Nick Kent - Apathy For the Devil

The New Vulgate is a blog/e-zine edited by Joe Carducci & Chris Collins. Joe used to be one of the main guys at SST Records, and is also a writer (Rock & the Pop Narcotic being his best known book). They publish lengthy posts once a week or so which include various stories of cultural interest. Last week's issue included this piece on Nick Kent's new memoir, Apathy For the Devil - out now in the UK, but not due for US publication until August.

From the London desk and Steve Beeho…

Nick Kent was the closest that the English music press came to producing its own Lester Bangs in the 70s. Each possessed a distinctive voice that hooked you from the outset, both of them ruinously pursued lives of excess at their peak and both created their own pantheon of artists which ironically seem like the conventional wisdom nowadays. And as the decade ended both branched out to front their own bands when the urge to practice what they preached became irresistible. (Kent had earlier been in an embryonic version of the Sex Pistols but was excommunicated by McLaren who thought he might contaminate them).

But unlike Bangs, Kent pulled himself out of the nosedive his life had taken and turned away from self-destruction. He has now found God and is a clean-living house-husband living in France. Sixteen years after his classic collection of journalism, The Dark Stuff, Kent has finally published his '70s memoir, Apathy For the Devil, although at least one ex-NME colleague has been less than gushing.

It's a great read but I do wonder though if the, er, oxygen of publicity hasn't made him temporarily take leave of his senses, as he declared in one interview: "I owned the 1970s. Okay, David Bowie owned them too, but he spent a lot of time with his people, just making his music. My job meant I was everywhere."

Such modesty! I wonder if David Bowie broods about how he'd've enjoyed the '70s more if only he'd been Nick Kent. It's kind of ironic though that the dead Lester found himself sanitised for posterity by Cameron Crowe in Almost Famous (2000) when the very-much-still-with-us Nick Kent's '70s descent into self-destruction and subsequent religious epiphany feels like pure Abel Ferrara (!). I'm not quite sure what the moral is there.

Further related & recommended reading:
- Nick Kent - The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music
- Charles Shaar Murray - Shots from the Hip (Penguin originals)
- Mick Farren - GIVE THE ANARCHIST A CIGARETTE (PIMLICO)