{"id":17659,"date":"2019-11-29T05:30:38","date_gmt":"2019-11-29T10:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=17659"},"modified":"2019-10-07T07:23:24","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T11:23:24","slug":"lets-talk-about-nuggets-with-lenny-kaye-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/11\/29\/lets-talk-about-nuggets-with-lenny-kaye-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Talk About ‘Nuggets’ with Lenny Kaye (Part Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a> \u2026 <\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You had moved on by then, right?<\/b><\/p>\n

I only lasted like five or six months at Elektra. And about six months after I was gone and forgotten about it, somebody called me up from there and said, \u201cWe have the rights to all these records, these songs. What do we do with them?\u201d And I thought, \u201cWhoa, this is still happening?\u201d So, in each moment, Jac, in his wisdom and intuition, went for it. The only thing he didn\u2019t<\/i> go for was that I wanted to change the name of it. I wanted to call the album Rockin\u2019 and Reelin\u2019 USA,<\/i> and he said no.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m eternally grateful to him, of course. Nuggets<\/i> is just a great phrase.<\/p>\n

It came out in October 1972. It was appreciated by rock aficionados, but it didn\u2019t really sell that much. After 10 years, Warner Bros. stopped sending me royalty statements because it was never about to make up my $750 advance. I always think that\u2019s funny.<\/p>\n

But it had a real impact in showing how this music was worthy of recognition. And in the same way, I have to say that there\u2019s a new series out called Brown Acid,<\/i> put out by these lunatics in California, RidingEasy Records. What they\u2019ve done is found all these obscure, kind of post- \u2026 I don\u2019t even know \u2026 but it\u2019s like a genre in itself. These ’70s bands that have a lot of Deep Purple and a lot of noise, a little Grand Funk. They\u2019re all really cool records that are now being excavated and pretty soon will have their own slot in a record store.<\/p>\n

The record changed my life. Barry Tashian of the Remains was kind enough to autograph my copy of <\/b>Nuggets<\/b><\/i> when I interviewed him more than ten years ago.<\/b><\/p>\n

The Remains? I mean, that\u2019s a group that shoulda, coulda, but never dida. And that\u2019s why they\u2019re a nugget, that\u2019s why the world needs to be reminded of them. I\u2019m really proud when I met Barry Tashian, he thanked me for keeping their flame alive. I owe them a lot, because that\u2019s really my beginnings as a musician and an appreciator of music. And I\u2019m happy that I can still celebrate it.<\/p>\n

I bought my copy of Nuggets<\/i> in the late ’70s. But it wasn’t the Elektra release; it was a reissue on Sire. How did that come about? <\/b><\/p>\n

Well, Seymour Stein is a very knowledgeable music person. He was very interested in stuff. Greg Shaw had just done The History of British Rock<\/i> for him, and he saw that nothing was happening with Nuggets,<\/i> he obviously loved those records and those things, and in the course of conversation \u2013 I think this would\u2019ve been \u201876 \u2013 so he would\u2019ve been hanging out at CBGB and we would\u2019ve been friendly. He thought it would might be nice to reissue Nuggets, <\/i>and he did.<\/p>\n

I was a little disappointed with the cover, given the fact that it had such a great cover on the first one. I kind of put it in that blue frame and I kind of regret that, actually, because it\u2019s a beautiful cover and it probably would\u2019ve looked nice [full size]. I was just so mad that it wasn\u2019t referential to the music. I mean, there\u2019s no guitar on it. It was just kind of \u2026 it had dolphins! But Seymour helped widen it to bring it up to date.<\/p>\n

The place where it made its most impact \u2013 and this is something I only realized later \u2013 was in Europe. The first time I went to Europe with Patti [Smith] in 1976, we were having a press conference in Denmark of all places. The usual discussions, and then some journalist asked me, he says, \u201cWell, when is the next Nuggets<\/i> coming out?\u201d And I thought, \u201cHuh. You\u2019ve heard of it here in Copenhagen?\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of those records were mid-level hits. There\u2019s some obscurities on it, but \u201cDirty Water,\u201d I heard those songs on the radio. They probably got into the midsection of the charts. But I realized in Europe nobody<\/i> had heard The 13th Floor Elevators, and so what a revelation it was there.<\/p>\n

And of course, Nuggets<\/i> did what I always hoped it would do: spark this kind of archaeological interest, so all of a sudden, people started digging around for group garage band records in the same way that collectors a few years before had been digging around for obscure rockabilly and group harmony records. So, it just kind of continues on and on and on.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 1964-1969<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

There were originally plans for a second volume of Nuggets<\/i>, right?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes. [Years later] when Rhino, of course, made that beautiful, beautiful box, they utilized a lot of the songs that were on the list for the second Nuggets.<\/i> Because Elektra did pick up the option for the second Nuggets,<\/i> but the secret to the first Nuggets<\/i> is they had a lawyer who really tracked down the rights, who worked really hard to find these obscure people who own the rights–many of whom were hoping to get a deal with Elektra. \u201cOh, yeah, Mouse and the Traps would be great to have on Elektra. Hey, here\u2019s our new\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

He had to deal with all that, and he really pulled that together in a way that the next lawyer couldn\u2019t do it. After a year, they had like three permissions of a list of another 40. And since the [first] record didn\u2019t really sell initially, they just, \u201cWhat the hell?\u201d Just dropped it and it just continued from there.<\/p>\n

The Nuggets<\/i> legacy really does continue, doesn’t it?<\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s amazing how much of it is out there. I\u2019m on the Underground Garage these days, the Sirius channel on Monday and Tuesday nights, and I mean, it\u2019s interesting to hear some of these records after all this time.<\/p>\n

I’ve participated, at this point, in many Nuggets<\/i> tributes. In fact, probably around the 50th anniversary maybe we\u2019ll have an anniversary concert in 2022 \u2013 may we all still be here \u2013 but it\u2019s interesting to play these songs, because they\u2019re not as simple as they look. I mean, everyone talks about, \u201cOh, yeah, three chords? I could be in a band in a minute.\u201d No, they have a lot of inner workings that are very interesting, and I think that\u2019s another one of the reasons why this music \u2026 the more you dig deep into it, the more you see how intelligent it is. I mean, it\u2019s got an attitude, and that\u2019s one of those things we love about it, but there\u2019s some musical sophistication going on that are not so apparent unless you put the headphones on and have a deep listen.<\/p>\n

But I mean, I have to say, I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time and with the right sensibility. I had no idea that, at this point, nearly 50 years later, we\u2019d be still talking about it. I always think that, in 1972, if I\u2019d done a record of mid-’20s acoustic into electrical recording, that\u2019s what we would be talking about in 1972, which seems really bizarre.<\/p>\n

So much time has passed, and yet this conceptual record in which all the stars aligned is still remembered as a touchstone of what we have come to know as garage rock.<\/p>\n

And I think it\u2019s because it really captures kind of the beating heart of why we make music, why we pick up a guitar, why we try to express ourselves and find ourselves. I mean, to be honest, I was kind of a mutant kid in New Jersey. I wasn\u2019t a ball player. I wasn\u2019t that intellectual. I loved records and I loved science fiction, and I found in music and then in being a band, a place that I could become who I always dreamed I could be.<\/p>\n

And I still am. It\u2019s like, \u201cWhoa!\u201d It\u2019s still continuing. It\u2019s a nugget if you dug it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One \u2026 You had moved on by then, right? I only lasted like five or six months at Elektra. And about six months after I was gone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,33,41,57,59],"tags":[1305,1610],"class_list":["post-17659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-garage","category-interview","category-psych","category-punk","tag-lenny-kaye","tag-nuggets","cat-19-id","cat-33-id","cat-41-id","cat-57-id","cat-59-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17659"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17667,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17659\/revisions\/17667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}