You used to be all right. What happened? etc. etc.
In the final paragraphs of his career-defining analysis of Astral Weeks, Lester Bangs briefly contrasts the eternal moan of that Van Morrison record with the pop reflections of the late ’60s isolationist American mentality. At the point he wrote it, the kind of thinking that spawned “You’ve Got to Make it Through This World On Your Own” had long since burned off in the ashtray in favor of a brand of decadence that would carry its own weight for nearly two decades. He was onto something, though.
Now, from Bangs’ account, making it through the world on your own was by all means the scariest idea to ever warble its way into the pop consciousness. The musical world he felt safest in was, like Astral Weeks, one in which isolation was an existing state we often felt uncomfortably close to, but not one that was at all desirable or inexplicably tied to success. Especially when it came to music, which, in spite of the well-worn cliche, most of the time really is “the great communicator.”
Bangs didn’t live long enough to hear the mediocre U2-Pixies-mashup that was Radiohead’s debut, Pablo Honey, and part of me is glad he hadn’t. Like any self-respecting music journalist at the time, he would have rightfully called it shit and moved on to bigger and noisier things. And given his propensity to be both steadfast and an asshole, he might have been equally dismissive of both The Bends and OK Computer, even if they’re two of the best records released in the ’90s.
I imagine, though, he would’ve found something to deeply love in Radiohead’s Kid A and Amnesiac.
