Editing Lester Bangs (section)

===''Rolling Stone'' magazine===
Bangs became a [[freelance writer]] in 1969, after reading an ad in ''[[Rolling Stone]]'' soliciting readers' reviews. His first accepted piece was a negative review of the [[MC5]] album ''[[Kick Out the Jams]]'', which he sent to ''Rolling Stone'' with a note requesting, if the magazine were to decline to publish the review, that he be given a reason for the decision; no reply was forthcoming, as the magazine did indeed publish the review.

His 1970 review of [[Black Sabbath]]'s [[Black Sabbath (album)|first album]] in ''Rolling Stone'' was scathing, rating them as imitators of the band [[Cream (band)|Cream]]:

{{blockquote|Cream clichés that sound like the musicians learned them out of a book, grinding on and on with dogged persistence. Vocals are sparse, most of the album being filled with plodding bass lines over which the lead guitar dribbles wooden Claptonisms from the master's tiredest Cream days. They even have discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitized speedfreaks all over each other's musical perimeters yet never quite finding synch—just like Cream! But worse.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/black-sabbath-19700917 |title = Album Review: Black Sabbath - 'Black Sabbath' |magazine = Rolling Stone |date = September 17, 1970}}</ref>}}

Bangs wrote about the death of [[Janis Joplin]] in 1970 from a drug overdose: "It's not just that this kind of early death has become a fact of life that has become disturbing, but that it's been accepted as a given so quickly."<ref>{{cite book |title=A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them |last=Jackson |first=Buzzy |year=2005 |publisher=W. W. Norton |location=New York |isbn=0393059367 |page=[https://archive.org/details/badwomanfeelingg00buzz/page/234 234] |url=https://archive.org/details/badwomanfeelingg00buzz |url-access=registration |access-date=November 2, 2013}}.</ref>

In 1973, [[Jann Wenner]] fired Bangs from ''Rolling Stone'' for "disrespecting musicians" after a particularly harsh review of the group [[Canned Heat]].<ref name= Blurt />{{rp|95}}