In his essential book of collected rock music essays and profiles, The Dark Stuff, writer Nick Kent recounts how famed psychiatrist, R. D. Laing watched an interview tape of Pink Floyd’s genius and drug-addled leader, Syd Barrett and claimed the singer was incurable. Not long after, Kent saw the evidence for himself:

Less than five years earlier, I’d stood transfixed, watching [Syd] in all his retina scorching, dandified splendor as he’d performed with his group the Pink Floyd, silently praying that one day I might be just like him. Now, as he stood before me with his haunted eyes and fractured countenance, I was having second thoughts. I asked him about his current musical project (a short-lived trio called Stars…) as his eyes burned a hole through one of the four walls surrounding us with a stare so ominous it could strip the paint off the bonnet of a brand new car. ‘I had eggs and bacon for breakfast,’ he then intoned solemnly, as if reciting a distantly remembered mantra. I repeated my original question. ‘I’m sorry! I don’t speak French,’ he finally replied.

Perhaps Barrett just wanted to avoid the dandified Kent. Then again, when Kent “rubbed up against the likes of Syd Barrett” he astutley realized:

...these were people who’d gotten what they actually wanted, only to find out it was the last thing on earth they actually needed…

This isn’t to dismiss Barrett’s immense talent or achievements - for one, he took an average band and turned them into something quite incredible. And his importance was such that when he left, his bandmates went on to make music inspired by his absence.

The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story was originally screened in 2001, as part of the BBC’s Omnibus strand as Syd Barrett - Crazy Diamond. The documentary gives a fascinating portrait of Barrett’s brilliant rise and tragic fall through a drug-induced breakdown. Contributions come from Roger Waters, Nick Mason, David Gilmour, artist Duggie Fields (who describes sharing an apartment with the Crazy Diamond), Robyn Hitchcock, and, of course, archive of Syd Barrett - who, incidentally, watched the doc, when it was first broadcast and enjoyed seeing the archive, though found the music “too loud”.
 

Hynde and Kent wearing Vivienne Westwood.
 
Journalist Nick Kent not only wrote about rock and roll, he lived it. And it almost killed him. In his new memoir Apathy For The Devil: A Seventies Memoir, Kent describes his crash and burn lifestyle among London’s rock royalty and some of punk’s royal assholes during the 1970s. Like Lester Bangs and Hunter S. Thompson, Kent was not content to merely observe the action, he had to become a part of it.

From snorting massive amounts of blow and heroin with Keith Richards and witnessing David Bowie screw a groupie in full view of Bowie’s wife Angie to being revived from a drug overdose by Rod Stewart and almost dying in Iggy Pop’s arms, Kent seemed to have a knack for infiltrating scenes few journalist could get close to and few would have had the guts to.  Perhaps it was his own rock star good looks, mod fashion sense and druggy excess that made him appear as glamorous and dangerous as some of the rockers he wrote about. While Bangs was mastering the slob aesthetic, Kent was wearing threads from boutiques like Sex.

Kent also managed to piss alot of people off. After writing a tell-all piece for NME in which he quoted some less than flattering remarks Page made about film maker Kenneth Anger, Kent was confronted by Anger who lived up to his name by shouting “I just have to crook this little finger and Jimmy Page will automatically be transformed into a toad!”

Even though Kent was an early member of The Sex Pistols and introduced them to American punk, his relationship with Malcolm McClaren and the band took a very nasty turn.

Kent ended up playing guitar for two months in an early line-up of the Sex Pistols, whom he taught the songs of Iggy Pop’s proto-punk band the Stooges. Distrustful of Kent’s growing influence over the Pistols’ main guitarist Steve Jones, McLaren got the group’s bassist Glen Matlock to fire him, a departure Kent didn’t mourn at the time — because “I was a middle-class druggie fop and they were working-class spivs who would steal the gold out of their mothers’ teeth” — but which had murderous consequences. A year later while attending a Sex Pistols gig at the 100 Club, Kent was the victim of an unprovoked bicycle chain attack by Sid Vicious, sustaining a terrible head wound that he was too stoned to feel at the time but that, he later realized, nearly killed him.”

In 1973 Kent fell in love with Chrissie Hynde, who had yet to find her rock and roll muse and was working in a boutique on King’s Road. The relationship ended badly in 1974.

While she was working at Malcolm McLaren and Viviene Westwood’s Sex Shop, Hynde later told Jon Savage - in his essential history of British punk, England’s Dreaming - a jealous Kent came into the shop looking to whip her with his belt, causing her to flee to Paris.

Nick takes some credit for inspiring Hynde to pick up a guitar and form a band. He claims to mentoring Hynde, which sounds arrogant or possibly delusional until you listen to Kent’s musical output.

In 1975 Kent formed a band called The Subterraneans with Rat Scabies and Bryan James, who both later moved on to spearhead The Damned. In 1980, The Subterraneans (with Scabies on drums) recorded “My Flamingo” and “Veiled Women.” It was the same year that Chrissie’s band The Pretenders released their debut album and there’s a remarkable similarity in feel, attitude and sound between Kent and Hynde’s music. Is this the result of two lovers absorbing each other’s style? Or mentoring? Whatever the case, Nick’s tunes are every bit as good as most of the music coming out in the late 70s/early 80s. You can hear both tracks in the video below.

A new edition of Apathy For The Devil: A Seventies Memoir is being released in February. You can snag a copy here.
 

 
Thanks to Exile On Moan Street for the turn on and the photo.
 
Nick Kent talks about Apathy For The Devil after the jump…