A Very Irregular Head and Apathy For The Devil, two cracking books about two maverick figures from far flung corners of the pop firmament, each in their own way the brightest star in their respective galaxies.

Apathy For The Devil, finds Nick Kent, one time enfant terrible of British music journalism, firmly in his anecdotage, relating war stories from the pop wars of the 1970s.

Kent is the nearest thing the British pop press got to a Lester Bangs. A voyager to the outer edges of pop mythology, living a life in the way he thought a pop legend should, as a diva, a devout hedonist and a drug-fueled liver of a life on the run. Apathy For The Devil (the title lifted from an Ian Hunter song inspired by a Bob Dylan quote about the death of the artist and the rise of the professional musician) is a rollicking memoir about living for music in the 1970s, during which time pop gave way to rock, boundaries were drawn and it all became just another career choice.

Like other war stories much of Apathy For The Devil is great fun, because Nick Kent really was that soldier. He did tour endlessly with the Stones and Led Zeppelin in their decadent pomp years. He did reinvent pop journalism and he did give meaning to pop in this country as something other than a throwaway trifle, that it could be a meaningful thrill worthy of awe and of devoting one’s life to.

In Kent’s case this became a very literal devotion as he succumbed to the prevalence of rock star heroin. Thus we see him junkying around with a load of nonetities but also with Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and Iggy Pop, that’s heroic old mentalist Iggy Pop, rather than sedate tooth-whitened Iggy Pop. So enamoured is Kent of the brown and the white, it’s amazing he found time to invent punk for Malcolm McLaren. Yes it’s that type of me, me, me book, but enough of it rings true with enough mea culpa to make Apathy For The Devil a roller-coaster of a read. And in most of Kent’s opinions you can still feel the force of someone who cares, is for the most part right and can explain why with the requisite elegance and self-belief to pull it off.

In the end Kent became washed away on a tide of heroin and peer group resentment but since he was also responsible for the initial reevaluation of Syd Barrett with a lengthy piece he wrote for the NME in 1974, good luck to him in reclaiming his rightful place, whatever that might be. Apathy For The Devil is a righteous hoot of a book.

Bookmark to