Lenny Kaye
Encyclopedia
Lenny Kaye is an American
guitarist
, composer
and writer
who is best known as a member of the Patti Smith Group
.
area of upper Manhattan, New York, along the Hudson River
in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge
. Growing up in Queens and Brooklyn, Lenny originally began playing accordion, but by the end of the 1950s, had dropped the instrument in favor of collecting records. His family moved to North Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1960 where Lenny attended high school, and later, college, graduating Rutgers in 1967. Though he majored in American History, his true avocation
was musical, and it was there that he first began playing in bands, on a college mixer and fraternity circuit later immortalized in National Lampoon's Animal House
. His first gig, with the Vandals ("Bringing down the house with your kind of music"), was at Alpha Sigma Phi
on November 7, 1964.
since her band's inception more than thirty years ago, and is the co-author of Waylon, The Life Story of Waylon Jennings. He has worked in the studio with such artists as R.E.M.
, Suzanne Vega
, Jim Carroll
, Soul Asylum
, Kristen Hersh and Allen Ginsberg
, as well as his own solo muse. His seminal anthology of sixties' garage-rock, Nuggets, has long been regarded as defining a genre. You Call It Madness: The Sensuous Song of the Croon, an impressionistic study of the romantic singers of the 1930s, was published by Villard/Random House in 2004.
His uncle, songwriter Larry Kusik ("A Time For Us" from Romeo and Juliet; "Speak Softly Love" from The Godfather) took note of his lengthening hair and musical commitment, and asked him to sing on a song he'd recently penned with Ritchie Adams, once of the Fireflies ("You Were Mine"). It was the fall of 1965, and folk-protest was in the air, Lenny soon found himself in Associated Recording Studios on Times Square, recording "Crazy Like A Fox", along with its flip side, "Shock Me". The resultant 45, issued under the name of Link Cromwell, was leased to Hollywood Records, a division of Starday Records located in Nashville, Tennessee, and released in March 1966. It garnered a Newcomer Pick of the Week from Cashbox ("A rhythmic bluesy folk-rocker with a pulsating beat") and was issued in England as well as Australia; but failed to move in the charts. Though hardly a smash, it did give Lenny a sense of himself as a musician, and inspired him to continue performing and playing. His group at the time, The Zoo, worked a college circuit ranging from New York to Pennsylvania; this early experience has been captured on a live album issued by Norton Records, Live 1966.
Moving back to the city, Lenny began writing reviews for Jazz and Pop magazine; branching out to such nascent rock publications as Fusion, Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone. He became the music editor of Cavalier, a men's magazine that at the time was also publishing the early short stories of Stephen King
, and would write a monthly column for them until 1975; and the New York correspondent for the British weekly, Disc. As a free-lance writer, he would write for a wide range of periodicals, including Melody Maker
, Creem
, and edit such publications as Rock Scene and Hit Parader
throughout the seventies.
While working at Village Oldies on Bleecker Street
in New York, he met poet-singer Patti Smith
. On February 10, 1971, he backed her at a reading at St. Mark's Church on E. 10th St. When they resumed performance in November 1973, their artistic efforts bore fruit as one of the major rock bands of the 1970s. Lenny produced Patti's debut single ("Hey Joe / Piss Factory"), and performed as part of her Group throughout the decade, as reflected in four Arista
albums: Horses (1975), Radio Ethiopia (1976), Easter (1978) and Wave (1979).
Following the Patti Smith Group's final performance in September 1979, Lenny joined the Jim Carroll Band
, as well as fronting his own Lenny Kaye Connection. He co-produced Suzanne Vega
's first two albums, including her 1987 hit single, "Luka
", which was nominated for a Grammy as Record of the Year. He has been nominated three times for Grammy awards in the liner notes category for boxed sets on the sixties folk revival (Bleecker and MacDougal), white blues (Crossroads), and progressive rock (Elektrock); and has co-authored a comprehensive hall of fame with David Dalton (Rock 100).
In 1995, he reunited with Patti Smith and has been a part of her band since, creating five studio albums, a retrospective, and celebrating the thirtieth anniversary release of their landmark debut album, Horses.
In 2010, Kaye contributed a solo recording for Daddy Rockin' Strong: A Tribute to Nolan Strong and the Diablos (The Wind/Norton Records
). Kaye recorded a version of "I Wanna Know," a 1950s R&B ballad. He appears on and wrote one song for The Fleshtones
2011 album Brooklyn Sound Solution (Yep Roc). Also, he appeared on 'Alligator Aviator Autopilot Antimatter' and 'Blue' on R.E.M.
's 2011 album Collapse into Now
, an album that Smith also contributed to, also on 'Blue' and another song, 'Discoverer'.
track: I Wanna Know
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
guitarist
Guitarist
A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...
, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
who is best known as a member of the Patti Smith Group
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
.
Early life
Lenny was born on December 27, 1946, in the Washington HeightsWashington Heights, Manhattan
Washington Heights is a New York City neighborhood in the northern reaches of the borough of Manhattan. It is named for Fort Washington, a fortification constructed at the highest point on Manhattan island by Continental Army troops during the American Revolutionary War, to defend the area from the...
area of upper Manhattan, New York, along the Hudson River
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...
in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge
George Washington Bridge
The George Washington Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Hudson River, connecting the Washington Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City to Fort Lee, Bergen County, New Jersey. Interstate 95 and U.S. Route 1/9 cross the river via the bridge. U.S...
. Growing up in Queens and Brooklyn, Lenny originally began playing accordion, but by the end of the 1950s, had dropped the instrument in favor of collecting records. His family moved to North Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1960 where Lenny attended high school, and later, college, graduating Rutgers in 1967. Though he majored in American History, his true avocation
Avocation
An avocation is an activity that one engages in as a hobby outside one's main occupation. There are many examples of people whose professions were the ways that they made their livings, but for whom their activities outside of their workplaces were their true passions in life...
was musical, and it was there that he first began playing in bands, on a college mixer and fraternity circuit later immortalized in National Lampoon's Animal House
National Lampoon's Animal House
National Lampoon's Animal House is a 1978 American comedy film directed by John Landis. The film was a direct spin-off of National Lampoon magazine...
. His first gig, with the Vandals ("Bringing down the house with your kind of music"), was at Alpha Sigma Phi
Alpha Sigma Phi
Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity is a social fraternity with 71 active chapters and 9 colonies. Founded at Yale in 1845, it is the 10th oldest fraternity in the United States....
on November 7, 1964.
Career
As musician, writer, and record producer, Lenny Kaye has been intimately involved with an array of artists and bands. He has been a guitarist for poet-rocker Patti SmithPatti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
since her band's inception more than thirty years ago, and is the co-author of Waylon, The Life Story of Waylon Jennings. He has worked in the studio with such artists as R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...
, Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Nadine Vega is an American songwriter and singer known for her eclectic folk-inspired music.Two of Vega's songs reached the top 10 of various international chart listings: "Luka" and "Tom's Diner"...
, Jim Carroll
Jim Carroll
James Dennis "Jim" Carroll was an author, poet, autobiographer, and punk musician. Carroll was best known for his 1978 autobiographical work The Basketball Diaries, which was made into the 1995 film of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Carroll.-Biography:Carroll was born to a...
, Soul Asylum
Soul Asylum
Soul Asylum is an American alternative rock band that formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1983.The band originally formed in 1981 under the name Loud Fast Rules, with the original line-up consisting of Dan Murphy, Dave Pirner, Karl Mueller and Pat Morley. The latter was replaced by Grant Young in...
, Kristen Hersh and Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, as well as his own solo muse. His seminal anthology of sixties' garage-rock, Nuggets, has long been regarded as defining a genre. You Call It Madness: The Sensuous Song of the Croon, an impressionistic study of the romantic singers of the 1930s, was published by Villard/Random House in 2004.
His uncle, songwriter Larry Kusik ("A Time For Us" from Romeo and Juliet; "Speak Softly Love" from The Godfather) took note of his lengthening hair and musical commitment, and asked him to sing on a song he'd recently penned with Ritchie Adams, once of the Fireflies ("You Were Mine"). It was the fall of 1965, and folk-protest was in the air, Lenny soon found himself in Associated Recording Studios on Times Square, recording "Crazy Like A Fox", along with its flip side, "Shock Me". The resultant 45, issued under the name of Link Cromwell, was leased to Hollywood Records, a division of Starday Records located in Nashville, Tennessee, and released in March 1966. It garnered a Newcomer Pick of the Week from Cashbox ("A rhythmic bluesy folk-rocker with a pulsating beat") and was issued in England as well as Australia; but failed to move in the charts. Though hardly a smash, it did give Lenny a sense of himself as a musician, and inspired him to continue performing and playing. His group at the time, The Zoo, worked a college circuit ranging from New York to Pennsylvania; this early experience has been captured on a live album issued by Norton Records, Live 1966.
Moving back to the city, Lenny began writing reviews for Jazz and Pop magazine; branching out to such nascent rock publications as Fusion, Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone. He became the music editor of Cavalier, a men's magazine that at the time was also publishing the early short stories of Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
, and would write a monthly column for them until 1975; and the New York correspondent for the British weekly, Disc. As a free-lance writer, he would write for a wide range of periodicals, including Melody Maker
Melody Maker
Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...
, Creem
Creem
Creem , "America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine," was a monthly rock 'n' roll publication first published in March 1969 by Barry Kramer and founding editor Tony Reay. It suspended production in 1989 but received a short-lived renaissance in the early 1990s as a glossy tabloid...
, and edit such publications as Rock Scene and Hit Parader
Hit Parader
Hit Parader is an American music magazine focusing on the genres of hard rock, pop, and heavy metal.The magazine was originally started as a pop song lyric magazine by Charlton Publications in 1942. Charlton sold off the magazine before the company went under in 1991...
throughout the seventies.
While working at Village Oldies on Bleecker Street
Bleecker Street
Bleecker Street is a street in New York City's Manhattan borough. It is perhaps most famous today as a Greenwich Village nightclub district. The street is a spine that connects a neighborhood today popular for music venues and comedy, but which was once a major center for American bohemia.Bleecker...
in New York, he met poet-singer Patti Smith
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
. On February 10, 1971, he backed her at a reading at St. Mark's Church on E. 10th St. When they resumed performance in November 1973, their artistic efforts bore fruit as one of the major rock bands of the 1970s. Lenny produced Patti's debut single ("Hey Joe / Piss Factory"), and performed as part of her Group throughout the decade, as reflected in four Arista
Arista Records
Arista was an American record label. It was a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment and operated under the RCA Music Group. The label was founded in 1974 by Clive Davis, who formerly worked for CBS Records...
albums: Horses (1975), Radio Ethiopia (1976), Easter (1978) and Wave (1979).
Following the Patti Smith Group's final performance in September 1979, Lenny joined the Jim Carroll Band
Jim Carroll
James Dennis "Jim" Carroll was an author, poet, autobiographer, and punk musician. Carroll was best known for his 1978 autobiographical work The Basketball Diaries, which was made into the 1995 film of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Carroll.-Biography:Carroll was born to a...
, as well as fronting his own Lenny Kaye Connection. He co-produced Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Nadine Vega is an American songwriter and singer known for her eclectic folk-inspired music.Two of Vega's songs reached the top 10 of various international chart listings: "Luka" and "Tom's Diner"...
's first two albums, including her 1987 hit single, "Luka
Luka (song)
"Luka" is a song recorded by Suzanne Vega and released as a single in 1987. It remains her highest-charting hit in the United States, reaching #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. This song was one of the earliest to deal with child abuse and domestic violence...
", which was nominated for a Grammy as Record of the Year. He has been nominated three times for Grammy awards in the liner notes category for boxed sets on the sixties folk revival (Bleecker and MacDougal), white blues (Crossroads), and progressive rock (Elektrock); and has co-authored a comprehensive hall of fame with David Dalton (Rock 100).
In 1995, he reunited with Patti Smith and has been a part of her band since, creating five studio albums, a retrospective, and celebrating the thirtieth anniversary release of their landmark debut album, Horses.
In 2010, Kaye contributed a solo recording for Daddy Rockin' Strong: A Tribute to Nolan Strong and the Diablos (The Wind/Norton Records
Norton Records
For the Canadian independent record label of the same name, see Matt Minglewood.Norton Records, a New York City based independent record label founded by musicians Miriam Linna and Billy Miller, maintains a focus on primitive, retro rock'n'roll, rockabilly, garage punk, garage rock, lounge music...
). Kaye recorded a version of "I Wanna Know," a 1950s R&B ballad. He appears on and wrote one song for The Fleshtones
The Fleshtones
The Fleshtones are an American garage rock band from Queens, New York formed in 1976.- 1976-1979 :The Fleshtones were formed in 1976 in Whitestone, New York by Keith Streng and Marek Pakulski The Fleshtones are an American garage rock band from Queens, New York formed in 1976.- 1976-1979 :The...
2011 album Brooklyn Sound Solution (Yep Roc). Also, he appeared on 'Alligator Aviator Autopilot Antimatter' and 'Blue' on R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...
's 2011 album Collapse into Now
Collapse into Now
Collapse into Now is the fifteenth and final studio album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M., released on March 7, 2011 on Warner Bros...
, an album that Smith also contributed to, also on 'Blue' and another song, 'Discoverer'.
Lenny Kaye Connection
- I've Got a Right (1984)
- Daddy Rockin Strong: A Tribute to Nolan Strong & The DiablosDaddy Rockin Strong: A Tribute to Nolan Strong & The DiablosDaddy Rockin Strong: A Tribute to Nolan Strong & The Diablos is a vinyl-only tribute album released by The Wind Records and distributed by Norton Records....
(The Wind / Norton RecordsNorton RecordsFor the Canadian independent record label of the same name, see Matt Minglewood.Norton Records, a New York City based independent record label founded by musicians Miriam Linna and Billy Miller, maintains a focus on primitive, retro rock'n'roll, rockabilly, garage punk, garage rock, lounge music...
, 2010, TWR002 LP)
track: I Wanna Know
- Child Bride b/w The The Tracks of My Tears (Mer Records 1980 Z270-B)
See also
- List of guitarists
- Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968