Blondie [Paperback]

Lester bangs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 16, 1980

, 96 pages with numerous photographs in black & white and colour

Product Details

• Paperback: 91 pages
• Publisher: Fireside; First Edition edition (June 16, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671255401
• ISBN-13: 978-0671255404
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #476,884 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lester on a Rant, March 14, 2005

By 

Scott Coblio "kookoo guy" (West Hollywood, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blondie (Paperback)

I agree with the reviewers who say this one's worth it for the pictures alone. Lester Bangs is kind of the Norman Mailer of rock journalism, and Debbie is his Marilyn. Only instead of Debbie being his muse, she seems to have become the target for all his frustrated ambition! Confessedly jealous of Blondie's success, as Lester hung out on the periphery of the CBGS's scene and had a band of his own that went nowhere, there also seems to be a note of misogyny in his tone. Not that he's an all-out woman hater, more like he is threatened by the idea of a beautiful but unavailable woman. Over and over, Lester hits us over the head with the idea that the point of music is to hear passion expressed, and by his criteria, Blondie and their emotional distance operated on the opposite principle. He just can't get over Debbie's independent lyrical stance--even though it's juxtaposition to her glamorous image is the cornerstone of Blondie's appeal! Songs like "Just Go Away" really get Lester mad. He harps alot on the sexuality used in marketing Blondie, not because he is prudish but because he seems to regard it as false advertising! Once again, he ignores the fact that Debbie's starlet image was part of the package from Blondie's inception in 1976, and that the contrast between that image and Blondie's quickfrozen lyrics might be compelling.

That was always the reason I loved the band so much. If Debbie had done the old bump-n-grind, she would have just been a musical Farrah Fawcett and we wouldn't remember her today as anything but a flash in the pan. She remains an icon because of the very duality that scared Lester so much. Luckily, he was a good enough writer that even his ranting is interesting, and as I've said before, the book is fabulously illustrated. Although it's strange to read a book on Blondie that cautions the reader against listening to their records! "If the point of music is to hear passion expressed, what harm are we doing ourselves by listening to this?" Calm down, Lester.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Revealing rant, July 13, 2010

By 

ihasch "ihasch" (New York) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Blondie (Paperback)

This book is an historical curiosity because it is a book about Blondie by Lester Bangs, arguably the most influential rock critic the United States ever produced. There was a time when a rock critic could almost achieve a limited rock star status. Bangs achieved such notoriety that he is even depicted in the film Almost Famous. Yet to achieve this status, one is left to wonder what the rock critic is all about: the music or himself. Is a book by Lester Bangs ever really about the subject or ultimately about Lester Bangs?

Lester Bangs was in fact an acute example of rock critic as rock star wannabe. With his rock critic duties he was also the lead singer of his own band, Birdland, playing the same circuit of NYC clubs that Blondie had graduated from. He knew Debbie Harry and Chris Stein by being part of the scene. They were even present when his band made its debut at CBGB. It was for this reason that they commissioned him to do what was intended to be an authorized biography of the band. Of course Blondie being Blondie, this seemingly innocuous choice misfired, and the authorized band biography became an attack on the band itself. In the end the band was no worse for wear. Bangs, upon analysis, was not so lucky.

Legend has it that Bangs wrote this book in a weekend. In fact, the book has an incoherent, sometimes ranting tone that makes this seem all too likely. To say the book is incoherent barely does this production justice. It is schizophrenic, changing in tone with great abruptness. In keeping with the purported rushed nature of the book, Bangs writes in a manner that is almost a form of stream-of-consciousness; rather than a direct narrative Bangs digresses into topics that interest him or that he feels are significant.

The book starts with a "chronologue", a brief introduction that appears to have been written after the rest of the book. In this brief introduction Bangs repeatedly states that he was jealous of Blondie's success. Having repeated this, he then states that at some point he was no longer jealous, and helpfully notes that his own band had broken up. This is in fact an argumentative tactic called "removing the sting," where someone, recognizing a vulnerability, mentions it right off the bat in an effort to deflect it. It is easy to see that someone read the manuscript, told Bangs how embittered he sounded, which prompted Bangs to discuss his jealousy at the onset to induce readers to disregard the point. But ultimately it stands instead as an admission.

From there, Bangs presents a superficial history of the band that draws primarily from magazine interviews. That Bangs, having gravitated to the NYC scene could potentially provide insight into the band's early history and the scene itself was the primary reason I purchased the book, so I found the lightness of his discussion of the band's history as it rose from the NYC rock circuit to be disappointing. Bangs does interview a few former members, airing some sour grapes, which is keeping with the somewhat snide to negative tone of the book in general. He also makes a factual error, claiming that the band was called Angel and the Snake for a year when this name lasted two gigs. I found that some of the early magazine articles I have read were more informative, although he did interview those involved in the production of the demos and first two albums, and their insights are useful. Bangs later complained of lack of participation by the band members, so maybe there were mitigating circumstances.

Musically, Bangs was a fan of the 1975 demos and the first Blondie album, which, it is noteworthy, he praises for being fun and inventive with its references to pop culture, comic books, prime time television, etc. He did not like Plastic Letters as much, believing the album to be more disjointed. In interviewing the producer of that album the point was made that there seemed to be an effort to deemphasize Debbie Harry (as much as a lead singer could be) on Plastic Letters, and that the song choice reflected this. As it is true that she had less songwriting involvement on this album than on the other Blondie albums of the time, it is again a useful insight.

Up to this point the book is not great, but it's not so bad either. However when the book reaches the discussion of Parallel Lines, Blondie's great commercial breakthrough, Bangs begins to fly off the rails. At that precise point, Bangs's jealousy seems to overwhelm him, and he seems fixated on the need to explain away the success of this album, looking for an explanation of this success that circumvents the simplest explanation: maybe it was just a very good album. Even with no coy admissions nor any background information about Bangs's personal musical aspirations, the timing of this fulmination is too exact to miss. The band is attacked as being "cold," light weight, as comparing unfavorably to the comic book band, The Archies. Blondie is also called a "non-entity."

Continuing in this vein, Bangs believes that he has found the skeleton key to the album's success in some type of Warholian trick where the lyrics on the album are ultimately about nothing at all. I must say that Bangs's point is not very compelling. Does a song need to be about something to be a good song? Bangs at an earlier point in the book even praised "Louie, Louie" as being more enduring than Sgt. Pepper, and what was that song about exactly?

It is, however, still a potentially interesting point, and one that another rock critic I once read had seemed impressed with by the authority of Bangs's name alone. But a point is not valid simply because a person writes it; it has to be demonstrated. As a bare minimum of this type of exegesis, Bangs, far from getting by on his name, should have been expected to engage in an actual analysis of song lyrics. Yet beyond expressing his opinion Bangs does not analyze song lyrics at all. And not unexpectedly in light of this, the argument itself does not stand much scrutiny. For some reason millions of people seem to know what Heart of Glass is about ("once I had love and it was a gas, soon turned out to be a pain in the ass"), so much so that it was recently used in a high profile ad campaign. One Way or Another is likewise easily understood as a song about stalking and obsession. Fade Away and Radiate simply about falling asleep in front of the television. Just Go Away too is not exactly obscure. Pretty Baby. Sunday Girl. Picture this. All of these songs seem to be about something readily discernible. And were the songs Bangs thought were inventive and fun, X-Offender, In the Sun, In the Flesh, Rip Her To Shreds, Man Overboard, etc., also against all appearances about nothing? Somehow I don't think the appearance of these songs being about something is an illusion. Bangs was of course free to prove otherwise, but beyond declamation he doesn't bother.

This discussion also becomes a matter of embarrassment for Bangs. In his desire to attack Blondie for lyrical meaninglessness, Bangs overlooks the fact that Hanging On the Telephone and Will Anything Happen?, which he cites as examples of the band's supposed Warholian outlook, were written not by Blondie but by Jack Lee of the Nerves, who no one I'm aware of ever accused of being a Warholian acolyte. The failure of Bangs, while engaged in criticism centered on a band's alleged idiosyncratic motivations in song composition, to know the songwriting credits listed on the album is not a testament to his credibility.

Even less so is the fact that having spent several pages attempting to criticize the band for lack of lyrical meaning, Bangs then in self-contradictory terms admits that yes, songs like Dreaming and Union City Blue and Shayla are earnest and meaningful songs. This can only undermine his argument further.

However all of this was really a preliminary to what becomes Bangs's main criticism: that Blondie's music allegedly lacks strong emotion. That music is supposedly all about the expression of passion is something Bangs is so emphatic about that he places this claim in capital letters. It is again a questionable point; does a song have to express strong emotions to be a worthwhile song? And what type of emotion? In performance? In lyrics? Isn't having fun or being ironic just as genuine an emotional expression?

Nor does this assertion seem to fit Blondie songs like In the Flesh or Heart of Glass or One Way or Another or Dreaming, Union City Blue, Shayla, etc.

Yet applicable or not, it is a criticism that is highly suggestive. After all, how many songs by Buddy Holly or the Beatles or Stones or Kinks or Doors or Cream or Bowie or Ramones or Talking Heads, et. al. truly express strong emotions no matter how intensely they are performed? Are there instances in all of Bangs's writings about rock music where he made a similar criticism of another band? Which of course leads to the elephant in the room; that all of these and other examples are male-led bands while the one band Bangs intently applies this criticism to is fronted by a woman.

In considering whether this is mere coincidence, it is interesting to note that early on in the journalistic reports about Blondie, Debbie Harry's attitude towards writing and performing as a woman lead singer was a prominent feature. Debbie talked about her belief that a woman lead singer did not have to "bleed for her audience" like Joplin. Nor did she have to write songs in the traditional pining role of women in songs like Leader of the Pack. Debbie Harry penned songs like Man Overboard or Just Go Away and especially Heart of Glass approach love from the totally opposite, non-traditional point of refusing to be victimized by it, from a point of view... Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars rock journalism in the seventies..., August 12, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Blondie (Paperback)

This is less a book about Blondie, although that's most of the material, than it is a book about the state of rock in 1970's, the origins of punk, and the insane journalism it inspired, of which Mr. Bangs was a prime example. The man COULD write. (If you've seen "ALMOST FAMOUS", a film which I didn't like, Phillp Seymour Hoffman, whom I do like, plays Bangs).

Lots of great photos you've never seen, too.