Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [3]
Others provided editorial counsel that helped me determine which articles I would ultimately use or offered other forms of insight, advice, and help with niggling little details. They are Chuck Eddy, Ben Edmonds, Bill Holdship, Jaan Uhelszki Kaufman, Dave Marsh, Michael Ochs, RJ Smith, Carol Schloner Swanson, and Queenie Taylor. A few did double duty. University of Texas journalism student Dana Centola without fail met deadlines on inhuman amounts of inputting and added useful editorial input. Georgia Christgau not only provided incisive editorial counsel but also did some inputting herself. And Texas Monthly assistant editor Katy Vine also offered considerable, and considered, editorial insights: along with TM editorial assistant Jennifer Olsen, she supervised the magazine's UT student interns Andy Buck, Quincy Collins, Erin Donnelly, Allison Gray, Michelle Morris, and Chamlee Williams in the inputting of numerous pieces. Since Lester did all his writing in the precomputer era, there was a lot of inputting to do, and I was damn lucky to get it done by people who did not treat it like drudge work for even one line.
Andrew Halbreich and Rick Triplett helped with some vexing legal questions. Sam Staples kept me from falling apart by whacking some sense back into my computer whenever it started messing with me.
Jeri Pamp gamely negotiated and helped ease the solitude and the full gamut of, er, mood swings that this project brought out in me, hanging in there even when it must have seemed to her like I was barely there.
Theron Raines of Raines and Raines was Lester's agent when he was alive, and has continued in the same capacity for the estate. Edward Kastenmeier of Random House was the first editor to see the original proposal for this book, and jumped on it right away.
In as few instances as possible, where there were references I felt some readers might not understand because Lester's work was so of the moment, I have added explanatory footnotes. But because I believe that even with all the time that has elapsed Lester's work still stands on its own, I usually haven’t tried to introduce individual pieces or put them in a context. But I would like to explain briefly the sole exception, which is the three pieces gathered in the opening section called Drug Punk. That was also the title of an autobiographical book the teenage Lester wrote before he was ever published anywhere except in his high school newspaper and literary magazine. It's a maddeningly erratic manuscript, but pure Lester in so many respects, and some of its best moments set up the rest of this book so effectively. So please, have at it.
—John Morthland
Austin, Texas
June 2002
from Two Assassinations
and a Speedy Retreat
into Pastoral Nostalgias
Today Andy Warhol was assassinated—well, I shouldn’t say “assassinated,” he was shot by some chick who wanted to murder him, and right now he's in critical condition, 50-50 chance or so they say. I was over at my girlfriend Andy's today listening to my new William Burroughs album for the first time (it just came in the mail) when suddenly they shouted for me from the bedroom. When I went in Andy's mother told me the news. Somehow I got the feeling they were expecting me to get distraught or something, so I faked this bunch of guffaws. Actually the news had no effect on me, at least no kind that could be measured positively or negatively, except that kind of vibration that sudden real-life surrealism sets off in you. It blew my mind is what I meant to say. When you say “Blow my mind,” you don’t mean anything to do with sadness or happiness, you mean WHAM!, the sudden impact of something outrageous, incredible, unthinkable, and I guess you could say that