I’ve been around this phenomenon a fair amount. Even writers who the world has judged to be utter failures often view themselves as unfairly judged, and believe their time will come, even if this time will come only after they’re dead.

Poets may be the worst. But it’s no fun to be related to or closely connected to any of those suffering from this malady.

Number one, everybody should realize that all this “art” and “bop” and “rock-’n’-roll” and whatever is all just a joke and a mistake, just a hunka foolishness so stop treating it with any seriousness or respect at all and just recognize the fact that it’s nothing but a Wham-O toy to bash around as you please in the nursery, it’s nothing but a goddam Bonusburger so just gobble the stupid thing and burp and go for the next one tomorrow; and don’t worry about the fact that it’s a joke and a mistake and a bunch of foolishness as if that’s gonna cause people to disregard it and do it in or let it dry up and die, because it’s the strongest, most resilient, most invincible Superjoke in history, nothing could possibly destroy it ever, and the reason for that is precisely that it is a joke, mistake, foolishness. The first mistake of Art is to assume that it’s serious. I could even be an asshole here and say that “Nothing is true; everything is permitted,” which is true as a matter of fact, but people might get the wrong idea. What’s truest is that you cannot enslave a fool.

–Lester Bangs

I’ve read that PSH was really sick when he did that scene with the Miller character. You can see he’s flushed and sweating. But Hoffman rose to the occasion.

Fifteen year old William Miller has just toured with a rock band as a journalist and must write up his experience for Rolling Stone magazine.

Lester Bangs: Aw, man. You made friends with them. See, friendship is the booze they feed you. They want you to get drunk on feeling like you belong.

William Miller: Well, it was fun.

Lester Bangs: Because they make you feel cool. And hey. I met you. You are not cool.

William Miller: I know. Even when I thought I was, I knew I wasn’t.

Lester Bangs: That’s because we’re uncool. And while women will always be a problem for us, most of the great art in the world is about that very same problem. Good-looking people don’t have any spine. Their art never lasts. They get the girls, but we’re smarter.

William Miller: I can really see that now.

Lester Bangs: Yeah, great art is about conflict and pain and guilt and longing and love disguised as sex, and sex disguised as love… and let’s face it, you got a big head start.

William Miller: I’m glad you were home.

Lester Bangs: I’m always home. I’m uncool.

William Miller: Me too!

Lester Bangs: The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.

William Miller: I feel better.

Lester Bangs: My advice to you. I know you think those guys are your friends. You wanna be a true friend to them? Be honest, and unmerciful.

It’s a great combination of Truth, and tongue-in-cheek humor.

Actually, I do have a favorite Neil Young album, “After the Gold Rush,” which neo excerpts with “Only Love Can Break Your Heart.” I could hear the music and the lyrics cut through me.

Back then I was trying hard to be a Good Hippie. “Tell Me Why” and “After the Gold Rush” were Hippie Gospel.
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Is it hard to make arrangements with yourself
When you’re old enough to repay but young enough to sell?

–“Tell Me Why”
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I’m not sure what I thought that meant, but it sounded like a profound moral question. I was 18. Maybe I’ll try Young again with “Zuma.”

In this topic I’ve discovered I’ve had Gene Pitney and Gary Puckett mixed up since high school.

“I put my trust in you
I put my trust in you”

and then: “In you, in you, in you…
I put my trust… in you.”

Those lines, and the manner in which Ian Curtis sings them, have hit home with me for (by now) 40 years. I don’t like to discuss Joy Division, as maybe I like to imagine their best material is just for me. I don’t like their fans, and I don’t like to see the band’s name on t-shirts. I didn’t want to view the film about Ian Curtis leading up to his suicide. When I heard the insincere, just showbiz cover version Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails performed live of Ian’s great song “Dead Souls” my opinion of Trent and NIN considerably dropped.

But I’m sharing here.

Zuma is by far my favorite album by Neil Young. I like Young’s lead guitar. Then comes Tonight’s the Night. I came to know Jimmy McDonough, the writer for Rolling Stone who wrote Shakey, the biography of Neil (a book that’s rather acclaimed) in the late 90s or early 00s, through my friendship in those days with Richard Meltzer, the rock critic who wrote The Aesthetics of Rock (among other works) and lyrics for various songs by Blue Oyster Cult. Meltzer had known Lester Bangs, Lou Reed, Jimi Hendrix, Patti Smith, on and on. When Peter Buck of REM or Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth passed through town they would seek him out. (He only knew of their music — and of Nirvana, for instance — through me, as he’d stopped listening to anything but jazz and classical after maybe 1981. He remained interesting to talk to about music, though, and had an encyclopedic memory. He was a dead ringer for Robert de Niro, enough so that he always wore hats in order to look less so.

Both Meltzer and McDonough were somewhat disreputable characters, ultimately, but I guess somehow I fit in. Meltzer and my friendship ended in 2004, by the way, when he called me, just before the election, and said, “You’re the only person I know who doesn’t think Bush is Hitler!” I replied: “I think he’s a politician. He’ll serve out his term and then go home.” That was the last time we ever spoke. My young wife at the time, very pretty, whom he sought to charm, was bored stiff by him. I had wearied of how obsessed by anti-war politics he had become.

Oh, I liked Gene Pitney too. He did some very memorable songs.

I checked it out and that is a very fine cover. Undoubtedly superior in sophistication to Welch’s version. Yet for me, Welch communicates the feeling that he’s actually going through a wrenching heartbreak. Whereas, the very sophistication of Jareau lessens it for me.

neo,

That’s a heartbreak song for sure, I happen to prefer Karla Bonoff’s cover.

huxley,

Linda Ronstadt is, by far my favorite female singer. “Heart Like a Wheel” is a bit too close to home for me.

TommyJay,

That late scene with Mozart bedridden, while he dictates to Salieri is IMO the closest anyone has come to providing a real insight into Mozart’s unmatched genius. As he’s dictating it, he’s also composing it with the composition just flowing out of him without forethought. Each note for Mozart inevitably reveals the next… no hesitation, no doubt.

Mozart had in composing, what Bach could do in his ability to play every instrument in the orchestra. When asked how he could so easily play them all, reportedly puzzled he replied, “it’s really very simple, you just put the right finger, in the right place, at the right time”…

I’ll have to check out the Director’s cut.

Orbison’s “Crying” is on my “feelin the blues” playlist.

That singer, singing “Crying” in Spanish, absolutely nails it.