Frank Sinatra Writes For Creem Magazine

"Rock and roll is the most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression it has ever been my displeasure to hear...It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phony and false. It is sung for the most part by cretinous goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiterations and sly, lewd - in plain fact dirty - lyrics."

- Frank Sinatra, 1957

Have you ever in your whole life ever read a better advert for rock and roll music? This is sheer gonzo brilliance.  Lester Bangs was a rank amateur compared to this guy. Dig those crazy adjectives; "brutal, ugly, degenerate, destructive, cretinous, imbecilic, dirty..." Anybody with halfa pulse reading this in button-down apple pie Madison Avenue 1957 musta been like: "hey, pops, you don't have to tell me twice! You had me at 'degenerate!'  Just tell me where to sign!"

Lester Bangs always tried to lay some jive on you 'bout how his style was broadly an attempt to marry the freewheelin' stream of consciousness long-form prose of Kerouac, Burroughs etc al with the semi-autobiographical first person approach of The New Journalism (Woolfe, Hunter S, Mailer et al), cooked up with a heap of Romilar cough syrup, amphetamines, whiskey yadda yadda yadda and a desire to reflect the visceral, blow-your-mind, live-wire electric power of ROCK MUSIC, but the dude was just straight ripping off Ol' Blue Eyes all along! I just wish Lester woulda fessed up and let Frank take over his whole bag. I mean, I gotta lotta time for Bangs, but between reading a '69 Stooges concert review by some bum from Detroit and a '69 Stooges concert review by Frank Fuggin' Sinatra, I'm gonna havta vote for sendin' Frankie down to the Filmore East to hang out with the dope fiends, Hells Angels and beatniks. Hell, let the whole Rat Pack go down there with him, dude'd probably appreciate some back-up, 'course Dean Martin was pretty handy havin' been a boxer and I hear Joey Bishop was a muvva with a motorcycle chain, plus if things got really heavy Sinatra could always just call in a favour from his associates in the 'business' world and have any disrespectful hippies disapeered real quick, capiche? And while I'm sure we all enjoyed  Bangs' 'legendary' love/hate interviews with Lou Reed plenty, can you really say you wouldn't have rather read Lou Reed being interviewed by Frank Sinatra? Like Frank hangs out at Warhol's Factory for an evening, sits 'round sluggin' back whiskey and popping those stupid-ass silver balloons with the end of his cigars, he gets hit on by Nico maybe, the Velvets play version of The Black Angels Death Song that lasts for 4 hours, by 3am Frank is pretty toasted and gets to thinking 'I've had it with this Reed son-of-a-bitch singin' 'bout mainlines and needles and whatever other junkie bullshit I can't even hear 'cos he's mumblin' and slurrin' the words damn much. This muvva is menna be some hot-shot new SINGER? He wants to try pullin' this half-assed shit at the Sands, see what sorta reception he gets there..', strides over to the stage, punches Lou Reed out, grabs the mic from his lifeless fingers and starts singing 'Come Fly With Me' while the rest of the Velvets continue to churn out evil distorto rock behind him. (Paul Fuzz)

Comments

[mof gimmers]

Fuckin'-A!