The Dark Stuff (2nd ed., 2002)

Nick Kent, self-declared Lester Bangs idolator and star NME staffer back when it really counted, brings all the soft-pedaled erudition, unblinking cynicism, and dead-on wit we have come to expect and appreciate from him and his '70s (and into the '80s) generation of British rock critics. A glance at the table of contents quickly reveals the usual suspects (plus a few ringers) in stark relief: Brian Wilson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roky Erickson, Syd Barrett, Brian Jones, Lou Reed, Sid Vicious, Elvis Costello, Morrissey, Shane MacGowan, Iggy Pop (twice—and he also writes the foreword), Miles Davis, Roy Orbison, Neil Young, Kurt Cobain, Prince, Johnny Cash, Eminem, a few others. In compulsively readable pieces that comprise equal parts interview, thought experiment, and nicely observed detail, with revisions and second thoughts and perspectives that stretch across the decades, Kent goes one on one with all our favorites, or a good many of them, as he works to get at the music and the players and fans and the scenes that spawned them. One of the most surprising portraits for me, though perhaps it should not have been, was his staggering wade through the torrents of Elvis Costello's head, with Costello stalking through endlessly spitting petty vengeance fantasies when he was not yet even 22, circa 1977, just at the precise moment when success seemed within his reach but not yet quite even partially within his grasp, focused so intently on what he was about that the intensity and confidence and overpowering creative energy read like a kind of brutalizing, primally infantile rage—hardly the mellow, kindly, slightly sour or acerbic old uncle figure he seems to me to cut now (the mellowing likely part of the continuing fallout of the 1979 contretemps with Bonnie Bramlett and Stephen Stills in a Columbus, Ohio, bar—more evidence by implication how much the incident changed him). But there it is, in black and white, along with Lou Reed as mid-'70s wastrel speed freak (yes, that really happened, children), Jerry Lee Lewis still plotting a comeback bid and imminent takeover of the entertainment world in 1989, and Kurt Cobain all MIA, the ghost who haunts every performer from Seattle across a six-week period that ended in April 1994. I can think of some I really wish Kent had been able to get to, e.g., Boy George, the Thin White Duke always, of course, and maybe Ian Hunter or Pete Townshend or Bob Mould or Nikki Sudden? Some others. But this will do. In fact, it's a real page turner.

In case it's not at the library.