・ Then, when you finished writing his biography, how did you feel Leicester?

Many of Leicester's books are his intense autobiography. So I knew that there was a completely different person than him when I met. He was always ongoing. While writing the music, the background, and the meaning of the time as a chronology, he wrote at the same time his own journey and what he grabbed from there. While writing the story of his life, I witnessed good, bad, beautiful, ugly, and thanked him more strongly. We all are complex creatures after all. There are also drawbacks, but still wonderful.

・More than 20 years after publishing, how do you feel again about Leicester as a human?

I am grateful that he once shared his personality and talent with the world. And I'm more grateful for what I have met. Every time you read Leicester, you can get new awareness about our culture, about him, and myself.

・Leicester seemed to have predicted that music would eventually lose power. Do you think your music now has lost power? If the music is still powerful, why was Leicester's prophecy wrong?

I don't think music has lost its power, but our culture has been divided into many different fragments by microscopic concerns. The process was progressing from Ervis's life (as Leicester said, "As we would have agreed on anything anymore, as" the opinions of Elvis were in line with), in the Internet era. As a result, the power of music, which works as a decisive cultural moment, beyond age, race, gender, geographical boundaries, may have diminished. But when artists like Nirvana and Beyonce appear, everyone will synchronize at the moment they are shared again by the same sound. But I don't need a new Beatles or Elvis anymore. Now, the way of music as an art, its power itself, does so. There was a time when Leicester was depressed at the end of life. I think I was looking for something next to me and for music. Don't forget that he was the first person to admit that he was wrong. He first thought that music was dead in the early 70's. After that, punk appeared, and it was the embodiment of the sound he had been proposed all the time. Pop culture was always circulating, and he knew it more than anyone.

・I have never read a music critic like Leicester's text. Most music criticism seems to be justified and defended your taste. Why is Leicester's sentence definitely different from other critics?

Leicester's sentence was extremely personal, as is all excellent critic, (the definition of criticism is an emotional reaction and analysis of art, backed by context, evidence, and insights. ) It also justifies your taste and sharing your worldview and view of art with others. However, the empathy that Leicester had, the depth of conviction that music could convey, and that it was completely honest on the page and on the page, not only the field of music criticism. , Overall criticism (he is a typical example of Oscar Wild's essay "critic as an artist"), and in general (Grill Marcus, as a "literature rock and roll as a rock and rock and rock," was in his first collection. It wasn't meaningless to give the subtitle "literature".

・We yearn for Leicester's living and dying like a rock star, but it feels somewhat incorrect. What do you think about it? What do you think if the current youth aims for such a way of life?

I did not evaluate Leicester's "rock star -like" aspect at all, and did not evaluate Leicester as a person who was desperate to stop drinking at the end of life. His excessive action was fueled by his pain and mental damage, as everyone was. "In my life, there was a time to show off my drunken, but if you behave like that, you may be able to live long, but you will not be able to live long as a good writer." Rockstar "The myth, passionately, and frequently angry. He said that the musicians were touched by the gods and had the right to handle others like scraps. Regarding Lou Lead, Patty Smith, Peter Lawner, The Crash, and himself, he hunt down over and over again through the text.

・What is the biggest message you received from Leicester?

He was generous to other humans (signed me who gave me a book "Now It's Your Turn" about Bronedi). Following that, the biggest message I received from Leicester is Zen's philosophy of being "here now" and "cherishing the present." Live your life as much as you want! Don't bite! There are many names in the philosophy and way of being, and rock and roll is just one of them. How did Leicester define it? "Rock and roll is an attitude. It's not a strict music format. It's a way of doing things, how to approach. Writing can be rock and roll, and movies can be rock and roll. Leicester said so.

Amen.

The original work "Let IT Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America's Greatest Rock Critic" (published by Broadway Books) was published in 2000 Popular agency that brokers publishing rights It was an agent to work for. One of the daily routines pursues English -speaking news, maybe the book review of the "Publishers Weekly" magazine or "Kirkus Reviews", or the "THE VILLAGE VOICE" paper review, which is the end of this book. I think you knew the existence of this book. The rough black -and -white photo of the particles of Leicester Bangs, who shows Fusaki on the street in Manhattan, was noticeable. Typography was also a bitter cover with only black, white and red, that is, only three colors, but the impression was rather clear and intense, so as I read the book review somehow, such an interesting person is rock music. I wondered if it was in the shadow of history. Someday I decided to read this book in Japanese, but it was my heart to read, but it was a literary agency's Sterling Lord Literistic (Jack Keruac agent) who had the translation publishing right of this book. I wasn't able to form a partnership with the copyright agency I worked for at that time, and I couldn't get the copyright.

I never imagined that I would translate the book until 20 years later. However, Leicester is always in the corner of my head, and when I listened to the music of that era, I remembered what happened to that book. Considering the meaning of rock and roll culture at the time, it is important that the music itself is important, and I thought that the records in words were also important.

If I can talk a little bit, from the Firth of Velvett Underground to the third album (although it's not real -time), it's deeply linked to youth memories, not really John Kale than Rou Led. I feel complicated to know that my favorite acupoints are not understood, and after that I knew that Molin Tucker was a member of that tea party (she was "IF You Close Door, The Night Could Last Last Forever") I really like that starts singing ...), but the story changes, but it is the first person who has been conscious of Iggy Pop for the first time in the 1993 solo album "American Caesar". There is a past that was drawn into US literature or danced in music without knowing how to handle the impact of The Stou Ziz 'SeaRch and Destroy.

I think it was 2020. Are you interested in such a book from Tomoko Yamamoto, the founding president of Liber Co., Ltd., a translation service industry? When I opened a terrible file, it was that Raster Bangs Den. I was surprised that such a valuable literature had been salted without being translated yet, and at the same time I was happy and jumped.

I don't want to talk a lot about the content of this book now.

If you search for the Internet under the name of Lester Bangs, you will get a lot of information, and there are many books that are very familiar with the music situation in Leicester's life. However, I want readers to unravel this book as much as possible.

The original book written based on the result of the relentless interview that makes you want to doubt that it is a stalker of Jim Delogatis (it has been omitted in the Japanese version, but the co -workers and references. This book, "Leicester Bangs -Legendary Rock critic, that word and life", translated the content of a huge list at the end of the book. This biography, which was not translated for almost a quarter century, can be read in Japanese, so I have no choice but to thank the publisher Tonkachi. In addition, this book did not come to publish without the help of Aya Kinobu, who was in charge of editing. Then, it is the designer Ikuya Shigeya who finished the Japanese version of the visual stylishly (the editor's good choice).

As an aside, I am writing this text in New York on a business trip. To feel the footprints of Leicester from Detroit to New York after many twists and turns, I am based in South Bronx, while keeping an eye on the streets every time I walk downtown Manhattan. We are deepening the relationship with the central Caribbean community. Despite the New York city, Leicester is wandering in a different context from the downtown -midtown, who spent his later years (or about 30 years old), but the huge cultural crucible called New York Writing this text in this book while feeling the dynamism with your skin is such a restless feeling that makes you want to doubt your sanity.

Ayama who edited this book, Mr. Yamamoto of Liber Co., who nominated him as a translator, and Mitsuhiro Sekine of the company gave me a big help until the end (thanks to the last life. It has been extended). In the future, both books, "Psychotic Reactions and Carblator Dang" and "Main Line, Brad Feass and Bad Taste", which are the culmination of Leicester, are Okuda. It will be published from the same TONKACHI by the translation by Yuji.

As a true hit, Leicester's own criticism (and written) is also available in Japanese for the first time in Japanese. Soon. Thanks for the strange tour of Leicester's biography, which plays the leading role, and at the same time, we have a terrible experience of counting the publishing date while enduring the weight of its responsibilities. I'm strangely shaking.

Leicester Bangs, who was a pioneer in rock criticism, was a pioneer in the real intention. There are more reasons for the fact that "legendary ~" is given.

On April 14, 2024, at South Bronx somewhere

Mario Tauchi

In the late 20s lurking in the gap between universities and society, an indie music label that worked like a chorus was a movie taught by the representative was Penny Rain. Now I feel that I have shown the origin of the youth of music, who is going to live in the music industry from now on. Like Mr. Taiuchi, the translator, after less than 20 years, it would be just to edit the Japanese version of Leicester Bangs' biography, which was played by Philip Seymore Hoffman in that movie. There is no choice but to encounter.

This book, who loves rock, but is too strong in the habit of a family word, but also the real and lives of Leicester, talks about a lot of things beyond one "biography". I think you are giving me. What are true journalism, criticism? Rock magazine's heyday. What kill music and publishing? What is a family? And about religion and loneliness-. After that, I decided to go to the publishing industry instead of music, but I feel that this book is a book that can get many suggestions for those who are involved in "writing" such as writers and editors.

Among them, my heart's breasts are the big gap between "players" playing music / writing novels, and "writers" who write about them, and their overcoming. Leicester actually sent a record as a musician and was trying to write a novel. If "writing" can be exceeded that of something, what is needed there?

Like the movie, the warm gaze of Leicester for the coming young people was very impressive. No, 33 years old (at the age of death) is not an "uncle" at all, Leicester.

May the dry words of legends reach the blood meat (and sweat) and reach one of the Japanese readers.

Everything he wrote was on tailor, from the congratulations of Elvis and John Lennon to the record reviews written in midnight. Leicester, a performance artist on the paper, turned rock criticism and personal soul exhausted into a standup comedy. Like Sam Kinison, one of the other unmatched Americans who died at a young age, he thought humor was the biggest salvation path. Waiting for a feud with Lou Reed, as an editor of "CREEM", a Keruac -like form, a sophisticated search for himself to become a punk singer, all of these. Ta.

ー James Wolcott
(Journalist, cultural critic)

Let It Blurt is a noisy and straight biography of Leicester Bangs (1949-82), a journalist and poet, and built the future of rock criticism. Nobody lived so hard, so passionately, with such a persuasive, penetrated sentence, and so hard about rock and roll. He lived in rock and roll, drank alcohol and drags like water, and spoke passion in spouts that spouted from paper in Rolling Stone, Creem, and "The Village Voice". In the 1970s, Leicester worked for a more loud, more loud, more electric, more lively sound, and in the process of drawing and defining heavy metal and punk aesthetics. "Let It Blurt" is a record that carefully investigated Leicester Bangs (although it is often vulgar and losing appetite), and carefully investigated the rock criticism and rock in the most turbulent and creative era. It is also a cultural window. Includes unreleased works by Leicester, a cheerful "way to become a rock critic" is also included, revealing his dubious and freedom business secrets.

ー Original book"Let It Blurt" Publisher CROWN

Leicester Bangs survived, died young, left a beautiful work. This is a tragic song dedicated to a great critic by Jim Delogatis by the author of Rock and Roll's talented writer, who knows both Leicester's world music and journalism.

ー Roger Evert
(Movie critic)