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…