Biography
Throughout a lengthy career spanning criticism, performance, curation, and production, Lenny Kaye played an underrecognized role in shaping punk rock's origins. Serving as guitarist in the Patti Smith Group, his raw, noisy approach and talent for open-ended improvisation complemented the visceral, spoken-word style of punk forerunner Patti Smith. By curating and annotating Nuggets, the landmark double album of 1960s garage rock and psychedelia issued by Elektra Records in 1972, he also formalized a previously overlooked movement and helped transmit its raw, independent ethos to punk.
Born and raised in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Kaye performed in a teenage garage outfit of the type later spotlighted on Nuggets. Under a pseudonym he led the local group Link Cromwell & the Zoo, which cut the 1965 psychedelic/folk/garage single "Crazy Like a Fox." He later took a job at a Bleecker Street record store while contributing rock writing to magazines; an article on doo wop in Jazz & Pop drew Patti Smith's notice, prompting her to visit him there and invite him, in February 1971, to back her poetry reading at St. Mark's Church—their initial joint appearance.
By late 1973 Smith and Kaye had expanded their poet-and-accompanist format into a full band, the Patti Smith Group, which released the influential debut Horses in 1975. After four studio albums the ensemble disbanded in 1979 when Smith stepped away from performing. Kaye maintained his parallel writing career, notably teaming with David Dalton on the 1977 rock reference Rock 100, and in 1980 launched his own project, the Lenny Kaye Connection, whose sole album, I've Got a Right, appeared on Giorno Poetry Systems in 1984. That same year he formally joined the backing band of poet and rocker Jim Carroll, with whom he had previously collaborated on an occasional basis and continued to work after the group dissolved.
Kaye also entered record production, co-helming Suzanne Vega's first two albums—Suzanne Vega in 1985 and the breakthrough Solitude Standing in 1987—along with later projects such as James' Stutter (1986), Soul Asylum's Hang Time (1988), Kristin Hersh's Hips and Makers (1994), and Throwing Muses' University (1995). In the mid-1980s he performed on steel guitar alongside Eugene Chadbourne and, in 1986, taught a course on rock history at Rutgers University.
Kaye rejoined Patti Smith's band for her 1996 comeback album Gone Again and remained her principal musical partner as she resumed regular recording. He additionally helped Waylon Jennings with the writing of his autobiography while sustaining his work as a rock journalist.
Born and raised in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Kaye performed in a teenage garage outfit of the type later spotlighted on Nuggets. Under a pseudonym he led the local group Link Cromwell & the Zoo, which cut the 1965 psychedelic/folk/garage single "Crazy Like a Fox." He later took a job at a Bleecker Street record store while contributing rock writing to magazines; an article on doo wop in Jazz & Pop drew Patti Smith's notice, prompting her to visit him there and invite him, in February 1971, to back her poetry reading at St. Mark's Church—their initial joint appearance.
By late 1973 Smith and Kaye had expanded their poet-and-accompanist format into a full band, the Patti Smith Group, which released the influential debut Horses in 1975. After four studio albums the ensemble disbanded in 1979 when Smith stepped away from performing. Kaye maintained his parallel writing career, notably teaming with David Dalton on the 1977 rock reference Rock 100, and in 1980 launched his own project, the Lenny Kaye Connection, whose sole album, I've Got a Right, appeared on Giorno Poetry Systems in 1984. That same year he formally joined the backing band of poet and rocker Jim Carroll, with whom he had previously collaborated on an occasional basis and continued to work after the group dissolved.
Kaye also entered record production, co-helming Suzanne Vega's first two albums—Suzanne Vega in 1985 and the breakthrough Solitude Standing in 1987—along with later projects such as James' Stutter (1986), Soul Asylum's Hang Time (1988), Kristin Hersh's Hips and Makers (1994), and Throwing Muses' University (1995). In the mid-1980s he performed on steel guitar alongside Eugene Chadbourne and, in 1986, taught a course on rock history at Rutgers University.
Kaye rejoined Patti Smith's band for her 1996 comeback album Gone Again and remained her principal musical partner as she resumed regular recording. He additionally helped Waylon Jennings with the writing of his autobiography while sustaining his work as a rock journalist.
Albums
Singles
