The rock critic who revived British music writing at the NME in the 70s is back with his first novel – a caustic tale of rock megalomania

Nick Kent, who is as close as British music journalism ever came to producing a legend, finally stopped writing about rock in 2007. “There was really nothing around that sparked my imagination,” he tells me. “There was no mystery, and rock’n’roll needs mystery.”

So ended a singular odyssey that had begun 35 years earlier, in 1972, when Kent joined a then struggling NME and, within a year or two, had helped push its weekly readership to near the 300,000 mark. Back then, a tall, stick-thin fop in leather trousers, matching biker jacket, a dangling earring and eyeliner, Kent was as sartorially stylish and – to borrow one of his own phrases – as “elegantly wasted” as the dissolute rock stars he profiled. And he walked it like he talked it, hanging out with the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, befriending Iggy Pop, stepping out with Chrissie Hynde (briefly a fellow NME writer) and even playing guitar in a very early incarnation of the Sex Pistols.