The Books: Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader; “Helen Reddy: Long Hard Climb”, by Lester Bangs

Next up on the essays shelf:

Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader, by Lester Bangs

I grew up surrounded by the music of Helen Reddy. I think my main introduction to her (as was true with so many of the cool artists of the day) was through Sesame Street.

I did not know the context, or what she represented at the time, but she was everywhere. Mitchell and I have talked a lot about Helen Reddy (he loves her too), and her voice – the instrument itself – how unique it is, in its own way. She’s got a jazzy sense of rhythm, totally hip. Of course there were also the feminist song lyrics, something she came to be identified with. She was representative of the sea change in the culture, the 1970s breaking-down of the structure of expected gender roles. Musically, there is a lot more to be said there, though, and I think her message often overpowers the music itself. That’s always going to be the case with someone identified with a cause of some kind.

That’s why I am so appreciative of Lester Bangs’ 1974 review in Creem of Helen Reddy’s smash album Long Hard Climb.

Almost every song on said album is now iconic, and the album went gold. She won Grammys. She wore pant suits. Naturally, she got a lot of shit thrown her way, showing how little things have changed. But she was a headliner at the height of her fame, and she is still out there, still performing.

Lester Bangs’ review starts with the comforting sentence: “All men are weasels.” He goes on in this vein for a while, calling out the boorishness of men who only see women as potential sex conquests (or don’t see them at all). He gets it, and he gets why women have contempt for men, in light of that behavior. Bangs sees Helen Reddy as something entirely “other”, a new kind of female idol that is making space for women to put things into words, to feel free, all that. Bangs refers to her as “downright prim“, and then, with a typical Bangs-ian switchback, says, “But that’s her genius.”

In a later essay he wrote about Blondie, Lester Bangs said that sexual repression was essential to the creation of rock ‘n’ roll, because everybody had to let off so much steam, and sex is a natural drive, and yet we weren’t supposed to talk about it, and so the music pulsed with unspoken feelings and lust and all that. But now, mid-70s, with S&M going mainstream, and sex, in general, saturating the culture, Lester Bangs saw that a little “repression” might be in order, at least to get the music back on track. He writes “everybody’s too damn blatant today”, which makes you wonder what on earth he would think of today’s landscape which is almost 100% porn-ified.

And so he appreciates Helen Reddy not going that route. He sees her prim-ness as being even more radical than any black-leather-get-up you could think of.

Here’s an excerpt from the review, where Bangs discusses (among other things) “Leave Me Alone”.

Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader, “Helen Reddy: Long Hard Climb” by Lester Bangs

But the real masterpiece here is “Leave Me Alone.” Guys have had all kindsa great hostility songs for years, from John Lee Hooker’s “I’m Mad” to Lou’s “Vicious,” but all women had to fall back on was masochistic laments like “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” or at best c&w you’re-cut-off sops like Loretta Lynn’s “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind).” But this is a woman’s song that goes all the way in the most basic terms: “Leave me alone, aww leave me alone. . . .” Not since Dylan’s pinnacles has there been such a revivifying and totally irresistible rancor. I can see this tune being a hot number on jukeboxes in bars across the USA, as the stags smooth their shags furtively eyeing the always two babes just a few tables away (“Yours doesn’t look so good,” if one’s really fat and ugly; “Well, which one do you want – makes no difference to me.” “The blonde.” “I thought you were gonna say that.”) So now besides just smirking “No” at these losers, the sisters have a blare of support to blast the brummels to cowering jelly under their own tables. It’s the same kind of release from sexual suffocation expressed in the line of her hit “Peaceful”: “No one bending over my shoulder / Nobody breathing in my ear!” This is a real woman’s pop anthem, and not that queasily self-conscious sisters-unite pap set in a perfect marriage of watered-down Sousa and “Waltzing Matilda.”

Even when she’s toeing the line Helen manages to get the irony. “A Bit O.K.” is about connubial fructification. In the morning she tap-dances while making the coffee, at night she turns off the late show and reaches for him. Perfect joy, perfect fulfillment: “Now I’m really livin’.” Now you might think that’s just a bogusly suburban mythical wifey-poo copout on Helen’s part, but it’s not. Subtle as ever, she saves her wealth of sarcasm for the chorus: “Hey hey, it’s a bit O.K. [whotta testimonial!] … By the way, thanks a lot for givin’ me a little lovin’…” (you miserable clumsy inconsiderate prematurely ejaculatin’ grunt lug!)

I don’t blame Helen and the rest of womankind for being mad. All men but me are puds. What I’d like to see is an all-girl band that would sing lyrics like “I’ll cut your nuts off, you cretins,” and then jump into the audience and beat the shit out of the men there. Meanwhile, Helen’s chops are up: she’s no artist, she’s a constant pulsation, 50,000 watts of Helen Reddy arcing into diffusion with a glow that touches every stucco nautilus in every housing project from here to Bobby Goldsboro’s composite dream suburb. Helen is not merely heavy, Helen is not just a downy-necked sex object like Anne Murray – Helen is a beacon, the perfect Seventies incarnation of Miss Liberty herself in pantsuit and bowler crooning for America in a voice like the tenderest walls brushing together – the real velvet underground.