Lenny Kaye

Legendary guitarist, producer, author, music historian, and cultural curator Lenny Kaye joins us this week on Rock & Roll High School. For more than five decades, Lenny has occupied a singular place in popular music. As the longtime guitarist and closest musical collaborator of Patti Smith, he helped shape the sound of one of rock's most influential artists and has remained by her side since the earliest days of the Patti Smith Group. He is also the compiler of the groundbreaking 1972 anthology Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968, a collection that helped spark the garage-rock revival and laid much of the foundation for punk rock as we know it. In this conversation, we trace Lenny's remarkable journey—from his childhood in New Jersey and his early years as a music journalist and record-store clerk, to the creation of Nuggets, the birth of the Patti Smith Group, and a lifetime spent documenting, preserving, and advancing rock & roll culture. We also discuss Goin' Local, Lenny's long-awaited debut solo album, arriving July 17, 2026. Written across decades and featuring contributions from Patti Smith and other longtime friends and collaborators, the album represents a deeply personal statement from an artist whose influence on modern music extends far beyond the stage. Whether you know him as Patti Smith's guitarist, the architect of Nuggets, author of some brilliant books about music, or one of rock's most respected historians and tastemakers, Lenny Kaye's impact on music is impossible to overstate. This is a conversation decades in the making.