Lenny Kaye is one of rock ’n’ roll’s national treasures. He’s the guy who never has to pay for his drinks in bars from Stockholm to Shanghai, thanks to “Nuggets,” his now-essential compilation of what were obscure garage rock classics that became the foundation of punk rock and a lingua franca for the spirit of DIY. He’s the kind of guy who should have been given a Guggenheim Fellowship because of his galactic range of interests, knowledge and influences and for his input and his contributions to rock ‘n’ roll as an art form.
Kaye was writing about music — for publications like Rock Scene, Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone — when the discipline was still nascent. If you read his early writing, which is well worth your time to hunt down (like this review of The Rolling Stones’ “Exile On Main Street,” in 1972), he brought knowledge and curiosity and genuine enthusiasm; even if he didn’t like something, he still gave it his serious consideration.
