Waiting for a friend

When I first met Lenny Kaye in 1970, his two immense contributions to contemporary culture were still in the future: (1) his compilation of the profoundly influential double album Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-68, released in 1972, and (2) his founder-membership of the Patti Smith Group, which he helped the young poet to put together in 1973 and in which he’s still active whenever they reconvene, as they did so memorably last year for the 50th anniversary of Horses.

We met in New York, introduced by our mutual friends Richard and Lisa Robinson at a time when Lenny was working at Village Oldies on Bleecker Street and writing rock reviews for various publications. Somewhere I have copies of his two solo 45s: “Crazy Like a Fox”, released on the Hollywood label under the pseudonym Link Cromwell in 1966, and “Child Bride”, which came out on Mer Records in 1980 under his own name. Now — not before time, you might think — comes his first solo album*, titled Goin’ Local and just released on Yep Roc Records, based in North Carolina and the home of Dave Alvin, Tift Merritt and others.

It was worth the wait. These dozen songs have a (mostly) straightforward warmth and clarity, ranging from the no-frills roadhouse boogie of the opening title track — for my money, better than anything on the new Stones album — to the touching ballad “Yes I Will”, dedicated to his late friend Andy Paley and adorned by a discreet string arrangement from David Mansfield, which ends the album.

Lenny sings sometimes in a confiding semi-whisper, sometimes in the New Jersey drawl of a kinder, gentler Lou Reed (particularly on a sweet song called “Pennsylvania Girls”). He keeps the arrangements simple, generally confined to himself on guitars, Tony Shanahan on bass, and Mark Sacco, Jeff Berg or Jay Dee Daugherty on drums. One or two other guests show up, among them the mandolinist John Jackson on “If I Were You” and, most surprisingly, the avant-jazz pianist Matthew Shipp on “Let’s Make a Memory”, adding texture to a Fourth-of-July dawning-of-romance song of bitter-sweet resonance: “My hand on your waist, your hand on my knee / Trying to understand who we want us to be…”

Lenny keeps his own lead playing mostly under wraps, although there are a couple of eight-bar solos on “A Friend Like You” that made me think of Mark Knopfler. More generally, to my surprise there were times when I found myself reminded of John Prine, James McMurtry and John Hiatt in the comfortable command of a familiar idiom, and the lack of a need to overstate anything. “Solstice”, a co-write with Patti, has the most poetic lyric, “World Book Night” the most amusing: there are “…books you have to study / And books that are so rare / And books you give to someone / To show how much you care.”

So here we are, in the photo above, sitting on the steps of the Island Records headquarters at 22 St Peter’s Square in Hammersmith in, I think, 1974, when Lenny, on a visit to London, was looking every inch the future rock star in his shades and slim-cut jeans (obviously I hadn’t got the memo yet). Next time I see him, I’m going to tell him that he hasn’t changed a bit.

* See Mike Scott’s comment, below.