Five on (Good) Friday: Jesus Christ
In conversation with critic Lester Bangs, JC talks about a handful of tracks that give him the feels.
The setting: Indeterminate. A booth. Fluorescent light with a flicker nobody fixes. Lester Bangs arrives first, naturally, already talking. Jesus arrives second, on time, which surprises everyone. He orders water and does something to it almost immediately. Lester orders coffee. It is bad. He drinks three cups anyway.
Lester: Okay. I’ve been waiting to have this conversation since 1982. You understand what I mean by that.
Jesus: I do. I’m sorry about that, by the way. The timing.
Lester: Don’t be. I got out before disco made a full comeback, so. Could’ve been worse. I want to talk about music. Specifically — and this is the angle — songs about dying and coming back. Which is, I mean, that’s your whole thing, right? That’s the headline on your story.
Jesus: It is one way to put it.
Lester: So you’ve had some time to think about the subject. And I want to know — and I mean this sincerely, not as a gotcha — what songs actually get it. What songs understand what that feels like, or what it means, or why anyone would bother.
Jesus: Can I start with Bowie?
Lester: Oh, thank God. Yes. Please.
Jesus: David was someone I felt had a genuine understanding of what it means to construct a self, dissolve it entirely, and then — very deliberately — become something else. He did it six, seven times in a single lifetime. “Lazarus” in particular. That song. He wrote it knowing he was leaving, and he chose to come back as the song itself. The voice in it is already somewhere else. You can hear it.
To read this in its entirety, help us facilitate independent journalism with a free or paid subscription via our Signal and Noise Substack, thanks!
