Lester Bangs

The filmmaker Cameron Crowe had the coolest childhood. Growing up in California, he started writing for Rolling Stone magazine at the age of 15. His big break came in 1973, when he had the chance to interview the Allman Brothers Band, then one of America’s biggest rock groups, for a cover piece.  For days he tagged along with the rockers on tour, winning their trust with his passion for music and open, honest, moon-shaped face, while phoning his mother every evening to assure her that he wasn’t taking drugs. Finally he earned an interview with the troubled Greg Allman himself, who, shirtless on a bed, spoke about the loss of his big brother Duane in a motorcycle accident and strummed some songs on his guitar. The article seemed in the can, but then disaster struck.

There are a surprising number of books on or by Sonic Youth, the most important of the East Coast bands to emerge in the wake of the first wave of US punk (1974-78). An excellent Spanish biography and an Italian potted history precede the three English language bios to date, while Thurston Moore’s ex-wife Kim Gordon published her own embittered memoir (Girl in a Band) in 2015. Seems Thurston had been a very naughty boy, and she was determined to tell the world all about it. In fact he may well be the least naughty boy in the history of rock music. ‘Neither hardcore sex nor drug action figured very much in my world,’ he writes. ‘Boys have always wanted to be in rock bands to get laid, or so it’s said. But that was not a defining factor for me.