With Sympathy, Lester Bangs xxoo
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.
I think that even right now it's like rock 'n' roll doesn't exist. On the one side you have this utterly homogenized margarine, and on the other side you have a bunch of people celebrating total incompetence. The idea of New Wave originally was like do it yourself, and because there's no rules, you come up with something really inventive and creative and good and interesting. Not just saying, "I can't play." Like Brian Eno gets these tapes from assholes that say, "Hi. We can't play our instruments either. Listen to this." He writes them back and says, "Listen, that's not the point." It's not that you're good because you can't play. So I don't know. These days, there's so little that is rock ‘n' roll or that has any kind of vitality to it. It's almost like it doesn't exist right now.
Everybody wants to be so hip and they won't like... I had a Grateful Dead album out that I was playing for a while, and people would come in here like this writer from the NME and they'd be like, "Are you listening to the Grateful Dead?" You know what I mean, you're not supposed to say you like something by the Grateful Dead, you're only supposed to like Public Image, Ltd. until somebody else tells you you're not supposed to like that anymore. And that's just shit. I hate that kind of stuff. The NME is like the king of that. They were political for like a year and a half when it was correct to be, and then they were into fashion. Fuck that. You have to go by what you believe in, what you feel. That's the only way anybody ever accomplished anything. I'm sure there'll be some kind of renaissance of rock ‘n' roll again as a backlash if anything against all this electronic computer stuff. There'll probably be a backlash of people doing things with acoustic instruments or just the human voice unadorned, a capella and stuff like that.
I think that even right now it's like rock 'n' roll doesn't exist. On the one side you have this utterly homogenized margarine, and on the other side you have a bunch of people celebrating total incompetence. The idea of New Wave originally was like do it yourself, and because there's no rules, you come up with something really inventive and creative and good and interesting. Not just saying, "I can't play." Like Brian Eno gets these tapes from assholes that say, "Hi. We can't play our instruments either. Listen to this." He writes them back and says, "Listen, that's not the point." It's not that you're good because you can't play. So I don't know. These days, there's so little that is rock ‘n' roll or that has any kind of vitality to it. It's almost like it doesn't exist right now.
Everybody wants to be so hip and they won't like... I had a Grateful Dead album out that I was playing for a while, and people would come in here like this writer from the NME and they'd be like, "Are you listening to the Grateful Dead?" You know what I mean, you're not supposed to say you like something by the Grateful Dead, you're only supposed to like Public Image, Ltd. until somebody else tells you you're not supposed to like that anymore. And that's just shit. I hate that kind of stuff. The NME is like the king of that. They were political for like a year and a half when it was correct to be, and then they were into fashion. Fuck that. You have to go by what you believe in, what you feel. That's the only way anybody ever accomplished anything. I'm sure there'll be some kind of renaissance of rock ‘n' roll again as a backlash if anything against all this electronic computer stuff. There'll probably be a backlash of people doing things with acoustic instruments or just the human voice unadorned, a capella and stuff like that.