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The Last Bandit
607 pages, Unknown Binding
First published February 1, 2011
36 people want to read
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May 5, 2025
Why…?
Why did I read The Last Bandit, a 607-page doorstop of a memoir by an obscure British rock and roll singer/songwriter named Nikki Sudden? Chances are you’ve never heard his name or his music. He was sort of big in Germany and Spain for a while. He got almost no recognition in his UK home after his first band, punk outfit Swell Maps, imploded after their debut 1979 LP. Here in the States, he’s the definition of a cult artist. Yes, some renown artists of my generation, give or take a decade, know about Nikki. The quotes on the back of this paperback printed in Italy make that clear – Ryan Adams, Peter Buck, Thurston Moore. These people (music geeks all) had careers, and they know Nikki’s music. But most do not.
Nikki writes good songs but he’s not much of a prose writer. So, when he set out to write this memoir, the bumpy, ragged story of his third-tier rock and roll life, he didn’t really set out with a plan or an overarching theme. There’s no big picture here, just the day-to-day details of his musical journey, sometimes coming across in the staccato style of diary entries. The manuscript needs serious editing. There are aspects of his life and those of his family and friends that are repeated ad nauseum – someone with a red pen really should have gone through his stack of pages. And while Nikki rubbed shoulders with some of the greats and near-greats (befriending punk legend Johnny Thunders; meeting all the Rolling Stones, his idols), his life of playing and singing rock and roll music to half-full bars in snowbound rural Germany does not the stuff of legend make, let alone scintillating rock memoir (oh, but there are plenty of drugs though!).
So yes, it was a bit of a slog. I read the first hundred pages back during COVID and shelved it, thinking I would read the tome in installments. Years passed. I dove back in recently and decided to plow through it all at last. The short chapters pile up quickly as the lists of gigs, jumbled rosters of session players and bandmates, and the litany of lovely women who take him in, all begin to blur together. The blurred effect only cleared away when something strange is dropped in, like the odd later chapter which reprints a dream-like “article” Nikki wrote about bluesman Robert Johnson for a British rock magazine.
So why then did I push through and finish the book?
Because I love Nikki Sudden. I love his music, his style, his attitude, his art. I’ve always had a soft spot for obsessive artists and Nikki was nothing of not obsessive about writing, recording and playing his music. No matter how broke he was, he somehow found the money to lay down some new tracks, record a new song he’d written, and somehow get these things pressed into vinyl. He muses at one point about taking a job in a record store (in his forties), quitting and swearing off jobs forever, writing “never again!” His life was only about one thing, rock and roll, not money. The drugs, drink, travel, women, colleagues, family and friends that swirled around him were simply facets of “a rock and roll life” – the subtitle of this book.
I discovered Nikki’s music in New York in 1986 when he and his mate Dave Kusworth, christened Jacobites, released their murky, dreamy, psychedelic masterwork, Robespierre’s Velvet Basement. With this LP, the die was cast for the rest of their careers, both together and solo, casting them adrift upon a sea of scarves, jangly guitars, sloppy drums and lyrics of ragged romance, history and heartbreak.
Over the years my appreciation for Nikki’s music only grew. I hunted down as much of his recorded oeuvre as possible – a challenge, as some albums were released only in Germany or by a French label that quickly went under. I managed to cobble together an almost complete collection on CD despite the nagging feeling I was engaged in lonely, isolated endeavor. Almost nobody in my life knew of the existence of this artist. (Shout out to the few that do, including a friend who sings in a Nikki tribute band called Sea of Scarves.) I even managed to see Nikki perform live here in LA, twice! Once he opened for The Brian Jonestown Massacre at The Garage – just him and his electric guitar before a room of LA hipsters. Did anyone in that club know who he was? Debatable. The second show was something I still think I dreamed. Nikki and Dave, as Jacobites, performed as a duo at Spaceland in Silverlake in 1999. I stood watching the chemistry and magic happen mere feet away in that tiny, dingy space. What struck me was how small they both were – and that they each were wearing new sneakers, not the usual boots or pointy shoes. They were, of course, both draped in scarves. (Nikki remembers this as an exceptional performance in the book!) I learned Nikki had a website where he would talk about the books he was reading. He was a voracious reader. Based on his tastes, I posted recommending he read The Baroque Cycle trilogy by Neil Stephenson – and he wrote me back saying it sounded right up his alley! I checked in to re-read his reply years after he was gone.
I was saddened to learn of Nikki’s passing in 2006. Saddened but not surprised; he lived a life on the very edge with few creature comforts. (He rarely had a permanent place of residence after leaving his parents’ home until they helped him with a security deposit for a Berlin apartment in his late 40s.) I tried to keep track of Dave Kusworth’s musical output until his death in 2020. They both took life as it came and pushed hard to live a dream that had grabbed hold of them at an early age – the dream of playing rock and roll music. I admired them both, especially visionary artist Nikki Sudden.
So that is the reason I read his clumsy, clunky, chockablock memoir from cover to cover: I feel like I owed it to Nikki, a man who gave me so much. Once I knew there was a book I had to find it (out of print, only on Ebay, if you’re lucky). Once I owned it I knew I would eventually read it. Once I started reading, I needed to finish it, despite its rumpled-bed-in-a-crash-pad prose. If an artist like Nikki was generous enough and prolific enough to offer up to fans the story of his “rock and roll life”, the least a true fan could do is read it.
Mission accomplished.
Why did I read The Last Bandit, a 607-page doorstop of a memoir by an obscure British rock and roll singer/songwriter named Nikki Sudden? Chances are you’ve never heard his name or his music. He was sort of big in Germany and Spain for a while. He got almost no recognition in his UK home after his first band, punk outfit Swell Maps, imploded after their debut 1979 LP. Here in the States, he’s the definition of a cult artist. Yes, some renown artists of my generation, give or take a decade, know about Nikki. The quotes on the back of this paperback printed in Italy make that clear – Ryan Adams, Peter Buck, Thurston Moore. These people (music geeks all) had careers, and they know Nikki’s music. But most do not.
Nikki writes good songs but he’s not much of a prose writer. So, when he set out to write this memoir, the bumpy, ragged story of his third-tier rock and roll life, he didn’t really set out with a plan or an overarching theme. There’s no big picture here, just the day-to-day details of his musical journey, sometimes coming across in the staccato style of diary entries. The manuscript needs serious editing. There are aspects of his life and those of his family and friends that are repeated ad nauseum – someone with a red pen really should have gone through his stack of pages. And while Nikki rubbed shoulders with some of the greats and near-greats (befriending punk legend Johnny Thunders; meeting all the Rolling Stones, his idols), his life of playing and singing rock and roll music to half-full bars in snowbound rural Germany does not the stuff of legend make, let alone scintillating rock memoir (oh, but there are plenty of drugs though!).
So yes, it was a bit of a slog. I read the first hundred pages back during COVID and shelved it, thinking I would read the tome in installments. Years passed. I dove back in recently and decided to plow through it all at last. The short chapters pile up quickly as the lists of gigs, jumbled rosters of session players and bandmates, and the litany of lovely women who take him in, all begin to blur together. The blurred effect only cleared away when something strange is dropped in, like the odd later chapter which reprints a dream-like “article” Nikki wrote about bluesman Robert Johnson for a British rock magazine.
So why then did I push through and finish the book?
Because I love Nikki Sudden. I love his music, his style, his attitude, his art. I’ve always had a soft spot for obsessive artists and Nikki was nothing of not obsessive about writing, recording and playing his music. No matter how broke he was, he somehow found the money to lay down some new tracks, record a new song he’d written, and somehow get these things pressed into vinyl. He muses at one point about taking a job in a record store (in his forties), quitting and swearing off jobs forever, writing “never again!” His life was only about one thing, rock and roll, not money. The drugs, drink, travel, women, colleagues, family and friends that swirled around him were simply facets of “a rock and roll life” – the subtitle of this book.
I discovered Nikki’s music in New York in 1986 when he and his mate Dave Kusworth, christened Jacobites, released their murky, dreamy, psychedelic masterwork, Robespierre’s Velvet Basement. With this LP, the die was cast for the rest of their careers, both together and solo, casting them adrift upon a sea of scarves, jangly guitars, sloppy drums and lyrics of ragged romance, history and heartbreak.
Over the years my appreciation for Nikki’s music only grew. I hunted down as much of his recorded oeuvre as possible – a challenge, as some albums were released only in Germany or by a French label that quickly went under. I managed to cobble together an almost complete collection on CD despite the nagging feeling I was engaged in lonely, isolated endeavor. Almost nobody in my life knew of the existence of this artist. (Shout out to the few that do, including a friend who sings in a Nikki tribute band called Sea of Scarves.) I even managed to see Nikki perform live here in LA, twice! Once he opened for The Brian Jonestown Massacre at The Garage – just him and his electric guitar before a room of LA hipsters. Did anyone in that club know who he was? Debatable. The second show was something I still think I dreamed. Nikki and Dave, as Jacobites, performed as a duo at Spaceland in Silverlake in 1999. I stood watching the chemistry and magic happen mere feet away in that tiny, dingy space. What struck me was how small they both were – and that they each were wearing new sneakers, not the usual boots or pointy shoes. They were, of course, both draped in scarves. (Nikki remembers this as an exceptional performance in the book!) I learned Nikki had a website where he would talk about the books he was reading. He was a voracious reader. Based on his tastes, I posted recommending he read The Baroque Cycle trilogy by Neil Stephenson – and he wrote me back saying it sounded right up his alley! I checked in to re-read his reply years after he was gone.
I was saddened to learn of Nikki’s passing in 2006. Saddened but not surprised; he lived a life on the very edge with few creature comforts. (He rarely had a permanent place of residence after leaving his parents’ home until they helped him with a security deposit for a Berlin apartment in his late 40s.) I tried to keep track of Dave Kusworth’s musical output until his death in 2020. They both took life as it came and pushed hard to live a dream that had grabbed hold of them at an early age – the dream of playing rock and roll music. I admired them both, especially visionary artist Nikki Sudden.
So that is the reason I read his clumsy, clunky, chockablock memoir from cover to cover: I feel like I owed it to Nikki, a man who gave me so much. Once I knew there was a book I had to find it (out of print, only on Ebay, if you’re lucky). Once I owned it I knew I would eventually read it. Once I started reading, I needed to finish it, despite its rumpled-bed-in-a-crash-pad prose. If an artist like Nikki was generous enough and prolific enough to offer up to fans the story of his “rock and roll life”, the least a true fan could do is read it.
Mission accomplished.
Displaying 1 of 1 review