This last interview with him was done just a few weeks before his death….a great read if you have a few minutes:
http://www.furious.com/perfect/lesterbangs.html
This really jumps out at me because he was exactly right about where rock music was heading.
What do you think about radio today?
I never listen to it. I don’t even have any opinion of it, because it’s so bad that I don’t even bother. I will say this, when Michael [Ochs] and I were traveling across country, we traveled like for six weeks to Detroit, Chicago, Nashville, Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and New Orleans, then drove back here. And it feels real weird to be working on a book about rock ‘n’ roll at a time when radio is so bad that we kept it off most of the time. There was no rock ‘n’ roll on the trip.
You don’t think it’s as important a force as it was in the ‘60’s.
I don’t think rock ‘n’ roll is as important a force as it was in the ‘60’s. Rock ‘n’ roll is getting like jazz used to be—it’s big in Europe. Those kids out there, they’re concerned with getting good jobs and stuff. They’ll go see Styx and it’s like spectacle. It’s very much leisure-time activity right now. It’s just something to consume.
Do you think there’s a danger of rock ‘n’ roll becoming extinct?
Yeah, sure. Definitely.
What would there be to take its place?
Video games. A lot of things we don’t like to think about.
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