89 Quotes by Lester Bangs

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.

If there’s nothing more poisonous than bigotry, there’s nothing more pathetic than liberal guilt.

They wouldn’t be heroes if they were infallible, in fact they wouldn’t be heroes if they weren’t miserable wretched dogs, the pariahs of the earth, besides which the only reason to build up an idol is to tear it down again.

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.

Irving Berlin said, “Popular music is popular because a lot of people like it.” That doesn’t mean it’s good or bad – that’s the equivalent of arguing the merits of hotdogs versus hamburgers. What the hell difference does it make?

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.

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.

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 the proliferating falsifications of what I and everyone I know experienced once in what it is now so convenient to call the “fifties” or “sixties,” as if life was really measured or lived in arbitrary decades, when the history books are sold like comix.