Nick Kent talks Morrissey and The Smiths in DN interview - Fredrik Strage / Morrissey 61 Facebook group

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Post by Fredrik Strage:

Jag intervjuade just rockjournalisten Nick Kent för DN. Han är aktuell med sin första roman "The Unstable Boys". Jag frågade också om hans relation till Morrissey och han gav mig väldigt utförliga svar. Eftersom jag bara fick med ett par korta citat i den färdiga texten tänkte jag bjussa er Moz-fans på resten. (Det här är inte korrat eller redigerat, bara utskriven intervju.)

Another big "what if" in rock history is what would have happened if you had agreed to publish the stuff that Morrissey sent you when you were a section editor at the NME? Maybe he would have become a rock journalist instead?
I never turned him down. I just didn't get back to him. He wasn't very good. But the main thing is that Morrissey was 14 years old. He was obsessed with the New York Dolls and I had spent enough time around the New York Dolls to know first hand that people who hang around the New York Dolls don't live very long. There's only one guy in the band still alive. Five are dead. Probably more than any other rock group of their era. So I just thought he'd better grow out of it. Also he was 14, what was I going to say? Leave school? Go to New York? I think he always resented me for that. Haha. We had a strange relationship. I remember interviewing him as a member of The Smiths, I couldn't remember him as Steven Morrissey, this kid that used to write to me. He wrote to a lot of people. But very quickly he wanted to know about the New York Dolls. And I knew about them. Johnny Thunders was the same age as me. We dressed the same and we had connections shall we say. So I knew the real story which he didn't. He just knew the story that he had read in the music papers. So I told him the real story of the New York Dolls and I remember him looking at me as if I was Saint Peter talking about Jesus Christ. This kind of worshipful look on his face. He wanted to touch the hem of my garment or something. I said to him "listen, man, the New York Dolls were a fine group, far be it from me to knock them but The Smiths are way better, you Morrissey are way more talented than anyone in the New York Dolls, that's just my opinion". And that impressed him. Haha.

I love The Smiths. I've been listening to them again. It's strange because their music came along at a really bad time in my life. Getting towards the end of my bad drug period. I was suffering from a really bad chemical depression. I was jaded and lacking stamina and everything was shit. Too many synthesizers. The whole music scene was all synthesizers at that point and I didn't like it. Then The Smiths came along and it was just wonderful. It was like hearing The Byrds again for the first time. I fell in love with music again. And meeting them was very nice. Johnny Marr gave me an amplifier, I was still a musician at that time, very nice of him. And a huge talent. I've played guitar with Keith Richards, I know how good a musician he is, like one-to-one, I know how good he is on stage but I also know how good he is when playing in a room and he's very good. He's much better in a room than he is on stage. And also Jimmy Page. Another guitar great. I've been in the same room and watched him play. He's great. But Johnny Marr was the best. When he was in The Smiths it was like... God, the beauty.... I'd purposedly go to soundchecks, before a gig, and Morrissey wouldn't sing it was just Joyce, Rourke and Marr getting the sound right. And they were rehearsing the songs for "The Queen Is Dead" which they were yet to record. They had just written them. And the music coming off that stage... everything that Marr played was just beautiful. It was like something out of a Greek myth. This golden music was coming out of his amplifier. Everything that he played was just... and they worked every day. The Smiths worked hard. The Smiths were the opposite of The Sex Pistols and The New York Dolls. They developed. They rehearsed. They wanted to be great. Every f***ing day, man. Morrissey and Marr would get together and say: "OK, today we're gonna write our version of '8 Miles High'. We're not gonna copy it but we're gonna do something as monumental as that." And they wrote "How Soon Is Now". Then Marr said: "OK, today we're gonna do our 'Gimme Shelter'." And they wrote "Bigmouth Strikes Again". They'd pick a song that was a classic. "OK, we're gonna do our 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling'." And they wrote "I Know It's Over". You understand? That's the level they were working on. Everyone else were thinking like: "OK, we want to sound a bit like Leonard Cohen, a bit like U2, and a bit like Depeche Mode, and the singer wants to sound a bit like Jeff Buckley. We'll put these ingredients together and we'll write our own songs." And that's pretty much what Coldplay does. And hundreds of thousands of people like that approach. That's a mainstream approach to rock music and has been for the last 30 years. But I don't like that because when I hear groups like that I just hear their influences. There's no personality. It's like the difference between Prince, who takes loads of influences but brought his own personality, versus Lenny Kravitz who takes Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, a little bit of John Lennon, and a lot of other influences but doesn't really add anything of his own to it.

The Smiths were like The Velvet Underground. They had their own sound. And those are the rare groups. Those are the important groups that are going to last.

Is it true that Morrissey wrote the song "Reader Meet Author" about you?
I haven't heard the song so I don't really want to comment. There was a time when things were nasty between us. Now we just ignore eachother. I prefer it that way. I don't like his politics. I don't know too much about him. I haven't even listened to his last album. But I listened to "California Son" and I really enjoyed that. I thought he made some really good choices. Joni Mitchell. Laura Nyro. But as for the stuff that he writes now... no. I don't want to say anything negative about the guy but I'm not gonna say anything positive either. Loved him in The Smiths.



The original DN article:


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I had never heard of David Stubbs before. Not until Nerak started posting about him.

I didn't know Melvin is Polish. Who is he? Is he in a punk rock band? I thought he might of been connected to Hugh because I thought it was Hugh who first started doing that "Melvis" thing as a horrible degrading put down. I could be wrong though.

havent you noticed the correlation between the nutters on here and punk rock? they all have punk rock manifestos and that type of nonsense.:crazy:
they make manifesto type posts as if they were in the Kremlin or something addressing the Comitern.:crazy:
 
Don’t think the mass enjoyment of an artist like Morrissey is such a bad thing, I don’t think it’s harmful to the people enjoying his art or to the people that don’t. There are worse forms of escapism through entertainment, fan adulation of pop acts,etc.
Right, but that's not what we're talking about.
 
havent you noticed the correlation between the nutters on here and punk rock? they all have punk rock manifestos and that type of nonsense.:crazy:
they make manifesto type posts as if they were in the Kremlin or something addressing the Comitern.:crazy:
John Robb reminds me a bit of Mark Kermode the BBC film review guy. Mark Kermode used to be a Morrissey fan but he has recently stopped being a fan and wrote about it on Twitter. Their hair looks punk but also a bit 1950s rock 'n' roll.

I know what you mean about the punk rock connection. I think people who were born in the late 1950s and 1960s would be the age group and generation who were most influenced by punk rock. Morrissey was aware of punk rock in the late 1970s he was a teenager back then and he sang in punk rock groups in Manchester. I think The Smiths were known as a "post-punk" group when they first started in the 1980s and they fitted in with "indie rock" and "alternative rock". There was the "New Wave" thing in New York in the early 1980s. Then there was that "New Romantics" things in Britain.

I don't know how old Melvin is. You say he is from Poland. Hugh is probably too young to be an original punk rocker. I didn't understand that politics is part of punk rock.
 
:straightface:

this Robb person gave the suco:handpointright::guardsman::handpointleft: Comet album 9/10 stars for FFS the loon is daft. calls it a 'melancholy masterpiece', now if
that is not enough to make you certifiable nothing is.:crazy:

and that annoying childish tuft of hair.doh:
65 yrs old with a tiny mini mohawk tuft of hair atop his bald dome.
what respectable writer would want to associate herself with that insanity.:censored:
 
You have to love Nick Kent for his hilarious performance on the South Bank Show documentary. As a teenager I watched a recording of this documentary on VHS so many times that I could have quoted every interviewee backwards in my sleep - sad I know!

'In ten years' time The Smith will be viewed in the same way that The Beatles [extremely pregnant pause, raises his eyes upwards as if searching desperately for some synaptic connection] um, are now viewed.'

 
:straightface:

this Robb person gave the suco:handpointright::guardsman::handpointleft: Comet album 9/10 stars for FFS the loon is daft. calls it a 'melancholy masterpiece', now if
that is not enough to make you certifiable nothing is.:crazy:

and that annoying childish tuft of hair.doh:
65 yrs old with a tiny mini mohawk tuft of hair atop his bald dome.
what respectable writer would want to associate herself with that insanity.:censored:
Vegan Cro Spirit have you seen any photos of Mark Kermode? Mark Kermode used to be a Morrissey fan but he has recently turned against him. Mark Kermode works for the BBC as a film review guy. I believe it is possible to work for the BBC and be a Morrissey fan. I think Morrissey still has some support on BBC Radio 2 and maybe BBC 6 Music. How can Mark Kermode be a fan one minute and not the next? If you see a photo of Mark Kermode I hope you see what I mean about he looks a bit like John Robb mostly in the hairstyles. Mark Kermode sort of reminds me of John Robb I think they might of met each other or know each other.

I don't know how old Melvin is? I don't know if he was born in the late 1950s or 1960s. Maybe he is a younger person who got into punk rock later on not when punk rock first started in the late 1970s. Was 1977 the year when punk rock first started and got going?
 

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