Lenny Kaye
| Lenny Kaye | |
|---|---|
Kaye touring in Rosengarten with Patti Smith, 1978
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| Background information | |
| Also known as | Lenny Kaye Connection |
| Born | December 27, 1946 |
| Origin | New York City, U.S. |
| Genres | Rock, protopunk |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, songwriter, record producer, music journalist |
| Instruments | Guitar, bass, vocals |
| Years active | 1964–present |
| Labels |
Giorno Poetry Systems, Arista, Columbia |
| Associated acts | Patti Smith, R.E.M. |
| Website | LennyKaye.com |
Lenny Kaye (born December 27, 1946) is an American guitarist, composer, and writer who is best known as a member of the Patti Smith Group.
Kaye was born to Jewish parents in the Washington Heights area of upper Manhattan, New York, along the Hudson River. Growing up in Queens and Brooklyn, Kaye 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 from Rutgers in 1967. He became a fan of science fiction and gained experience in writing, publishing his own fanzine, Obelisk, at the age of 15. 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. His first gig, with the Vandals ("Bringing down the house with your kind of music"), was at Alpha Sigma Phi on November 7, 1964.
As musician, writer, and record producer, Kaye was intimately involved with an array of artists and bands. He was a guitarist for poet/rocker Patti Smith from her band's inception in 1974, and co-authored Waylon, The Life Story of Waylon Jennings. He worked in the studio with such artists as R.E.M., James, Suzanne Vega, Jim Carroll, Soul Asylum, Kristin Hersh, and Allen Ginsberg. His seminal anthology of sixties' garage-rock, Nuggets, is widely regarded as defining the 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.
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