Bereits im April erschienen, aber erst jetzt gelesen: Nick Kent zum 20. Todestag von Lester Bangs, der, soviel wird durch den schönen Artikel im Guardian wieder deutlich, kein glückliches Leben geführt hat. Das und anderes macht ihn sympathisch, allerdings glaube ich nicht, daß mir Bangs ästhetische Vorlieben besonders nahe sind.

Zitat:
"[...] I would rather write like a dancer than write for the man cloistered in a closet somewhere re-reading Aeschylus while this stupefying world careens crazily past his waxy windows towards one last raving feedback pirouette."

Da schwingt doch viel von der Haltung eines "Dichter-Propheten" mit, der anderen die Welthaltigkeit und Relevanz abspricht. Passend, daß viele Pop-Leute ganz vernarrt in die Romantik und die Beat-Bewegung sind.

In Nick Kents Essay Sammlung "The Dark Stuff" habe ich vor einigen Tagen wieder hineingelesen, die wirklich, wie Iggy Pop in seinem kurzen Vorwort schreibt, "nasty" ist, allerdings auch - zumindestens streckenweise - faszinierend. Daß er sich den Objekten seiner Reportagen nicht unbedingt diskret nähert, kann man ihm doch irgendwie verzeihen, schließlich sind dies kanonisierte Rockmusiker (keine Frauen) der mittleren und älteren Generation. Vieles was Kent schreibt, hat sardonischen Humor, z.B. über Mick Jaggers oft verspottete sogenannte "Verwandlungsfähigkeit":

"He [Jagger] had this other peculiar habit of adopting the dialect and accent of anyone he was talking to, just as he was talking to them. On one occasion I found myself in a room with him, a white guy from the American South, a black guy from Los Angeles and someone from the North of England; and everyone stood quietly aghast as the singer's voice weaved a reckless path away from his usual faux Cockney intonations to attempt a >y'all< drenched drawl straight out of a particularly arch Tennessee Williams production before slipping into 'soul brother' black speak somewhat in the over-exited cadence of Little Richard. When he finally started to talk like a Manchester bus conductor, everyone in the room looked utterly mystified because the whole performance was frankly ridiculous to begin with and you couldn't really tell if Jagger consciously realized he was even doing it or not."

Ein paar Seiten weiter heißt es:

"As for Jagger...well, anyone who's ever known him will tell you what an interesting bunch of guys Mick Jagger can be. During that tour I'd seen him turn into the leering hedonist, the repellent aristocrat, the working class 'oik' with a social edge, the concerned family man, the lifeand soul of the party, the 'don't approach me' primadonna, the narcissistic old queen, the ruthless business man, the loving husband, the rapacious adulterer. There was really no limits to the masks he's don. Yet in his ceaseless quest always to stay one step ahead of everyone else he'd somehow lost contact with his own humanity, or at least some interconnecting essence that threw all the mystifying contrasts into some sympathetic relief."