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Short-lived writer Roger Anderson – author of this week's Midweek and Weekend Read
One of many to write about short-lived author, El Cajon's Lester Bangs
Roger Anderson was not the only Reader writer to write about El Cajon classmate Lester Bangs. Bruce Springsteen and Bangs, 1975.
Roger Anderson, who wrote Wednesday's story on Lester Bangs at Altamont and Friday's on Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona, grew up in El Cajon, was part of early San Diego rock scene, wrote for alternative weeklies, and served as art director for the Washington Post. He died in January, 2003 in Baltimore, Maryland at the age of 53.
From Friday's Weekend Read story on Ramona
A list of Anderson's Reader stories:
Old Highway 80: Guatay, Buckman Springs, La Posta, Live Oak Springs, Boulevard, Bankhead Springs, and Jacumba
"Shorty’d gotten on a freight tram in San Diego, headed for Chicago. Got locked in there and froze to death. They found his body later — he was wearing two pairs of pants, and his wrist was cut."
February 22, 1990
Eucalyptus, the non-native tree that does so much. Like kill people.
The branches grow so fast that they cut off views; the roots crack sidewalks, curbs, and roads; they steal water from nearby plants, drop litter on the ground, and exude an oil that kills other plants.
December 14, 1989
Lester Bangs on Altamont the day the music died
In summer of 1969, when the Rolling Stones announced that they were going to tour the United States, it was one of the biggest deals to come along in hippieland in a good long while.
December 14, 1989
Reader writers: the story I wanted to write... but didn't
Sandy and a girlfriend had gone into a liquor store, robbed the clerk, They locked the clerk in a walk-in cooler. Sandy started feeling bad about the guy. She went back and let him out.
October 5, 1989
When early filmmakers zoomed in on San Diego
Disappointingly, the movie shows no scenes of recognizable Lakeside streets or structures that I can compare with the town as I’ve known it during my lifetime. But it does show something more evocative: vistas of wild grass and brush…
September 7, 1989
The Zipper – near death at the Del Mar Fair
Through the hard frozen streets we go at a regular canter; often I am upraised as high as the first story of a house; n*ver do I sink as low as the house doors. — …
July 13, 1989
My grandfather in Point Loma killed himself
My father’s death from cancer last June, at age 71, was a mercy not just because it freed him from the pain of his illness but because he was — always had been — a …
May 25, 1989
Birth of the Beat Farmers
“Country Dick was a Glory fan during the old days, back when he was in high school. As a matter fact, he was student-body vice president at Grossmont High and hired us to play a dance there.”
March 16, 1989
Development more rapacious in San Diego's South Bay
The City of El Cajon bought from us (at an enforced discount) about two-thirds of our front yard and sent in heavy machinery to chop down the olive trees and grade away the lawn and the fence.
December 8, 1988
Was Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona real?
“I there was such a woman as Ramona, the odds are that she was married not here but in a little chapel on Conde Street. Father Yubach said he seemed to remember marrying a woman by that name.”
September 29, 1988
The Hardback Lester Bangs
I moved to the Bay Area from El Cajon and the fifteen- or twenty-page letters we used to exchange dwindled down to a precious few and the next thing I know you had quit Creem.
November 26, 1987
^^^^^^^^^
Anderson was not the only one to write about the legendary Lester Bangs for the Reader. Other stories filled out the picture:
My high school days with Lester Bangs
Lest anyone think that I have a few bones to pick myself, let me make clear that I wish neither to trash Lester’s personal or literary reputation nor to gild his legend with hyperbole and shaggy-dog stories. I suppose Ed Ward, Greil Marcus, Richard Meltzer, Dave Marsh, John Mendelssohn, Jann Wenner, Robert Christgau, Lou Reed, Debbie Harry, or any number of other people who have known Lester over the years have their own versions of his life story.
By Robert Houghton, July 13, 2000 | Read full article
Lester Recollected in Tranquility
One afternoon in ’74 Nick and I met Lester at some ritzy midtown hotel. Though he’d been in the room all of an hour, the smell was like a dog had died there. Consequently, we vetoed his offer to call down for drinks on Creem’s tab, suggesting, to his consternation, that any dump of a bar would be more, uh, whatever. Many of his heterosex liaisons had foundered on the rocks of precisely this issue.
By Richard Meltzer, Dec. 6, 1984 | Read full article
Lester Bangs, El Cajon Kid
These “great man” theorists see Lester as self-made and El Cajon actually was a hindrance. Those of us from El Cajon, especially those who knew him well, have a much more nuanced view of Lester’s El Cajon years. And, we definitely see Lester as a product of El Cajon. If you like Lester, you have to like El Cajon because...Lester is El Cajon. He’s an El Cajon kid. He acts like one. He thinks like one.
By Andrew Hamlin, July 24, 2013 | Read full article
What It Was Like to Sit Next to Lester Bangs for Six Years
“He looked like an ‘adult,’ when everybody else looked, well, like members of the MC5 road crew or like slightly demonic hippies. Lester looked like a visiting professor, with neatly trimmed hair and his shined shoes and his over-extended mustache. He was wearing a button-down shirt over a sparkling white undershirt. During his stay, I occasionally spied him actually wearing a suit jacket — he owned one in a Prince of Wales plaid.”
By Andrew Hamlin, Sept. 30, 2015 | Read full article
Everybody just be cool now
Lester had begun writing freelance for a fledgling but already influential newsprint rag called Rolling Stone. “Just a couple days ago I sent a review of Let It Bleed to my editor." And maybe Rolling Stone’ll have a party for the band after the concert, and maybe we’ll get to go, and maybe they’ll introduce us to Mick and Keith, you know, like, ‘This is Lester, he’s the guy who’s reviewing your new album.’ ”
By Roger Anderson, December 14, 1989 Read full article
Here's something you might be interested in.
Short-lived writer Roger Anderson – author of this week's Midweek and Weekend Read
One of many to write about short-lived author, El Cajon's Lester Bangs
Short-lived writer Roger Anderson – author of this week's Midweek and Weekend Read
One of many to write about short-lived author, El Cajon's Lester Bangs
Roger Anderson was not the only Reader writer to write about El Cajon classmate Lester Bangs. Bruce Springsteen and Bangs, 1975.
Roger Anderson, who wrote Wednesday's story on Lester Bangs at Altamont and Friday's on Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona, grew up in El Cajon, was part of early San Diego rock scene, wrote for alternative weeklies, and served as art director for the Washington Post. He died in January, 2003 in Baltimore, Maryland at the age of 53.
From Friday's Weekend Read story on Ramona
A list of Anderson's Reader stories:
Old Highway 80: Guatay, Buckman Springs, La Posta, Live Oak Springs, Boulevard, Bankhead Springs, and Jacumba
"Shorty’d gotten on a freight tram in San Diego, headed for Chicago. Got locked in there and froze to death. They found his body later — he was wearing two pairs of pants, and his wrist was cut."
February 22, 1990
Eucalyptus, the non-native tree that does so much. Like kill people.
The branches grow so fast that they cut off views; the roots crack sidewalks, curbs, and roads; they steal water from nearby plants, drop litter on the ground, and exude an oil that kills other plants.
December 14, 1989
Lester Bangs on Altamont the day the music died
In summer of 1969, when the Rolling Stones announced that they were going to tour the United States, it was one of the biggest deals to come along in hippieland in a good long while.
December 14, 1989
Reader writers: the story I wanted to write... but didn't
Sandy and a girlfriend had gone into a liquor store, robbed the clerk, They locked the clerk in a walk-in cooler. Sandy started feeling bad about the guy. She went back and let him out.
October 5, 1989
When early filmmakers zoomed in on San Diego
Disappointingly, the movie shows no scenes of recognizable Lakeside streets or structures that I can compare with the town as I’ve known it during my lifetime. But it does show something more evocative: vistas of wild grass and brush…
September 7, 1989
The Zipper – near death at the Del Mar Fair
Through the hard frozen streets we go at a regular canter; often I am upraised as high as the first story of a house; n*ver do I sink as low as the house doors. — …
July 13, 1989
My grandfather in Point Loma killed himself
My father’s death from cancer last June, at age 71, was a mercy not just because it freed him from the pain of his illness but because he was — always had been — a …
May 25, 1989
Birth of the Beat Farmers
“Country Dick was a Glory fan during the old days, back when he was in high school. As a matter fact, he was student-body vice president at Grossmont High and hired us to play a dance there.”
March 16, 1989
Development more rapacious in San Diego's South Bay
The City of El Cajon bought from us (at an enforced discount) about two-thirds of our front yard and sent in heavy machinery to chop down the olive trees and grade away the lawn and the fence.
December 8, 1988
Was Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona real?
“I there was such a woman as Ramona, the odds are that she was married not here but in a little chapel on Conde Street. Father Yubach said he seemed to remember marrying a woman by that name.”
September 29, 1988
The Hardback Lester Bangs
I moved to the Bay Area from El Cajon and the fifteen- or twenty-page letters we used to exchange dwindled down to a precious few and the next thing I know you had quit Creem.
November 26, 1987
^^^^^^^^^
Anderson was not the only one to write about the legendary Lester Bangs for the Reader. Other stories filled out the picture:
My high school days with Lester Bangs
Lest anyone think that I have a few bones to pick myself, let me make clear that I wish neither to trash Lester’s personal or literary reputation nor to gild his legend with hyperbole and shaggy-dog stories. I suppose Ed Ward, Greil Marcus, Richard Meltzer, Dave Marsh, John Mendelssohn, Jann Wenner, Robert Christgau, Lou Reed, Debbie Harry, or any number of other people who have known Lester over the years have their own versions of his life story.
By Robert Houghton, July 13, 2000 | Read full article
Lester Recollected in Tranquility
One afternoon in ’74 Nick and I met Lester at some ritzy midtown hotel. Though he’d been in the room all of an hour, the smell was like a dog had died there. Consequently, we vetoed his offer to call down for drinks on Creem’s tab, suggesting, to his consternation, that any dump of a bar would be more, uh, whatever. Many of his heterosex liaisons had foundered on the rocks of precisely this issue.
By Richard Meltzer, Dec. 6, 1984 | Read full article
Lester Bangs, El Cajon Kid
These “great man” theorists see Lester as self-made and El Cajon actually was a hindrance. Those of us from El Cajon, especially those who knew him well, have a much more nuanced view of Lester’s El Cajon years. And, we definitely see Lester as a product of El Cajon. If you like Lester, you have to like El Cajon because...Lester is El Cajon. He’s an El Cajon kid. He acts like one. He thinks like one.
By Andrew Hamlin, July 24, 2013 | Read full article
What It Was Like to Sit Next to Lester Bangs for Six Years
“He looked like an ‘adult,’ when everybody else looked, well, like members of the MC5 road crew or like slightly demonic hippies. Lester looked like a visiting professor, with neatly trimmed hair and his shined shoes and his over-extended mustache. He was wearing a button-down shirt over a sparkling white undershirt. During his stay, I occasionally spied him actually wearing a suit jacket — he owned one in a Prince of Wales plaid.”
By Andrew Hamlin, Sept. 30, 2015 | Read full article
Everybody just be cool now
Lester had begun writing freelance for a fledgling but already influential newsprint rag called Rolling Stone. “Just a couple days ago I sent a review of Let It Bleed to my editor." And maybe Rolling Stone’ll have a party for the band after the concert, and maybe we’ll get to go, and maybe they’ll introduce us to Mick and Keith, you know, like, ‘This is Lester, he’s the guy who’s reviewing your new album.’ ”
By Roger Anderson, December 14, 1989 Read full article