Theatre in Review: How to Be a Rock Critic (Under the Radar/The Public Theater)

	Erik Jensen. Photo: Craig Schwartz

The title of How to Be a Rock Critic is misleading; a better one might be A Guide to Career Burnout Before Thirty. Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen have devised this solo show from the writings of Lester Bangs, a ferocious founding father of rock music criticism who, at 21, was already busy sandblasting the sheen off the industry's most gilded idols. Passing through a series of key publications, his career soared, then crashed as, increasingly, he wondered if there was any point in chasing after so-called rock gods who, when seen close-up, were more often than not created out of clay. Driven by a host of personal demons, he dropped dead at the tender age of 34, done in by a cocktail of cough syrup, NyQuil, and Valium.

As portrayed by Jensen, Bangs' appearance doesn't even aspire to the level of unprepossessing. Clad in baggy jeans forever slipping down and a T-shirt proclaiming "Detroit Sucks," his hair and mustache permanently unkempt, he looks like a sort of aging fanboy bred in a moldy basement somewhere in some suburban subdivision. Which, in fact, is where he grew up, torn between a boozing, hell-raising father (who died young) and a Jehovah's Witness mother who dragged him along while she pitched copies of The Watchtower and Awake! to the unsuspecting housebound. Bangs eventually broke free, but life as a shoe salesman in El Cajon, California left much to be desired, even with free time spent pouring over the Beats -- William S. Burroughs, in particular, fascinates him -- and amassing a vast record collection.

As is typical of this type of show, Bangs gives us the once-over-lightly version of his career, beginning with little pieces in little magazines, followed by the big leap to Rolling Stone, at the time (the late 1960s) the official bible of the youth movement. There he makes his name, but he gets the gate after one too many pans of prominent acts. (As he notes, with considerable disdain, the magazine's advertising base consisted of record companies, making a joke of editorial independence.) He finds a more congenial home at Creem, which, in his description, is more like a frat house than a going publishing concern, but his writing thrives there -- It is, he notes, "a people's magazine" -- and it is there that he discovers heavy metal, which he cherishes as a middle finger poked in the eye of an already corporatized rock establishment. (Kvelling over the music of Iggy and the Stooges, he envisions "a counter-counterculture," a movement that dispenses with the foggy transcendentalism of flower power for a nihilistic rebel yell.) Even Creem eventually becomes too much of a business for his taste, so it's off to New York, where, at CBGB's -- his spiritual home -- he revels in the punk scene created by the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, Blondie, and many others.

Opening with the excuse that he has been up for thirty-two hours working on a review, Bangs becomes our reluctant host, handing out magazines and a handful of cans of beer while dispensing scathing opinions about Fleetwood Mac (anyone who likes them is invited to leave), Joni Mitchell (whose run-on lyrics are subjected to his withering examination), James Taylor (who, he insists, is "marked for death"), and The Beatles and The Rolling Stones (just because). His enthusiasms -- Karen Carpenter (understandable) and Van Morrison (really?) are equally eclectic. And then there are the many amusingly contrarian opinions: Is Black Sabbath really the most Catholic band?

But this is less a portrait of an outlaw writer than the saga of an increasingly desperate spiritual seeker, forever trying to recapture the moments of transcendence that rock music offered his youthful self. No matter how hard he rebelled, Bangs, at least as presented here, never really escaped his mother's proselytizing ways: What he sought from the artists he revered was a kind of ontological thrill, a glimpse of the divine that would lift him out of sordid everyday reality. His adoration of the Beats was central, yet two encounters with hero rebel figures -- a group of Hell's Angels engaged in a gang bang and, years later, the band The Clash -- end in profound disappointment at their cruel, swinish behavior. In the end, the Church of Rock and Roll proved to be as flawed as any other human institution.

Jensen plausibly inhabits Bangs' itchy, cranky, perpetually frustrated persona, but he often struggles to make him into a compelling figure. The script is based on Bangs' writings, but it never comes close to capturing the rush of his prose, which is rather like an adrenaline-filled needle jabbed into one's arm. He spent most of his adult life surrounded by larger-than-life personalities, but you won't find out much about any of them here; at times, How to Be a Rock Critic threatens to devolve into a bill of complaints about a world that, time and again, fails to live up to his exacting standards.

Under Blank's direction, How to Be a Rock Critic feels too long at eighty minutes, and certain points aren't given the attention needed for us to see the world through its subject's eyes; not least among them is Bangs' devotion to the Van Morrison album Astral Weeks, which, excerpted here, is hard to credit. (His love-hate relationship with Elvis Presley is fascinatingly presented, expressing sorrow -- no doubt for many -- over his descent from pelvis-grinding provocateur to narcotized King of Vegas Showrooms, throwing sweaty towels into the house to be snatched up by the female faithful.) Richard Hoover's set is a plausible representation of the abode of a man whose mother never taught him to pick up after himself. (Would Bangs really treat LPs with such abandon, tossing them around and dropping them on the floor?) Lap Chi Chu's lighting is rather basic. David Robbins' sound design provides a number of audio clips of the stars Bangs loathed and deified.

Jensen is a solidly talented actor, and there is enough of Bangs' go-for-broke sensibility that, for much of its running time, How to Be a Rock Critic provides a singular window on the rock revolution. But if this piece is to have an extended life, it will need a bigger injection of rock and roll. -- David Barbour