Lester Bangs

Lester Bangs was an American music journalist born Leslie Conway Bangs on December 13, 1948, in Escondido, California. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential rock critics of the 1970s, known for his work in Creem and Rolling Stone.

He was raised by his mother, a Jehovah's Witness, after his father died in a fire when Bangs was a small child. The family moved to El Cajon, near San Diego, where he grew up reading Beat literature and listening to jazz and early rock and roll. In 1969 he answered an open call for record reviewers from Rolling Stone and began submitting unsolicited reviews; his first published piece was a notice of the MC5 album Kick Out the Jams.

In 1971 he moved to Detroit to work full time for Creem, a rival magazine where he served as record review editor and later editor. His freewheeling, first-person essays on Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, and the Clash helped to define a confrontational style of rock criticism. He was an early champion of punk and of obscure American garage rock, and he also performed and recorded as a singer with several bands.

Bangs left Creem for New York in 1976 and freelanced for The Village Voice, Penthouse, and other publications. He died on April 30, 1982, in Manhattan, of an accidental overdose of prescription medication. His selected essays were collected in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, edited by Greil Marcus and published in 1987.

The name Lester is an English surname turned given name, originally derived from the city of Leicester in England, whose name combines an old British river name with the Old English ceaster meaning Roman fort. He used this masculine name throughout his writing career.