Dave Kendall, who as the taste-making creator and former host of the long-running MTV music video show 120 Minutes introduced alternative rock and underground music to a generation of fans in the 1980s and ’90s, has died. He was 63.
His death was confirmed by MTV in an Instagram post and by Matt Pinfield, a close friend who succeeded Kendall as host of 120 Minutes. Neither provided information about the cause, time or location of Kendall’s death. In recent years he had been living in Bali, Indonesia.
Originally from Britain, Kendall arrived in New York City in November 1984 on an exchange program through the London School of Economics. He soon dropped out and immersed himself in the vibrant local music scene, writing for the East Village Eye and the British publication Melody Maker.
In 1986, he landed a job with MTV, which was introduced just five years earlier but was already transforming pop culture, working as a writer for a brand-new show.
That show, as Kendall told the hosts of the podcast What Difference Does It Make? last summer, didn’t yet have a name but was expected to be two hours long.
Debuting in March 1986 with videos by Robyn Hitchcock and Iggy Pop, 120 Minutes would go on to promote a vast array of rock, pop and punk acts working outside the glare of the mainstream. In the show’s early years, that meant artists including the Smiths, Kate Bush, Hüsker Dü, Cocteau Twins and the Dead Milkmen. Some, like Depeche Mode, would soon go on to hugely successful careers.
Kendall started off writing for the late-night show’s host, initially one of a handful of MTV regulars, including Alan Hunter and J.J. Jackson, though it could also include guests such as Lou Reed. As the program’s budget increased, Kendall became its producer.
In 1989, Kendall became the second permanent host of 120 Minutes, taking over from Kevin Seal. “I essentially just wrote myself into the script as the host,” he confessed on What Difference Does It Make?
With his English accent, spiky black hair and ubiquitous leather jacket and earing, Kendall soon became the face of 120 Minutes — and alternate music on MTV — until he left the show in 1992.
He joked with Trent Reznor, then the shy, brooding frontman of a little-known band called Nine Inch Nails, on Christmas morning, fake snow falling on their heads. He gallivanted around the streets of Tijuana, Mexico, with John Lydon, the former Sex Pistols frontman once known as Johnny Rotten, who had been an idol of Kendall’s as a teenager. He interviewed members of Sonic Youth and Mudhoney at the Reading Festival in England in 1991.
By the time he left the show the next year, many of the bands Kendall had promoted — among them R.E.M., the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana, whose Smells Like Teen Spirit premiered on the show on Sept 29, 1991 — had taken over the pop mainstream, and would soon sell many millions of records.
David Kendall was born in Liverpool, England. No information was immediately available about his upbringing or survivors.
When he arrived in New York in 1984, he lived downtown, on East Ninth Street between Avenues B and C. It was rough neighborhood at the time, one that, as Kendall explained last year on What Difference Does It Make?, was controlled by Puerto Rican gangs.
“I had sort of spiky blond hair, and they just thought I was such a freak that they left me alone,” he said.
Kendall soon immersed himself in the local music scene, working at clubs such as Danceteria, and by the late 1980s he was DJing at the Limelight. It was around this time that he befriended Pinfield, who would go on to host 120 Minutes in the latter half of the 1990s, and again about a decade later when the show was briefly revived on MTV 2.
Pinfield was one of the first to post online about Kendall’s death, describing him as a “true believer” who introduced fans to “bands that would go on to define an era.”
After leaving 120 Minutes in 1992 — Kendall said in an interview with Newsday the next year that MTV told him he had become “too old and ugly” — he eventually made his way to Los Angeles, where he worked as a producer and writer.
In 2005, he left California for Chiang Mai, Thailand, to work as a volunteer and “basically retire,” he said on What Difference Does It Make? But he soon found his way back to television production, working on a travel show, Destination Thailand.
And he eventually returned to journalism, though of a different sort. He served on the editorial staff of the Bangkok Post from 2017 and 2025, producing a monthly podcast focused on Thailand called Deeper Dive, among other duties.
In recent years, Kendall became something of an environmentalist, arguing for reduced meat consumption and a vegan diet to protect the environment — though, as he admitted on What Difference Does It Make? last year, he was not “100%” vegan himself.
Kendall eventually received a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management from National University in San Diego, according to his LinkedIn page. More recently, he received a master’s degree in international journalism from Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
