Lou Reed. RIP. One of the great rockers for sure, and a great writer. To my mind he was someone who gave thought and feeling to important things. He didn’t patronize the listener or suck up to crass business interests. He was an original, a sound artist, something like that. 

Quick story:  I’ve bothered to get one autograph in my lifetime past the age of fifteen. It was Lou Reed’s. I was in Manhattan, staying around the corner from where he was debuting the tour for the album “New York,” doing a five-night stand at the St. James Theater. So, I was walking by the side of the theater, but on the other side of the street, with a couple of friends, around midnight. We didn’t go to the show, but noticed a limousine parked outside the stage door. There were maybe one or two people hanging around the limo, and my friends and I deduced it was Lou’s ride. So we walked over to the limo just as a guy comes out of the stage door and says Lou will be out in a few minutes. My friends and I were like, “WOW.” We were only just starting to appreciate Lou Reed’s music at the time, but he was quickly vaulting up into something like VIP status in our estimation. We thought it strange there weren’t more people waiting for him.

Anyway, Lou comes out – his eyes fried wide open – almost like he was recently electrocuted. He moves past us and into the car, and then rolls down his window to chat, which basically meant trading one or two word responses to handful of questions and comments like… I can’t even remember – stupid stuff, probably. Somebody gave me a pen and I grabbed a napkin off the street for Lou to sign. He grabbed my napkin, and just as he did that, a random passerby on the other side of the street was shouting to someone else named Steve – “Steve – Steve – Steve!” Lou Reed returned the napkin to me with the words “Best of luck, Steve.” Ha-ha.
 
I still have the napkin somewhere. Coincidentally, the next night I was riding in an elevator of the hotel where I stayed. I shared the elevator with a stranger who was in the city with a church group. When this person had free time, he proceeded to tell me, he wandered around taking pictures of celebrities like an amateur paparazzi. He was in the background on the night I met Lou Reed and he recognized me from there. He took a great picture of Lou sitting in the car, and he gave it to me (since he didn’t know Lou Reed from Mr. XYZ, he had no reason to keep the picture for himself). So, not only do I have best wishes to Steve from Lou Reed, I have a picture of Lou sitting in his limo from that night given to me by a random dude – some kind of youth minister no less – that I met in an elevator.
 
That is not all… The night after that, I was walking down that same street across from the stage door of the St. James Theater. I noticed the stage door was cracked a little bit… so I went over and let myself in. Yes, I did. There were a couple roadie-looking guys, maybe sound techs, who saw me, but didn’t care. It was Lou Reed’s encore of the fifth and last night at the St. James… I got to watch him do – if memory serves - White Light/ White Heat, Satellite of Love and Sweet Jane.  I remember it being absolutely incredible. 
 

Lester Bangs was a writer’s writer for Rock criticism. He was brash and unabashed; as colorful as his subject matter, his passion for culture was infectious. As a bonus, he could string together complete sentences, (not necessarily a pre-requisite for the cutting-edge Rock Writers of his day). Lester Bangs could write and he had enough charisma and cache to keep getting gigs – albeit garbage gigs - after repeated bridge burning. He left a notable legacy as an unflinching misanthrope.

After a read of selected writings recently, the bold bombast of Lester Bangs still seems potent and important. He was notorious for scorching the cultural landscape of the Golden Gods, and challenging to the mindfulness of the consumer. He brilliantly took down the titans: Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Bowie, Sex Pistols, etc. He wrote like someone born to die, relentlessly punching away at an unfeeling, unthinking marketplace, and a culture that couldn’t and wouldn’t care less. We could use more of this today, though his style is as unemployable as ever.

Bangs didn’t accept that pop music had to be meaningless. He fought cynicism and keenly mocked creative self-seriousness, but over time, battling the superficial currents of the music business left him with unhealthy measures of both. He was not unlike John Henry up against the machine; eventually he was just worn out by trying too hard. Lester Bangs was an obsessive, and bless him for it. But, his occupational pan handling and tendency to self-medicate – heavily - underscores an inescapable contradiction within the main premise of his work: his job depended on an industry that obviously valued money over good art.

Lester Bangs was almost perversely expectant on the transformative powers of music. He set impossible standards; ultimately, he fell far short of them himself, (he died young – age thirty-three - in a rather cliché way: OD, looking like a bit of a scum bag). He would manically buy into and simultaneously reject the conceit of the musician as hero. He was a complicated person writing about complicated people, but his chosen medium demanded an oversimplification of the strange business of it all. He fought a good fight, but over time, a predictable downer obfuscated the vitality of his viewpoint. He was somewhat of a fool for elevating his subjects in the first place.

The downfall of Lester Bangs was fast and furious; sad associations, thinning taste, broke. His last writings have a feel of self-parody, and must have bummed him out greatly. He went out of his way to record some shitty music himself. The talent started to calcify, and he let go/ lost faith, became another first world burnout; a man too smart for his own skill set. It was too early for a man of his vision. He reached rare heights as a critic, especially in the Rock and Roll game, as one able to spit into the eye of conformity and make it seem viable.

MTV is awful in this day and age, but at one time I watched quite a bit of it – back in the silent commercial days. I was just a kid. My dad brought a box home one day to attach to the top of the TV. You would punch buttons and get like 8 more channels - pre-cable. I had heard about a 24 music channel called MTV. We hooked the box up and I hunted for MTV… The first video I saw was Romeo Void “Never Say Never…”

“I might like you better if we slept together/ 
But there's somethin'
 in your eyes that says
 / Maybe that's never
 / Never say never…”

I’ll never forget that moment. MTV was better than I had imagined. But, my mom - Irish Catholic and annoying - was in the room with me, so I had to act like I wasn’t interested in the video. In truth, it was all I could think about. Funny thing: I never saw the Romeo Void video again on MTV - or anywhere else for that matter (until years later on You Tube). It took me years to track down the name of the band and song.

I did see other cool things on MTV in the early days - Eddie Grant, David Bowie, Pat Benatar, the Pretenders, DEVO, Blondie, Duran Duran (Girls on Film and Rio videos in particular– yeah, I thought the boat shit was cool at the time - still like the keys/synths from Nick Rhodes in general), and a handful of other things. That first year or so of watching MTV introduced me to a bunch of music that I didn’t know anything about – being a kid from the sticks who was literally listening to Styx.

Book Review: Commando – The autobiography of Johnny Ramone

Commando, released in early 2013, is a good read for anyone interested in the Ramones, Punk Rock and the music business in general. Johnny Ramone, (real name, John Cummings), is succinct and to the point in this telling, the recollections fast and rich. The march through the years is brisk, unsentimental and the reader gets a sense of the real deal. This is the most definitive inside account of the Ramones - by default - seeing as Joey and Dee Dee died prior to the book coming together. Johnny himself was presumably on his deathbed at the time of writing, but illness didn’t dull his edge. Johnny Ramone had a strong point a view and he kept it going until the end. He could be boorish, but there is plenty of intelligence and humor in this memoir to lift the infrequent moments of mono vision.

The Ramones are on the short list of Punk’s greatest innovators. The influence of their music, style, attitude and pragmatic approach to the business behind it all is growing with time. They were original; an antithesis to institutionalized sounds and behaviors that water down most attempts at commercial music, and they were stronger because of it. As a band, they always intended to be great, even dreamt of being the greatest of all time. Their aspirations were sincere and raw, and it took real drive to overcome a lack of traditional musical ability and make it as far as they did. In the book, Johnny is candid about his expectations and goals, and his disappointment upon realizing the Ramones would be fated to something less than the rarified air of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

The Ramones recalibrated Rock music for the modern age. They kept songs tight and on point, eliminated the Blues and guitar solos; toured a no-nonsense stage show relentlessly, and they wore a uniform of leather and long hair throughout their career. They were geeks underneath it all, but cool as can be. Johnny Ramone was the architect behind the band’s operation; he was the Task Master, the aesthetic guide (or despot, depending on who you ask), and the main money manager. To hear him tell it, they kicked more ass than just about anyone despite certain limitations posed by his band mates: Dee Dee’s self-destructiveness and inability to take an order, Joey’s insecure “front man” prima donna prerogatives, and a series of drummers who were grating complainers, if not outright drunks. Tommy Ramone, the band’s original drummer, is the only person connected with the band to consistently receive high compliment from Johnny.

It was Tommy’s idea to start the band, and it was Tommy who would be the first to leave, after their third album, in a desperate attempt to reclaim his sanity. The Ramones were truly strange – and I don’t mean in a gimmicky way. The showbiz shtick stayed on the surface. Just below, the Ramones were four singular individuals who were often at odds with each other. Johnny was as unapologetically right wing as they come, (and if today’s right-wingers had good taste in music, this book would provide evidence that their ideology had a notable cultural legacy – at long last). Dee Dee Ramone, the band’s principal songwriter, was a sensitive soul with a hard drug problem, as well as a determined non-conformist. Joey, for his part, ran regular interference with band logistics and productivity stemming from his severe OCD and debilitating self-esteem issues. Marky Ramone, the second and longest tenured drummer, could be a melancholy alcoholic. You get the idea…

The Ramones took on piety in all forms with unrelenting humor. Deconstructing self-righteousness was about the extent of their musical statement, preferring instead to just rock and have a good time. But, the band’s inner mood was often sullen and sour. The band’s internal dialogue – both publicly and privately – was terse. To quote Johnny, Dee Dee was the “craziest guy you’re ever going to meet.” Johnny lacked sympathy for Joey’s OCD; instead dismissing him as unorganized and bothersome. Dee Dee would purposely write lyrics and act in ways that mocked Johnny’s conservatism and controlling nature. Johnny, in turn, would force everyone to listen to Rush Limbaugh in the touring van (they toured together in a single van through the course of their career - comrades). Joey would accuse Johnny of managing missteps, and characterize him as being a fascist. Johnny married Joey’s girlfriend. As so it went, on and on. The band was certainly beset with mental illness from the get-go, and all that heaviness went unsaid and largely unresolved within the Ramones.

They were dysfunctional, but it fell away somehow when they were on stage. The Ramones were remarkably tight as a performing outfit. Anyone who ever saw them live – whether they be punks, rockers, or metal-heads – will attest to the non-stop fierceness of their set. Always on time, (and only postponing a hand full of shows across a twenty-five year career), the Ramones were tougher than platitudes and rock star pretensions. They didn't pander to the audience, which I appreciate and admire the more I think about it. They charged into an uphill battle against a dull and slow-turning industry and managed to bring hilarity to the game. They held on to their integrity too, which may be their greatest legacy. To those who don’t understand Punk music – where it came from, how it has evolved (or not), over the years, and why it is still relevant today – the Ramones might appear one dimensional and cartoon-like. In truth, their path to greatness was anything but.

Commando is a rare telling from the inside of one of the best rock bands of any era. You don’t have to be a Ramones fan to appreciate, but it helps to know the scene from which they came. Johnny doesn’t mince words in his assessment of any and everything, and to his credit, he keeps things on point. He is unfair at times. One has to keep in mind the equally strong personalities of Dee Dee and Joey, who probably roll in their graves with this book. But, since they have all passed on, this is as good as it gets. Johnny’s shell cracks a bit when forced to come to terms with the death of his band mates. He offers touching reflections on Dee Dee and Joey, and it’s a little bit of emotional truth that goes a long way. Taken as a whole, Johnny Ramone’s Commando doesn’t take the posterity format too seriously. It seems like he had fun putting the book together, and I enjoyed reading it.