The final issue of Frendz (January 6, 1972) was a thin affair and was not helped by Nick Kent having missed the deadline for his copy. He got his mum to phone in his excuse . . .

Bowie had confused Doug Yule with Lou a year earlier and it seems their identities were still getting mixed up, but, you know, Transformer was still two months away from its November release, so who did know what he actually looked like?

Whatever, the front cover is a graphic delight. A new logo and the use of colour within san serif typefaces that left a now jaded Underground aesthetic behind and signalled the pop/punk age to come. Apparently it is not a Barney Bubbles concoction, but surely that is a Pennie Smith image from July’s King Sound gig?

Regardless of the legend of Nick ‘the zeitgeist-surfing dark prince of seventies rock journalism’ Kent, I find his output in 1972 endlessly fascinating as he works out a stance and discovers his voice. His attitude was already in place with his first published reviews in Frendz (March 3, 1972); his take on Quicksilver and Moby Grape is a quick shuffle through the ashes left after second generation rock ‘n’ roll had burnt out. All he finds is a lingering nostalgia for when The Grape were a ‘genuine rock ‘n’ roll band’, which is as true as anything he ever wrote.

Kent hasn’t yet figured out what the third generation would look like, but he knew Lou Reed was going to be important and that a taste for the pure sixties pop of Motown (and others) was the basis on which the new decade would turn.

. . . and who wouldn’t want to hear that Laura Nyro album after reading this.

When the next lockdown hits, and I find the motivation, I’ll post an annotated bibliography of his reviews and interviews from the year of the pin-up.