Fresh Air - Best Of: ‘The Invite’ screenwriters / Guitarist Lenny Kaye

Episode Date: July 18, 2026

Rashida Jones and Will McCormack are the screenwriting duo behind ‘The Invite.’ It takes on the realities of marriage in middle age, told over the course of one dinner party that spirals out of control. They’ve been mining stories like this together for decades, finding the funny inside the painful. “We are never above a laugh. There's nothing that's grave enough for us not to laugh about, because that's how we release. That's how we process our pain,” Jones tells Tonya Mosley. Also, Lenny Kaye, Patti Smith’s longtime guitarist, has his first solo album at age 79. It’s called ‘Goin’ Local.’ He spoke with Terry Gross about his decades-long collaboration with Smith and evolving with age and experience. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter Follow us on Instagram Subscribe to our YouTube channel Check out the Fresh Air ArchivesSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

From W.HYY.Y. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today, writing team Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, their new film, The Invite, takes on the realities of marriage and middle age, told over the course of one dinner party that goes into salacious territory.

Jones and McCormack have been mining stories like this together for decades, and finding the funny inside the painful. We are never above a laugh. There's nothing that's a grave of life. enough for us not to laugh about because that's how we process our pain. It's like we laugh through death and sickness and sadness. Also, Lennie K., Patty Smith's longtime guitarist. He's made his first solo album at 79. It's about time you made your own album. Why did you never do it before and why did you do it now? Well, Terry, I've been slightly busy. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley, and my guest today are writers and performers, Rashida Jones and Will McCormick. They dated Forst it in their 20s. It didn't work out, but what they found instead was one of the longest-running creative partnerships in Hollywood. Their first screenplay together, Celeste and Jesse Forever from 2012, followed two people who couldn't stay married, but also couldn't imagine life without each other. It's the kind of complicated relationship stories that they've returned to, throughout their careers. Their latest screenplay is the invite, directed by Olivia Wilde, who also stars alongside Seth Rogan, Penelope Cruz, and Edward Norton. The entire film unfolds in a single San Francisco apartment. Two couples gather for dinner, and as the evening unfolds,

the stories they've been telling about their relationships and themselves fall apart. It was inspired by the 2020 Spanish film, Sentimental, The People Upstairs, by Cess Gay. In this scene, the couple who live upstairs, played by Cruz and Norton, have just arrived at their host's apartment, played by Wild and Rogan. It took you a while to come to the door, and it sounded like you were arguing. No filter. No, I just want to be honest. We were at the door before we rang, and we could hear you were fighting. Oh, we were talking, we were, um...

We were fighting. We were fighting, yeah. A bit of a contentious environment in here, so I understand if that's... repellent to you, no hard feelings. You know what I mean? Completely understand, you know. We love a contentious environment. We love it.

Okay. Well, really, really, it's fine. You hit the jackpot then, my friend. As the evening goes on, awkward small talk turns into an unexpected invitation. Rashida Jones is an actor, writer, producer, and director. She won a Grammy for co-directing the documentary Quincy about her father, Quincy Jones, and recently earned an Emmy nomination for her performance in Black Mirror. Will McCormick is an Academy Award-winning writer, director, and actor. He won the

Oscar for the animated short, If Anything Happens, I Love You. Will McCormick is with me in our Los Angeles studio, and Rashida Jones joins us from London. Welcome both of you to Fresh Air. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tanya. It's so great to be here with you. All right, let's start with this first scene that I just played because there is a rule that we all live by. And nobody ever says out loud if you hear a couple fighting through a door, you pretend you didn't hear it. And this movie actually opens with that rule being broken. Take us inside of the writer's room when you decided that these four will start with that rule being broken. Well, it's kind of the beauty of this match of these two very different duos where you have a couple that is boiling over by the time their neighbors arrive.

And then you have this couple who has decided to kind of take the honesty of life and turn it inwards into their own kind of fantasy and excitement. So, you know, it's his theme stated. They're coming in. They're going to perhaps bring a wrecking ball to this already fragile relationship. Right from the start. Yeah, I will. Yeah, I think Hawk sets the tone right from the jump. You know, tonight we're going to sing it like we feel it.

And I think that there's something really refreshing about that to Joe as well. Like it does making them comfortable. But I think that it's so unvarnished. and it's so raw that it's actually intriguing. And this is a night where people will have to reveal some hard truths, and Edward gets the party started right away. This, as I mentioned earlier, is inspired by this Spanish film that was under a different name.

And, Will, you actually came up with this idea of the invite being the title of the movie, and it has double, almost triple meaning. Yeah, it felt like, It worked in a lot of ways. It also just felt like classic. It felt sort of iconic, like the graduate. I just like the sound of it.

There's something horror like about it too. Right. Right. Yeah. We talked about that a lot, which I think plays in well now with the kind of tone and the propulsion of the movie. Yeah. Will is an expert title creator, just to say. It's really the only thing I excel at as titles. But there are several different invites over the course of the evening.

evening, and those are fun to peel back where you think, oh, my God, there's another invite. I didn't see that coming. I want to play another clip from this film. And in this scene, they have moved past that explosive entrance, but the evening is still getting started. Hawk, who is played by Edward Norton, and his partner, Pina, who is played by Penelope Cruz, they're admiring the apartment. And Hawk is complimenting the decor.

He's walking around the living room. and it feels like harmless small talk, and then it turns into something else. We start to see beneath the surface of Angela and Joe's marriage, played by Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen. Let's listen. You've really got some beautiful pieces.

It's all Angela. Well, I know what I like, but it's actually not all expensive. Some of it is very expensive, though. Some of it is, though. Yeah, I'm not all, not everything, but not everything. I guess what I meant to say is

you can tell that it's been done with a lot of care, and you have a really great eye. That's true. I can feel it. I feel you put so much love. I did that. Thank you.

Yeah. I love it. I do love it. I really care. I do. Thank you for saying that. I see it. I care.

I do care a lot. I'm sorry. I'm getting emotional. I don't know why. But I thank you. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, it has great energy. Ah, see what I'm going to.

Wow, look at that. Energy is what I was going for. That's what I wanted. Energy's great. We talked a lot about how to capture energy as though that was a real thing we could do. That was a scene from the invite written by my guest today, Rashida Jones and Will McCormack.

And Seth's character, it's interesting, his responses, his quips. He is a musician whose band had one hit years ago, and he's kind of still carrying this around. What struck me is that it's such an ordinary kind of disappointment. Their lives actually look really great, you know, and from the outside, but there's this private grief over the person that they thought they'd become. Yeah, and I think Joe is defensive about this conversation about energy because he's uncomfortable because his energy is completely stuck. It's whack. Yeah, his energy is for sure whack, but it's completely stuck, right? He's inert.

And, you know, I think that being an adult is sort of like reconciling who you are with who you want to be. And it's great to have dreams. And sometimes dreams don't come true. But that doesn't mean you can't have another. That doesn't mean life goes on, right? Like you don't always get that dream to come true, but you can pursue another. And he's just stuck. And it just becomes toxic.

I love what you said, Tony, about private grief. Because that is, it's like that this. night is about exposing this very private grief that's like they haven't processed the pain, the death of their old selves, both with each other and for themselves. And like, they're forced to do it in this one fateful night. Are these the kind of conversations that you all are having as you're building out these characters and actually writing them? Take us to this writing room where you're kind of delving into these deeper things. It's literally all we talk about, whether Whether we're writing or not, it's all we talk about.

So selfishly, it's great that we can channel the thing we're most interested in, which is, like, relationships, living with other people, being parents, losing parents, being alive, getting older, being middle age, looking down, straight down the barrel of the back half of life. All these things we got to bring to this script. Relationship expert Esther Perel consulted on this film. Is there a particular note or assessment that she gave you that's your favorite that sort of stuck with you or deepened these characters? So many. I mean, I think the truest one for the theme of our movie is this idea that like when you've had such a difficult relationship that at a certain point you have to almost acknowledge that the relationship is over and then you can make this decision to start another relationship. maybe with each other and maybe with somebody else. That to me is like the essence of her teaching

and also the essence of this movie, which is like it's about moving on. It's about letting go of a past and really accepting your future as you are, as the other person is, as you want to be, and maybe can be with that acceptance. My guests are Rashida Jones and Will McCormick. They're the writing team behind the new film The Invite,

directed by Olivia Wilde, and starring Seth Rogen, Mellopee Cruz and Edward Norton. We'll hear more of their conversation after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Let's get back to my interview with Rashida Jones and Will McCormack. They've been creative partners for more than two decades.

First is co-writers of Celeste and Jesse Forever. And now with their new film The Invite, a comedy about two couples and one dinner party that goes places nobody expected. It's directed by Olivia Wild and stars Wilde, Seth Rogan, Penelope Cruz, and Edward Norton. All right, let's talk about this working marriage that the two of you have. And I would have start at the beginning because there is the story that you all met in the late 90s because your sister, Will, felt like that you two should be together or at least go on a date. Tell me the story.

Yeah, Mary, my sister Mary McCormick. the greatest sister and actress. She was doing a film with Rashida. And I think she told you, Rashida, right? You've got to meet my brother. You guys are going to be soulmates. Yeah. She said soulmates.

She said soulmates. She showed me some, like, some picture of you on a sports team from college? Definitely not college. It would be high school probably. Okay, maybe high school. You were with a bunch of people in some athletic gear, but she was like, this is your soulmate. Were you into it?

Like, I was into it. Yeah, yeah. I was fully into it. I was newly out of a really bad relationship. But you can't even remember what sport it was. And you don't have to qualify it, okay? You were, you were, I was like, he's cute.

He's, he looks intense, which is fine. I'm intense. Scorpio. Scorpio. Yeah. Full Scorpio vibes through the picture. Yeah. So you went on the date.

We went on a couple dates, right? Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty casual. I feel like we were like a lot of, it was. It was a lot of people. We didn't like, it wasn't like a, it was like a 90s date. Right.

Group dates. Right. Group dates. Yeah. But yeah, we're, you know, we've known each other for so long, but we're like, I mean, we're really like brother and sister who, you know, dated briefly, which is not weird. But, you know, no, we dated for a second. But I think we both knew right from the very beginning that we were connected and that we had to be in each other lives.

And it took us a minute to sit down to write. But finally, we did. did, and I'm so glad we did. Your first film is Celeste and Jesse Forever, 2012. And, Rashida, you start opposite Andy Sandberg, and Will, you played skills with a Z at the end, a weed dealer with the wisdom. And it's about a couple whose marriage is over, but the friendship won't die. And I'm curious, once you had to speak words you'd written yourselves, did you discover things that you didn't hear on the page?

Because that's an interesting thing to write something and then to see it turn into something with actors. But then you all being the actors who had to say the words. What was that experience like? Well, we act while we're writing. Like that's how we, that's our discovery process of dialogue because we're lucky. we both started as actors and can do a good job with that. So so often we act out the scenes. And if it's not working, it doesn't feel right,

especially if it's something we're going to say on screen, that's easy to fix, you know. Yeah, we get it aloud pretty quickly, and that's been helpful. And, you know, having been an actor prior to being a writer, I think we both read thousands of screenplays. And sometimes you feel like, oh, my gosh, has anyone ever said this out loud?

So, you know, being actors, we get it out loud as soon as possible. As writers, I noticed that you all gravitate towards, I don't know if I call it an emotional traffic jam or that moment, that moment of clarity. It's the hard moment. It's the part that we all know. It's inevitable that we experience.

But why do you want to live there as writers? Like it almost feels like that's the thing you all always are going towards. Always. We are always there, aren't we? Yeah. I don't mean to sound morbid. And I don't meet it that way, but life is really just a series of losses. It's one loss and one heartbreak after another.

You know, when your little summer ends and you don't want it to end and then you get your heartbroken and then you have kids and they're going to break your heart and then your parents die and then you start to lose bone density and then you start. It's like, but I say that because I really believe it that those are the gifts, right, of being human because it's in those moments where we feel. the most vulnerable, the most alive. Those moments can actually be the funniest because they're so raw. And it's when we feel connected, right? Like heartbreak is the thing that binds us. Like no matter who you are or no matter where you are or no matter how old you are, like you're going to go through heartache.

And when you do, you feel less alone. You feel more connected because that is the thing. It's like the great connector. It's, and, you know, for better or for worse, and for the most part, in my work and in our work together, I've been able to, like, dig into those moments because I find it hard for me personally to live life without stories that help me get through those moments. I find it actually impossible. Like, I need music. I need poetry. I need films to help me get through those moments because they're really, really hard.

And to be able to dig into some of those moments with Rashida has just been such a gift. And, you know, I don't take that for granted to be able to do that for a living. I also think that we, Will and I like the dissonance of the inevitability of loss and heartbreak and letting go, budding up against the need, like the survival skill of, waking up every morning and believing in the best of people and believing that things are going to be okay and believing that, you know, your dreams can come true, that like this life that you want to build can come true. And then, you know, being crushed by realities and circumstance and random things. And then the things that are just built into being alive, like losing people and your kids, you know, like letting go of your kids from the minute they're born.

And like, there's something so interesting to us about this inherent dissonance of being alive. And there's something really funny about it for us. And I think, like, that's the thing that does kind of make us work soulmates is that we are never above a laugh. There's nothing that's grave enough for us not to laugh about because that's how we release. That's how we process our pain. It's like we laugh. We laugh through death and sickness and sadness. And like I believe that that is the medicine.

That's the thing that brings us together. We have to do that. Well, this has been such a pleasure. I really enjoyed The Invite. And just reviewing all of your work and seeing the through lines. Thank you both so much. Thanks, Tanya. Thanks, Tanya.

Rashida Jones and Will McCormack wrote the screenplay for the new film, The Invite. It's in theaters now. Terry has our next interview. My guest, Lenny Kay, has been Patty Smith's guitarist since their early days when he was a rock critic and she was doing poetry readings. In 1971, when Smith decided she wanted guitar accompaniment for her next reading, it was Kay she asked to join her. With the exception of her long breaks from performing, their partnership continues to this day. Lenny Kay has played with other bands, but finally, at the age of seven, he has a new solo album of his own songs.

It shows off his versatility as a guitar player and songwriter. I also love his singing. There's some scorching guitar, tender ballads, and songs that made me smile and laugh. Lenny Kay is one of those people who seems to know everything there is to know about rock and pop music. He's written several books related to rock and roll history, including his latest, lightning striking, about ten transformative periods in rock history and the cities they are. originated in. His record anthology Nuggets, original artifacts of the first psychedelic era, 1965 to 68, inspired many first-generation punk rockers. Next year will be its 55th anniversary,

and it's still considered a classic. As proof of his open mind, musical curiosity, and wide-ranging taste, he wrote a book about the crooners, the singers from the early days of the microphone, which allowed them to sing in more intimate voices, like Bing Crosby, Rudy Valley, and Russ Columbo. Lenny Kay, welcome back to fresh air. It is always great to have you on the show, and I love the new album. Oh, thank you so much, Terry. It's great to be fresh aired. It's about time you made your own album. Why did you never do it before and why did you do it now? Well, Terry, I've been slightly busy. I can only really deal with one thing at a time.

And also, I didn't quite know how to present myself. This is a is a different side of what people might expect from me. I felt like these songs kind of had a theme, which is who I am at this very moment in time. And I like the fact that there's a progression of my musical consciousness that's reflected in this album. I do a lot of things, and a lot of times I kind of duck into somebody else's soundscape. But I thought it was time for me to really understand who I am as an artist. And I wanted artistic closure for some of these songs that I've come up with over the last, you know, at this point, 10 or 15 years. How do you think you've changed musically in what you want to say and what you want to hear? And I'm thinking like, is it in part age,

experience? I think it's less age and more experience. I've been through so many musical genres in my time. I've sung to you some of the great crooners. I love country music. I'm a passable pedal steel guitar player. I love heavy music. I have a band called The Drift, My Side Project,

which is kind of a power trio that, accesses the darker side of my personality. But I thought that in a sense, these songs show a personal thing. When I played them for Patty, she said something to me, which I thought was good. She says, I've never heard you sound like this. And I'm all about the future, Terry. I mean, I have to say, I have a long list of things I've done in the past, but to me, that's the past. I really like the fact that I've given myself a new persona that I can pursue and understand who I am at this point in my life. Well, I want to play a song that I've never heard a song like it. I've never heard lyrics about this subject before. And it's a really reflective song. It's called The Things You Leave Behind.

And it seems very autobiographical, because it's an part about as you're getting to the end of the line, what do you do with all your stuff? What do you do with all your records? What do you do with the stuff in the storage lockers? Does anybody want to inherit it? Should you be selling it? Like, donating it? My daughter always says to me, she says,

Dad, what are you going to do with it? It's all going in the dumpster. Well, I don't think so. Not the dumpster. No, no. Please, not the dumpster. No, no. I mean, you know, I call my accumulation the museum of me

because, you know, I look at all the books, some of which I'll never read, but I like seeing their spines on the shelf. Of course, you know, the accumulation of records, which is a curation of a sort. And any time I get rid of a record, I want to hear it a week later. And the song was birth when someone I knew passed on, and I was given the honorary and honorable job of moving their stuff out and I thought, man, this is, you know, it's a great responsibility to make sure that somebody's sense of curation is honored. Yeah, well, let's hear it. This is the things you leave behind written and performed by my guest Lenny Kaye on his new album, Going Local. Sooner or later, we're all going to find that we've made it to the end of the line.

It gets heavier every mountain you climb It's the things you leave behind It's been one of those years When people keep passing into the past And you're still here Gonna pick up the pieces of your life and theirs Who gets white and why By the side of the pros

Old clothes and photos That's the things you leave behind from Lenny K.'s new album going local. What's your plan for the things you leave behind, for the records and books? Do you want to, like, donate it to an archive? Do you want to sell it? Do you want to bequeath it to somebody? I mean, actually, I'm amused by the fact that Tom Verlain's book and record collection have been kind of put out into the world,

discogs just sold a thousand of Tom's records they had an event where you could go and buy a Tom Verlaine book I'm not that you know I mean who knows that that's kind of a prideful thing

that anybody would want a record that I personally scratched after listening to it for a hundred times and to be honest you know I probably you know when the time comes and it gets dispersed I won't know anything about it I'll be up there with the great, you know, file cabinet in the sky thinking, oh, man, I want to hear this record.

My husband decided before he died that he wanted, you know, most of his collection, thousands and thousands and thousands of albums and CDs sold so that record buyers could experience the pleasure he got from buying the records, from searching for them, finding them, buying them, listening to them. And I thought there was something really wonderful about that sentiment. They will return to the great flea market in the sky. You worked at Village Oldies, which was a famous record store in Greenwich Village. So what did you get out of working in a record store? Since you're so obsessed with music and with recordings and with making them. I got a lot of records on that. I like to joke that I'm not.

Well, you know, I'd like to say that I worked for $10 a day and all the records I could slide out the door. You know, you get a sense of the expanse of recorded music, which is a beautiful thing. I mean, in my crooner book, I got to investigate a world that I didn't personally experience, you know, to understand how in these 78 grooves, an entirely new music was done. being invented. My lightning striking book is more my personal journey through the many transformative moments of rock and roll. You know, it's funny because I think at the same time you were working at Village Altos, which was a stop for, you know, like serious record buyers and also just like, you know, people in

the neighborhood, tourists. but it was a very, you know, alternative kind of culture. But you also had a band, and I think at the same time we're playing for fraternities, which seems like a really different culture than Village Oldies culture. Do you feel like you lived in different worlds at the same time? Well, I believe that it's all the same culture. When you're playing in a band that playing in a fraternity party as the zoo did. That's the name of your band, yeah.

Yeah, the zoo. Bringing down the, you know, for your very own horror show, I think, was our thing. We had dancing girls called the Zulus. I know. What can I say? You can apologize later. Okay, thank you. But, you know, you'd play shout for 20 minutes, and the fraternity brothers would be swimming in beer on the floor.

And that's a great response. You know, music releases us. Music elevates us. Music illuminates us. And no matter the different styles, this is what I've really found, given all my many, you know, investigations into different genres, is that it's all kind of accessorizing because the basic reasons for a song stay the same. I want love. I don't have love. I'm sad. I've lost love. Who am I? I'm peeved at the world. All of these things are, are you. universal. And no matter the decoration or the genre or how it's presented, these are the elements of why we sing. And I'm, of course, quite blessed to be part of those who sing and see it

come back to them in the response of the audience. Lenny Kay, speaking with Terry Gross, he's Patty Smith's longtime guitarist, has performed in other bands, and now has his first solo album. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. This is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Let's get back to Terry's interview with Lenny Kay. He's Patty Smith's long time guitarist, and now has his first solo album. It's called Goin Local. Let's go back to the beginning. Your first instrument, as far as I know, was accordion, which seems like an unusual choice if it was a choice. I don't know whether somebody chose it for you.

What's the story behind accordion? My dad played the accordion and the piano. I almost wish he would have started me on piano because when I was growing up and rock and roll was getting going, the accordion was not the most mobile of instruments. But, you know, after when I was about 10, I stopped playing it. And then I picked up the guitar when I was getting out of high school. And that one, you knew that was the one for you.

Well, you know, folk music was happening. I originally wanted to be a lonely folk singer in the backyard. But in February of 64, the Beatles came on the Ed Sullivan show. And in that seismic moment, that's when I bought my first electric guitar. I want to talk about your first brush with professional recording. Your uncle, Larry Kusik, was a lyricist. Your family name was Kuzikov, if I'm pronouncing that right. Yes.

Your father changed it to K. Your uncle changed it to Kucic. And he was a lyricist. And among the things he wrote the lyrics for was the love theme from the Godfather, which was a hit for Andy Williams in 1972. too. So let's just hear a little bit of that. Speak softly love and hold me warm against your heart. I feel your words the tender, trembling moment start.

We're in a world, our very own sharing our love that only few have ever known. I love that line-colored days, warm by the sun. Deep velvet nights when we are one. I love that line, wine-colored days, kissed by the sun, warm-colored nights. My uncle was, my uncle wrote a lot of, you know, 60, 70, I have 45s, you know, that nobody ever heard. He was a journeyman songwriter. When I was 18, he knew I was in a band, and he called me up, and he wanted to jump on the Eve of Destruction bandwagon and write a folk protest song. And so he had me sing it over the phone. The next thing I knew, I was in a recording studio, first time ever in Times Square.

Well, let's hear the recording that you made for your uncle. And this was professionally released. and it's called Crazy Like a Fox. So this is my guest, Lenny Kay, under the name Link Cromwell. They say I'm psychotic because I let my hair grow long. Say that I'm crazy and they call me lazy because I don't like to work all day long. Crazy like a foxy. They call me neurotic and say I'm psychotic because I let my hair grow long.

Your hair is still pretty long. Yeah, you know, thank you, DNA. I mean, I remember when growing your hair long could get you in really big trouble. I remember that too. Why did you keep it that way? Why is it still long? I don't know.

I just like it. You know, it's getting good in the back, as they say. I cut up every once in a while when I feel like my hair is wearing me. I, you know, I cut it back so I get the proportion right. But I don't know. I just like it. It's who I am.

What did that recording do for you in terms of your sense of identity as a possible, like, real professional recording artist? Well, it gave me a sense of who I could be, even though I didn't dare think about it. You know, it gave me a sense of purpose, one might say. But thank God it wasn't a hit, because if it was a hit, my life would have really had a different art. You know, I would have had that million-seller, you know, gotten a drug habit, been found on the streets of San Francisco. Or playing at Oldies Festival. Yeah, I might be on PBS's folk protest singers of the 1960s. But I believe the musical gods had different ideas for who I might become.

So you started off as a rock critic. You were still playing, you know, in a band. But you were a rock critic. you were reviewing records. You wrote for all the pop magazines, but you also wrote from men's magazines. It's through an article that Patty Smith first got in touch with you. This was, I think, in 1971 or two,

and you'd written about a cappella music or duop. What did you love about the music, and what did she love about the article? It touched Patty very much because it was the kind of music that she listened to growing up. up in South Jersey and Philadelphia. We both enjoyed Jerry Blavitt, the Gita with the heater, the boss with the hot sauce, playing beautiful, beautiful group harmony. And when I was growing up in Brooklyn, I would see the older kids on the corner hitting notes, as it were. And I was

the first music that touched my soul. I once had hopes to be a high tenor in a duo. group, of course, I've completely lost that part of my vocal range, so I'll never achieve that one. But when Patty called me up about this article I'd written for jazz and pop, which was about a very niche thing, a cappella music was duot music without, of course, musical instruments, but it was specialized from oldies stores. And this is like 1963, 1962, which meant that that the music was already past dated. And, of course, it would be knocked off the charts by the English invasion.

But I wrote this article, and that's when Patty first called me up, and she said she was moved by it, and that's when she started visiting me at Village Oldies, and I'd put on our favorite records, my hero by the blue notes, today's the day, Maureen Gray, Bristol Stomp, and we just became friendly,

and that's where she asked me to join her at St. Mark's Church for her first poetry reading because she wanted to shake things up a little bit. Can you describe what that night was like your first time playing with her? And not that many people were doing like music behind poetry? Patty didn't want to do a standard poetry reading. We were opening, quote, unquote, Gerard Malangas. So there were a lot of Warhol people there. There were a lot of music people.

It was kind of a cross section of downtown, but Patty felt that if she just did a standard poetry reading, Gregory Corso would be up in the balcony, you know, saying, come on, liven it up. And so she wanted to, you know, have a little action. I went over to the loft where she was living with Robert Mabelthor. And she read me her poems. And I just kind of put some rhythmic,

energy behind the poems. And we went there and did it. It was not meant to be anything. We didn't even perform again together for another two and a half years. It was more like an art event. But it was very well received. Again, it was so casual.

New York at that time was just a hotbed of artistic creativity, theater, film you name it in that little ten block circuit of the East Village so much was happening

and this was just another night of going out and putting on a performance I always marvel at the fact that we didn't think of it as oh hey let's have a band I mean we didn't have a band

for another three years we developed organically and that to me is what made us so special. We sounded like ourselves by the time we had all the pieces of a real band. On your first album together, you do Gloria. And it reminds me of Charlie Parker's early recordings in the sense that. Wow. Thank you.

And here's why. I mean, both Gloria and Charlie Parker, they start a movement. I mean, Gloria is so punk and it inspired so many punk rockers. and Charlie Parker inspired like every jazz musician. And so you'd think when you listen to them that it would sound like everything else since so many musicians pattern themselves on it. But both those early Parker recordings and Gloria,

every time I listen to either end of those, it just sounds so radical and so fresh and new and energized. Can you talk about recording it together what it was like for you? to be doing something that was, like, so different and so exciting. It didn't seem that different to us. I mean, here we are. We were basically, we started out as a trio, myself, Patty, and the pianist Richard Sol.

And what we would do, especially as we were beginning, would Patty would do a poem, we connected with a song, and then she would improvise. And you could do that in the structure of this little trio. Richard Sol was such an accomplished pianist, except he could play Rachmaninov. He didn't want that, sure. He was used to accompanying cabaret singers,

but he could also not show off and just hit those chords and keep things propelling, and I'm pretty much of a rhythm guitarist at that point. And so we would just explore these fields, as we call it. Gloria happened because Richard Hell had sold us his bass guitar for $40. And Patty strapped it on and whacked the e-note. And then she said, Christ died for somebody's sins but not mine, which was a poem of hers called Oath. And then I connected it with the most.

glorious of songs. Glory, of course, is not only the great Van Morrison song done by every garage band, but it was also a classic du-op song done by the Cadillacs, Esther Navarro. It seems to be a word that replicates and understands each other. And by the time we got in the studio, it had been sculpted into a kind of quasi-arrangement.

But launching it in the studio was kind of, made us aware that we were writing ourselves into history, which is kind of daunting in a certain way and somewhat presumptuous. Well, let's hear Gloria from Patty Smith's first album Horses with my guest Lenny Kay on guitar. Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine. Milton Part of thieves

While cord Of my sleeve Thick Heart of stone My sins my own They belong to me May That's Petty Smith

Lenny K, my guest on guitar From Petty Smith's first album Horses What did she bring out in you? She brought out in me a sense of trust in my own musical abilities. I'm not a virtuoso guitarist by any means, but she stayed with me and let me express my musicality. She helped me understand who I am as a musician and how it helped her understand herself as a singer because Patty learned how to sing on the stage with the band.

She also sensed a positive energy in me that I could go anywhere. I'm not hidebound by genre or how things should be done. And Patty, of course, is a creative force that continues to move ever forward. She's not one to rest on her laurels. She wants to see what happens next. And she encourages that in me. And I think, you know, to be honest, that I have a solo album at this point of my life shows that I also understand that. that you have to keep evolving, you have to keep moving forward, you have to be true to your art,

you can't be blinded by fame or money. I'm a worker. That's really what she encouraged in me. She's a worker too. No matter what we did yesterday or five years ago or 10 years ago or at this point, 55 years ago, it's all about the future. She has an expression. Progress isn't the future, it's keeping up with the present. And so I try to incorporate that in my life. Whatever I've done in the past, great. But what I'm really interested in is getting up and seeing who I am today and as it moves into tomorrow. Well, I want to close with another song from your new album, and I want to play a friend like you. Would you talk about the song? A friend like you, I heard the original French version by,

Stefan Isher, when I was in Paris in the 90s, and I just loved the song. I bought it, and I brought it home, and I always thought I would like to write English lyrics to this. And so I did. I recorded it. It's actually one of my favorite songs on the record, and when I finished it, I sent it to Stefan,

and he loved it. So, you know, I guess I kind of did what my uncle did with Nino Roda's music. I took Stefan Isha's music and spun it into English. So this is a friend like you from Lenny Kay's new album Going Local. Lenny Kay, it has been such a pleasure to have you back on the show. Thank you. Lenny Kay, speaking with Terry Gross.

Fresh Year Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Year's executive producer is Sam Brigger. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Moosley. If you forget about me Far away You know I will return Of all the places I've been Or we'll see

It's you that my heart yearns And in the darkest night You're a light A glow that never goes You reach out to me tenderly And so our story goes Because a friend like you