Book is called The Unstable Boys and concerns a cult band following their rediscovery after a Mojo-style reappraisal.
Great interview with Mr K in today’s Guardian Culture section – well worth reading if only for the story about Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band trying to buy a meal in a greasy spoon on an early 70s tour of the UK.
If the book is one tenth as good as the long article he wrote about Brian Wilson across three issues of the NME in 1975 it should be bloody good.
Time to dig out that dead-tree copy of The Dark Stuff…
Jaygee says
NK’s later Apathy for the Devil was also pretty good.
Jaygee says
Anyone know why this is not showing up on the actual forum page?
Mod Team says
Crack team on it, etc
Jaygee says
Nick Kent was on crack as well as smack? It’s amazing how he managed to slide into his leather keks of a morning!
Moose the Mooche says
Pretty simple – he’d never taken them off.
See John Cooper Clarke’s “patina of grime” comment
Sewer Robot says
🤢
rich says
Should be ok now etc
H.P. Saucecraft says
Two things I always associate with Mr. Kent – the brilliant (and then brave) re-appraisal of the Beach Boys referred to above, and someone on the letters page of the NME asking the identity of the “dodgy boiler” in a previous week’s photograph (it was he).
retropath2 says
I think it was then that I finally took the Beach Boys to heart: long and magnificent writing over (at least) 4 pages, the centre pages, I recall. They were not cool at that time, but Holland and the Live double were getting them some surprised glances from the cognoscenti.
I think the Beach Boys biography ‘Heroes and Villains; the true story of the Beach Boys’ came out at a similar time, or am I thinking of an earlier tome?
H.P. Saucecraft says
Wasn’t the NME piece run over at least a couple of weeks? @ four pages per? I kept them for years. Can’t tell you about the book.
Jaygee says
Running at a time shortly after Nick Drake’s suicide/accidental overdose at a time when barely anyone was talking about the artist, Kent’s lengthy reappraisal of ND was equally way ahead of his time.
Dug. out my copy of TDS last night and, in addition to the Wilson/Drake pieces, there are some other great articles in there I’d forgotten about and will read again – Shane McGowan, Morrisey, Neil Young and Miles Davis being the three that leapt of the contents page.
As regards the Dodgy Bolier letter in NME. Sublime pieces like the Marquee Moon review aside, NK was in a sorry state by the mid-70s. You know you’re in serious schttoock when a then equally abject addict like John Cooper Clarke comments on how far you’ve fallen!
The novel is out on Jan 28 if anyone in the ATM is interested
Moose the Mooche says
The Drake piece appears here.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/05/nick-drake-requiem-for-a-solitary-man
duco01 says
Nick Kent was an excellent rock journalist.
As a novelist? I dunno. We’ll see.
Also, I’ve always been a big fan of Kent’s old NME comrade in arms, Charles Shaar Murray. I’ve read some of his rock books, but never took the plunge with his one novel, “The Hellhound Sample”.
Has any Afterworder read CSM’s “The Hellhound Sample”? Is it any good?
Jaygee says
No idea, but hope he spent more time and took better care of it than he did with his teeth which looked shocking last time I saw him on TV.
Anyone know what’s happened to CSM these days? He used to be a regular feature of Friday night rock docs on BBC4. Can’t recall seeing him for a while
H.P. Saucecraft says
He peaked with Schoolkid’s Oz.
Jaygee says
Crosstown Traffic was pretty good though
slotbadger says
He’s pretty active over on Facebook, just drop him a friend request
Twang says
CSM’s guitar columns from some guitar mag are available on Kindle at cheap, well worth a read.
Moose the Mooche says
He draws the parallel between Axl Rose and Trump:
Narcissist – check
Ginger – check
weight problem – check
Racist language – check
Appetite for destruction – check
Stupid voice – check
H.P. Saucecraft says
Not President in a few days – check
duco01 says
From his autobiog, Mark Ellen’s description of Nick Kent’s customary arrival at the NME offices in Carnaby Street…
‘… the magnificent Nick Kent, whose arrival was preceded by great waves of expectation, especially among the girls. Would he be wearing his ripped leather trousers, and, if so, any pants beneath them? He’d finally levered himself off heroin but was so enfeebled by his methadone habit that the fine details of his physical appearance weren’t a high priority. His legendary lack of undergarments wasn’t a fashion statement: he’d either forgotten to attach any or didn’t own a pair in the first place. Kent would wobble through reception in a stained hat, an off-white scarf that could have done with a wash, a Johnny Thunders T-shirt, jangling biker boots and severely torn trousers, a brace of swinging testicles visible from round the back. He had the crepuscular pallor of a nine-pint blood donor and legs like a wading bird’s, so stick-thin and rickety you thought his knees might bend the wrong way. One hand brandished a glowing butt, the other several sheets of cardboard from cereal packets with his latest meisterwerk on them in spidery scrawl. His overstretched pockets carried two tins of cling peaches, the only solids apart from cornflakes the drug-addicted scribe could stomach.’
Mrbellows says
Hahaha! That’s wonderful.
Freddy Steady says
It’s just nit picking.
Mousey says
I’ll read it.
I loved the NME in that early 70s period – NK, CSM and the rest. I even bought Lone Grover t-shirts and had them shipped to New Zealand (where we got NME and MM and Sounds 3 months late
duco01 says
I love the bit in Robert Forster’s (auto)biography of his life with Grant McLennan, when the Go-Betweens arrive in London and are overjoyed to find that they can buy the NME minutes after it hits the streets, rather than 3 months later!
Moose the Mooche says
Whereas with Rolling Stone you can buy a copy months or even decades later and not notice any difference.
Mousey says
@duco01 I can so relate to that!
I have told the story here many times of arriving in London in January 1973 (after a 6 week boat trip from New Zealand) and heading to the newsstand to buy the current MM reporting Eric Clapton’s Rainbow concert with the headline “Great, Eric!”
And the photo caption “Triumvirate of axemen in white” (Eric, Pete Townsend and Ron Wood)
Junior Wells says
Are those pieces on the Beach Boys available online?
Moose the Mooche says
Probably on Rock’s Back Pages, but don’t quote me on that.
Jaygee says
They are on RBP but the minimum three month subscription ain’t cheap. You’d probably be better off trying eBay for a second hand copy of The Dark Stuff
yorkio says
Indeed. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve considered subscribing only to back away in alarm when I’ve discovered how much it costs.