Nick Kent was the “Zeitgeist-surfing dark prince of seventies rock journalism”. This is how he describes himself with only the vaguest of self mockery in his memoir of the decade entitled Apathy For The Devil.
The title is taken from a quip by Bob Dylan after being asked his opinion of a lacklustre Rolling Stones concert. It’s a highly quotable line but not a great book title and the cheapskate cover image by Jon Stevens for the Faber & Faber edition is pretty crap too.
Don’t let either of these details put you off though as this is a fantastic book.
Like many of my generation (I was born in 1958), I grew up reading NME cover to cover and Kent’s pieces stood out as writing that was both passionate and committed. He has always maintained that to write meaningfully about music it is not enough just to listen to the records and analyse the lyrics. He approached rock journalism in the same way a war correspondent covers conflicts, by braving the heat of the battle or what he calls entering “the belly of the beast”. This involved him being a kind of rock writer in residence on tour with bands like The Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Faces and Jethro Tull. Unfortunately, part of this full immersion into the rock star lifestyle meant he emulated his heroes to the point of being stoned out of his skull for most of his waking hours. He snorted heroin for the first time at the tail end of 1973 aged 22, opening the door to a “world of hurt”. The fact that he was able to produce good copy in this state is as miraculous as the fact that he has lived to tell the tale now.
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I wanted to see this movie since, according to the Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw, it is the best film ever made.
