Lenny Kaye is a guitarist, composer and writer who is best known as a member of the Patti Smith Group. Kaye has been Smith’s most frequent collaborator since 1971, when they performed their first poetry reading together. He wrote the liner notes and assembled the tracks for Nuggets in 1972, which included one of the first uses of the term “punk rock”.
A successful producer, he helmed the first two albums by Suzanne Vega and the first solo effort by Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses, among many others. Other artists he has worked with are Soul Asylum, Allen Ginsberg , The Weather Prophets, James and Cindy Lee Berryhill.
His books include Waylon Jennings’ autobiography Waylon: An Autobiography, which he co-authored with Jennings. His most recent book is You Call It Madness, based on the life of the 1930’s crooner Russ Columbo, published in 2004 by Random House/Villard.
Lenny told us how much he admired the musicality in Kerouac’s work: “One of those things about Kerouac’s writing is the sense of rhythm and melody and movement. He took a lot from the bebop players. Those rushes of notes the incredible ah, sense of riding on a high.”
