Lester Bangs

[Gazza]

Hey, I've been trying to find some stuff of his about the Mac, in particular, the Lindsey and Stevie era. So far I've found these rather lovely words about Dreams...

The song was so honest and accurate that it became heartbreak instead of just being about it. It was cleansing for everyone who heard it, which was everyone period.

And this...

Two concepts to which the decade has been notably unkind were the worship of guitar players and the tradition of the English supergroup. Eric Clapton post-junk pulled a very faint retrenchment with 1974's 461 Ocean Blvd. and then ceased to matter at all while Jeff Beck disappeared into fusionoid jazz and the Who and Led Zeppelin have soldiered (staggered) gallantly on in the face of quantifying irrelevance. Townshend might a wrote some halfway decent songs the second half of the decade if he'd ever stopped worrying so damn much about the fact he didn't die before he got old, and even if Led Zep weren't a bloated, turgid monstrosity for you in front they've certainly achieved same now. The Limey guitar hero who probably best sums up the ethos of the age (in much the same way as McCartney) was Peter Frampton, who left boogie plodders Humble Pie for the even more plodding Frampton's Camel, after which he ruled the world for a year or so by figuring out how to make heavy metal for housewives (pour a lot of Valium in the mix). A far more compelling brand of superstar pop was dished up by Fleetwood Mac in Rumours and the epochal album that preceded it - they seemed truly a group that no one could dislike, making radio fodder that reflected the confusions of our own lives, though with Tusk it seems that they too have lost their way, either don't know any longer what they want to say, or have forgotten how to say it, or both.

Anyone got any other stuff?