Rage Against The Machine

"I'm not angry; I'm just passionate about music and trying to speak the truth about it," says Lefsetz, who once worked in the music industry. (By Jonathan Alcorn For The Washington Post)

But in person, where the dynamics are markedly different, everybody seems so . . . civil. The moderator challenges several of Lefsetz's stances, and an audience member voices disagreement with Lefsetz's take on the Led Zeppelin reunion concert. But the session ends with an ovation.

"I wasn't sure what to expect," Lefsetz says afterward. He shrugs. He almost seems disappointed.

* * *

I quoted "Captain Jim's Drunken Dream" at the shrink today. The doctor asked me if I was in the cool group in high school. I said no. Seems that nobody in the music business was cool in high school. If you were cool in high school, you've long ago descended into obscurity. That was the peak of your life. Whereas those of us who were frustrated, who wanted more, we've been trying our whole lives to achieve coolness.

-- The Lefsetz Letter, Nov. 10, 2007

* * *

Once, Bob Lefsetz was a lawyer doing pickup legal work. But it was never his intention to become a practicing attorney. Once, he was a talent manager for heavy metal bands. But nobody understood his creative vision.

Nearly 40 years ago, in high school, he edited a student newspaper in the upper-middle-class suburb of Fairfield, Conn., where he experienced a significant moment of cool. Riffing on the big Paul McCartney rumor of the day, Lefsetz had wondered, in a front-page piece, whether his school's headmaster was dead. "It was a HUGE hit," he recalls.

In some ways, he seems to have been questing for some inchoate sense of self-coolness -- for validation -- ever since, and perhaps he's found it by turning his own life into a performance.

"Doing the kind of [expletive] I'm doing, you're looking for some kind of acknowledgment, the love your mother didn't give you or something," he says. "If you're not neurotic, if you're not insecure, you're not doing this. It's not made for well-adjusted people."

Lefsetz is slumped on a bench outside a bookstore, telling yet another splenetic, circuitous story that's loaded with profanity, asides and Bob Dylan lyrics. It's a story about a lifelong love affair with rock-and-roll and a deep-seated hatred of anybody or anything that threatens the music-loving experience. It's the story about how the Lefsetz Letter happened.