Nick Kent > Quotes

“Self-destructing – in rock, in public, in fact anywhere – is not good for the human spirit, not to mention the lungs, liver and kidneys. Artistically, it’s best approached the way David Bowie did it in the mid-1970s. His cocaine addiction turned him into a withered stick-insect figure of a man but also inspired the best music of his entire career. Then he sorted himself out and became the golden-haired survivor we know and love today.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“First, I always go for the key, then I go for the rhythm, then I go for the melody, then I go for the lyrics, OK? That’s how I do it.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“That’s what I was gonna do, and I wasn’t going to hurt. And if you shut yourself off and say, “This isn’t going to hurt me,” you can’t shut it down without shutting it down totally. I closed myself down so much that I was making it, doing great with surviving – but my soul was completely encased. I didn’t even consider that I would need a soul to play my music, that when I shut the door on pain, I shut the door on my music. That’s what I did. And that’s how people get old.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“Nostalgia, shit! That’s a pitiful concept. Because it’s dead, it’s safe – that’s what that shit is about!”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“In fantasy, everything’s possible; you can slip out of reality into a fantasy. ‘It’s a satisfying feeling to withdraw, what can I say? I live inside my own head, so my head contains a lot of memories and a lot of ingeniousness. I consider myself to be a creative genius and the child in me, of course, tries to get away though the world around me keeps me from going too far. But the child is basically the expression of the ego, and I think this is why I want to be a child; because you can express ego, but, at the same time, you can be innocent …”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“What was really happening was that Brian’s whole approach to romance was becoming more and more personalized, more honest in a distinctly autobiographical way.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“Elvis Presley exhibited all the classic symptoms of those driven to self-destruction by too much fame and medication: short attention span, an egocentric, chronically addictive personality, bad taste in friends and horrendous eating habits. He was also stupid.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“took those drugs that made me search my soul, and try to see what I was all about … But the drugs back-fired. I took acid, and it squashed my ego down a little bit, and it hurt my feelings that I didn’t have what someone else might have had. When you go through too much of that, it’s like an attack you have inside your head. You won’t accept it like that. I want it to be perfect! Music is perfect! ‘But I never ever quit. See, I’m not a quitter.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“If you put music out that’s spiritual, that has spiritual vibes in it, people are gonna hear it.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“don’t believe in the fuckin’ work ethic. This “work is what life’s all about” shit is just a bunch of bollocks, it’s just a fuckin’ English bourgeois guilt trip invented by the fuckin’ English bourgeoisie to keep people in line, y’know, like a bunch of happy fuckin’ slaves. Bourgeois guilt means fuckin’ nothin’ to me.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“I’ve made bad records but I’ve never made a dishonest record, let’s put it that way.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“You can make it on your own time? / Laid-back and laughing? Oh no!’ he’d admonished during the album’s grand finale. It was just his way of letting the culture know that the upcoming seventies were going to be very tricky indeed, that all that sixties sweet-talk no longer applied to what lay ahead, and that it was time, for him at least, to get to grips with the dark, deadly undertow of the Aquarian age.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“The only two things that matter to me, the only motivation points for me writing all these songs,’ opines Costello with a perverse leer, ‘are revenge and guilt. Those are the only emotions I know about, that I know I can feel. Love? I dunno what it means, really, and it doesn’t exist in my songs.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“For me, an image becomes meaningless inasmuch as it’s always temporary.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“I think an artist will have to know that the reward is in the giving. That’s where it’s at: it’s called “unconditional love”.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“And what I recall of it was that their zest and gusto for life was what made those times so supercharged. So that if they were drinking they’d drink a lot, and when they were playing they’d play with all their heart and soul.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“could never get anything going in Toronto, never even got one gig with a band. So I moved instead towards acoustic music and immediately became very introspective and musically inward. That’s the beginning of that whole side of my music.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“A villain walks in and destroys something.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“It’s like there’s a mighty reservoir of songs that no one’s ever heard up there in heaven and there’s a tap in Neil Young’s brain that’s somehow attached to it. All he has to do is ease his mind into the right gear and something will always come trickling down.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“Looking back on my childhood now, there’s a sort of glow to my reminiscences. It’s like my memory has blocked out most of the bad stuff. I just remember all those glorious sunny days and good times. You need to have good memories from your past. You never know when you’re going to have to depend on those memories just to see you through a bad patch in your adult life.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“Every wall has two reasons for existing.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“OK, let’s just get really, really mellow and peaceful. Let’s make music that’s just as intense as the electric stuff but which comes from a completely different, more loving place.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“The key incident for me was that I never had any friends. And I realized that in order to have friends and impress people, I had to do something extraordinary.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“like all the great rock’n’rollers, to sound like he’d dropped in from another planet and yet get the stuff which was right to the heart of what you were living today. That was how he opened up your vision.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“Looking back on my childhood now, there’s a sort of glow to my reminiscences. It’s like my memory has blocked out most of the bad stuff.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“Brian was constantly looking for topics that kids could relate to. Even though he was dealing in the most advanced score-charts and arrangements, he was still incredibly conscious of this commercial thing. This absolute need to relate.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“You can find that in all art forms: the minute you inspire laughter you also make that person vulnerable, which means either you can shock them, make them laugh more, or, at that moment, you can be totally honest with them.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“I’ve got to keep moving somewhere. I’ve written some of my best songs on the move, driving on a long journey, scribbling lyrics on cigarette packets while steering. I like that style,”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“He’d just interpreted his brother’s enthusiasm, blending his own fantasies in to add a little extra flavouring. But this new music had a spiritual thing going for it. This was his music, the sound of his soul rising up, and as he leaned forward to embrace it”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

“It’s out of the question … Partly because I was always attracted to men or women who were never attracted to me. And I was never attracted to women and men who were attracted to me. I’ve never met the right person. I’d like to take [one mad plunge]. But not just with anyone; it just doesn’t come naturally to me.”
― Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993