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Babylon's Burning BAT.Qxd 11/10/07 11:49 Page 3 Babylon's burning BAT.qxd 11/10/07 11:49 Page 3 Clinton Heylin Babylon’s burning Traduit de l’anglais par STAN CUESTA Babylon's burning BAT.qxd 11/10/07 11:49 Page 5 Prologue Au début était le Verbe… Mon favori pour le titre de « premier punk » est né sous le nom de Leslie Conway, dans un hôpital de la périphérie de San Diego, Californie, en décembre 1948, le parfait baby-boomer. Sa mère était une fanatique des Témoins de Jéhovah, son père un alcoo- lique, qui a disparu de la vie de son fils avant qu’il n’ait dix ans. Lester Bangs – puisque c’est de lui dont il s’agit – a passé la majeure partie de sa vie à vouloir rentrer chez lui, spirituellement parlant, et à s’enfuir, physiquement et intellectuellement. Lester était vendeur de chaussures quand il a réalisé qu’il avait autant à dire que les Greil Marcus et autres Paul Williams qui définissaient alors l’écriture rock. Après une plongée intensive sous amphétamines typiquement beat, enfermé et défoncé au déca- pant, à passer toute une nuit en boucle les deux premiers albums du Velvet, Bangs a décidé d’envoyer une chronique du second, véritable orgie bruitiste, au bastion underground de l’écriture rock, Rolling Stone, basé à plus de mille kilomètres au nord sur la 5 Highway One, à San Francisco. Son évangélisme semeur de dis- corde n’était pas ce dont le patron, Jann Wenner, pensait avoir besoin, mais Bangs ne s’est pas découragé et a envoyé dans la fou- lée une chronique du Kick Out The Jams du MC5 que le journal a publiée dans son édition du 6 avril 1969. Surprise, Bangs y déni- grait le Five, «une bande de punks de seize ans sous méthadone, assoiffés de pouvoir». Pendant les dix-huit mois suivants, Bangs est devenu le punk de service du Stone, sans jamais se voir confier un grand papier, ni approcher aucune de leurs vaches sacrées. C’est quand il a Babylon's burning BAT.qxd 11/10/07 11:49 Page 6 chroniqué un album des Fugs à l’été 1970, pour le jeune fanzine Creem, basé dans la même ville du Michigan que le Five et les Stooges, que Bangs s’est enfin senti dans un contexte qui lui convenait. Quand, à la fin de l’année, ce mensuel dirigé par Dave Marsh a non seulement publié son essai de dix mille mots pré- tendant chroniquer le fondamental Fun House des Stooges, mais l’a fait passer sans aucune coupe, Bangs s’est dit, «ma place est ici». Après son déménagement à Detroit, il a commencé à écrire une série d’articles reprenant les choses là où sa critique de Fun House les avait laissées et entre une nécrologie du Velvet Underground et une «histoire» imaginaire des Count Five – tous publiés au cours d’une période de sept mois prenant fin en juin 1971 –, il a exprimé une idéologie qui était, en tout point excepté le nom, le punk-rock. Déjà à l’époque, on avait l’impression que le terme « punk » avait toujours été là, à la manière des parasites d’une station de radio de rock & roll. Comme le dit Lenny Kaye, « même dans les notes de pochettes de Nuggets, je disais que le mot [punk] était dans l’air. Je pense qu’il se référait plus à une attitude – Iggy était un exemple classique de punk. Mais tous les groupes garage en possédaient certains aspects». À la fin de cette période féconde, le mot punk-rock existait aussi. Dave Marsh l’avait utilisé pour décrire la reformation de ? & the Mysterians dans un article de mai 1971, leur come-back étant annoncé comme une «présentation du punk-rock qui ferait date», et dans le numéro suivant, Bangs lui-même signalait que « des groupes punk commençaient à surgir qui… prenaient le son des Yardbirds et le réduisaient à ce fracas cinglé de pédales Babylon’s burning Babylon’s Prologue fuzz». 6 Marsh semblait avoir repris un mot qui était dans l’air pour l’ap- pliquer au genre de rock bruyant qu’il aimait, mais Bangs avait une idée beaucoup plus claire de ce que ce terme signifiait pour lui. Cette esthétique – et dans les mains de Bangs, cela méritait certai- nement un vocable aussi sophistiqué – était exposée, sous une forme cohérente bien que décousue, dans la deuxième partie de son article sur Fun House; ou pour lui restituer son titre quasi intégral: Un programme pour la libération des masses sous la forme d’une chronique des Stooges. Bangs y considère la possibilité qu’un groupe quelque part puisse s’emparer «des moyens de contrôler les distorsions du feed-back et du fuzz à la Who/Yardbirds et produire une nouvelle Babylon's burning BAT.qxd 11/10/07 11:49 Page 7 free music qui combinerait le caractère aventureux et erratique du free jazz avec le rythme irrésistible et soutenu du rock». Dans la troisième partie : Les grandes lignes du remède, il voit dans les Stooges les interprètes les plus prometteurs de ce free rock, «probablement le premier groupe de renom à s’être formé avant même de savoir jouer… [et] le rock, c’est principalement… s’affirmer bien avant de savoir ce qu’on fait». Pour Bangs, éternel adolescent, le rock «ne peut pas grandir – quand c’est le cas, il se transforme en quelque chose d’autre, qui peut être tout aussi valide mais reste très différent de l’original». Cherchant un arché- type de cette esthétique, il est tombé sur ses chers Stooges, deve- nus un quintet après l’ajout d’un saxophoniste. Bangs a alors décidé de jouer cette carte à fond. Comme il l’écri- rait quelques années plus tard dans un article mémorable sur les racines du punk, dans le fanzine New Wave à la trop courte exis- tence, «Pendant les cinq années où j’ai travaillé à Creem, nous uti- lisions notre amour fondamental du truc pour exploiter l’esthétique punk de toutes les façons humainement possibles… Dave Marsh… moi, Robot Hull, pensions tous être des punks qui, ayant rejeté la contre-culture comme un gros tas de bouse, formaient maintenant, avec Iggy et même Alice Cooper pendant un temps, et tous les autres musiciens et les fans de rock dépravé et agressif, une scène qui était la seule alternative possible à toute cette merde grand public qui nous entourait.» Le genre de rock dont Bangs voulait faire l’éloge était effecti- vement un animal rare. Son idée du punk-rock possédait toute l’innocence intuitive du rock garage de n’importe quel groupe inconnu mais pouvait englober le Velvet, les Stooges de l’époque Fun House, Albert Ayler ou John Coltrane. C’était un retour à la 7 simplicité d’un Woolly Bully ou d’un Louie Louie et la possibilité pour lui d’improviser sur Black to Comm, Sister Ray ou le Dazed & Confused des Yardbirds. Naturellement. Le punk-rock de Creem a toujours mis le punk avant le rock. Même nouveau-né, sous la forme encore hybride de ses débuts, le punk-rock n’a pas commencé dans les clubs, mais sur papier, ne prenant qu’ensuite une Fender pour partir à la recherche de ces insaisissables trois accords. Ceux qui l’ont initialement défini – entre 1970 et 1975 – l’ont fait avec un stylo, pas une guitare. Le folk-rock (qui, ironiquement, est antérieur au rock comme terme journalistique), le country-rock, le jazz-rock et même le frat-rock Babylon's burning BAT.qxd 11/10/07 11:49 Page 8 possédaient des interprètes reconnaissables auxquels se raccrocher et devenaient ainsi des expressions passe-partout bien commodes. Le punk-rock – avant d’être associé aux Ramones, Sex Pistols, Clash et/ou quiconque directement inspiré par au moins un de ceux-là – était un état d’esprit, pas un son (ou un tempo) spéci- fique. Bien sûr, tant que le punk-rock restait la propriété de ce petit groupe de critiques, idéologues et gardiens de l’héritage d’un rock & roll plus «pur», il n’était pas plus réel que le légendaire passé communautaire de l’Irlande, pour lequel des membres de la Gaelic League, et plus tard du Sinn Fein, étaient prêts à se sacri- fier au début du XXe siècle. Comme la plupart des révolution- naires, ce que Bangs et ses camarades de Creem essayaient de restaurer était une sorte de mythe – une ère innocente où les lois du commerce ne s’appliquaient pas au rock & roll. Évidemment, le résultat a été une liste extraordinairement éclec- tique de gardiens de la flamme, pour lesquels Creem a pris fait et cause tout au long de ses pages (ainsi que le NME, New Musical Express, dès le milieu des années 70). Beefheart et les Fugs faisaient tout autant partie du credo que les Kingsmen et les Sonics. Et les rédacteur de Creem dans la première moitié des seventies, quand le rock semblait crouler sous le poids de sa propre importance, offraient la seule réelle alternative. Charlotte Pressler, à cette époque mariée à Peter Laughner, l’a écrit dans son essai, C’était une époque différente, «[Les auteurs de] Creem… alors… étaient frais et exci- tants. Ils écrivaient sur une musique que les autres magazines igno- raient; publiant des articles sur le Velvet et les Stooges; descendant d’une façon délibérément adolescente les salades solennelles de la Babylon’s burning Babylon’s Prologue contre-culture; recherchant et applaudissant la nouveauté, l’expé- 8 rimental, l’inconnu.» Contrairement à beaucoup de 45 tours de groupes garage, Creem bénéficiait également d’une distribution.
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