Personally I find the unpublished work to be better, and some of the most infamous works by him—such as “James Taylor Marked for Death”—to be somewhat overrated and not that great. However I'm sure it's a time-and-a-place thing, and it’s hard to adequately comprehend his posthumous influence, real or imagined, on things like Vice magazine and other bullshit. I think that Lester had a lot more to give to the world, and it's kind of tragic. Regardless of whether or not Lou Reed in some form called forth his premature demise— which we also can’t really hold against him considering it was a different time, and that Lou Reed at the bequest of his parents had undergone electroshock therapy, which would, noted, influence his later output— Due to my respect for both Bangs and Reed I will limit any further speculation (this may be amended for opportunities of future publication and I retain full publishing rights to the materials and concepts herein).
THE LAST MALE POET is a tool, the last male poet is a weapon. There were many other poets like it but this one is yours. Hail Discordia!
Interested in being a Fellow Traveller? Email your poetry, prose, visual art, etc. to discordia.sucks@gmail.com. We pay (not much), and pieces are collected a few times a year in a small print edition.
Fellow Travellers “Eyes” banner adapted from Opal Louis Nations’ “An Eyeball Alphabet” (1980).
RELATED
no such substance as "Davron"