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

left in the family's garage. "He told me you've no make me cry." Antonio Junior left home to join a protest in Seattle. A week later, he was shot and killed there. "I need some a breath mate, just as for my son." Listen to "We Keep Us Safe" on the Embedded Podcast from NPR. From WHY in Philadelphia, 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 delicious 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 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, Lini Kay, 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.

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And NPR, we stand for your right to be curious because the forces shaping our world can be hard to see. Follow NPR's planet money wherever you get your podcasts and start seeing how the economy really works. This is fresh air weekend, I'm Tonya Mosley, and my guests today are writers and performers, Rashida Jones, and Will McCormick. They dated forced 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 relationships 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 and 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 Wilde and Rogan. It took you a while to come to the door and it sounded like you were arguing.

No feel better. 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 fighting. We were fighting. Yeah.

Bit of a contentious environment and here's what I understand if that's

repellent to you. No hard feelings. You don't even completely understand. You know, we love a contentious environment. We love it. Well, really, it's fine. You had 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 immunomination

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.

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 then this movie actually opens with that rule being broken. Take us inside of the writer's room when you decide it 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. Yeah. I think Hawksets 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. Right. Yeah. That's we talked about that a lot, which I think plays in well now with the kind of tone and the propulsion of the movie.

But yeah. And there's Willis of Izzy is an expert title creator just to say.

“It's really the only thing I excel at titles. But it is there's several different”

invites over the course of the 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 was played by Edward Norton. And his partner, Pena, who was 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 Rogan. Let's listen. You've really got some beautiful pieces. It's all enjoy. Well, I know what I like. But it's actually not all expensive. Some of it is, but most of it's not. No, I'm not. Not everything. It's all, 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. See it. I care. I do care a lot. I don't know why, but I thank you. Thank you. For saying that. Yeah, it has a great energy. It's just about nothing else.

“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. And 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. 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,

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-fade full 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-aged, 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 Perrell 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 McCormack. They're the

writing team behind the new film The Invite, directed by Olivia Wilde and starring Seth Rogan, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton. We'll hear more of their conversation after a short break. I'm Tony Mosley and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This week, I'm considered this. What more have we learned about Todd Lange, President Trump's pick for Attorney General? Are you in President Trump French? I'm his lawyer, was his lawyer, and now I'm the deputy attorney general. We unpack that

slip of the tongue, and other takeaways from Blanche's Senate hearing on consider this. You can listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcast. Every episode of it's been a minute, NPR is what's happening in culture podcast. Starts by asking three questions. Who? How? Why now? If the culture's asking it, we're talking about it. At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious. And indulge your cultural curiosity. Follow it's been a minute wherever you get your podcasts.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air Weekend, I'm Tonya 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, the comedy about two couples and one dinner party that goes places nobody expected. It's directed by Olivia Wilde 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 want to start at the beginning because there's the story that you all met in the late 90s

because your sister will felt like that you two should be together at least go on a date. Tell me the story. Yeah, Mary and my sister Mary McCormack, the greatest sister in actress.

“She was doing a film with Rashida and I think she told you Rashida, right? You got to meet”

my brother or 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 a cause would be high school probably. Okay, maybe high school. You were with a bunch of people and some athletic gear but she was like you this is your soul. Wait, were you and do it? Like I was doing it. Yeah, I was fully into it.

Yeah, and you don't have to qualify it, okay? You were I was like he's cute. He's that he looks in

tents, which is fine. I'm in 10 Scorpio. Scorpio. Yeah. Full Scorpio five school show. Yeah. So you went on the date? We went on a couple of days, right? Yeah. Yeah. It was it was pretty casual. I feel like we were like a lot of like was a lot of a lot of people. We didn't. It wasn't like a foes like a 90's date. We were like. Group dates. Yeah. But yeah, we've known each other for so long but we're like we're really like brother and sister who you know dated briefly, which is not

“weird. But you know, 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 right but finally we did and I'm so glad we did. Your first film is a Celeste and Jesse

forever, 2012. And Rashida, you start opposite Andy Samberg and will you play 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 your cells, 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. But that's how we, that's our discovery process of dialogue. Because we're lucky, we both”

started as actors and, you know, 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 allowed 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, is 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 we 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. I don't mean it that way, but life is really”

just a series of losses. It's one loss and one heartbreak after another. You know, when you're little summer ends and you don't want it to end and then you get your heart broken 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 to lose. 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. 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 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 I don't, I don't take that for granted,

we will do that for living. I also think that we, well, 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 your kids, you know, like letting go of your kids from the minute they're born, like, there's something so interesting to us about this inherent distance of being alive and there's something really funny about it for us and I think 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 a

“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 through death and sickness and sadness and like I believe that that's like 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 guitarists 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 79, 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 originated in. His record anthology nuggets, original artefacts 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 crunars,

the singers from the early days of the microphone, which allowed them to sing in more intimate voices, like Bing Crosby, Rudy Valley, and Rascal Embo. 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 air. 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 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 liked 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 ten or fifteen 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 is it

“a 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 corners. I love country music. I'm a passable pedal steel guitar player. I love heavy music. I have a band called the Drift of my side project which is kind of a power tree of that access is 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 cherry. I mean I have to say I have a long list of

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 impart 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 and the storage lockers? Does anybody want to inherit it? Should you be selling it? Like

don't you? 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 know. Not the dumpster. 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 anytime 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

an 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 that's here this is the things you leave behind written and performed by my guest Lenny Kay on his new album going local. He's a good person. He's a good person. He's still here going up pick up the pieces of your life and lands. He gets what and why. We all fall in the ground. A whole lot of baggage that we're going to be left by the side of the road.

This is the things you leave behind from Lenny Kay'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 be queath it to somebody?”

I mean actually I'm amused by the fact that Tom Verlaine's book and record collection have been kind of put out into the world. Discocks just sold a thousand of Tom's records he 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 and the sky thinking oh man I want to hear this record so my husband has been 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. 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 famous record store in Greenwich Village. Yeah 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. I like to joke it out. Well you know I like to say that I I worked for ten dollars a day and all the records I could slide at the door. You know you get a sense of the expanse of recorded music which is a beautiful thing. I mean in my Kruna book I got to

78 grooves an entirely new music was being invented. My lightning striking book is more my personal

“journey through the many transformative moments of a rock and roll. It's funny because I think”

at the same time you were working at Village Oldies which was a stop for you know like serious record buyers and also just like you know people in the neighborhood to or us but it was a very 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're 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's playing in a fraternity party is the zoo did. That's the name of your band yeah. Yeah the zoo bringing down you know for your very own horror show

“I think was our thing. We had dancing girls called the zoo loos. I know how what can I say?”

You can apologize later. But you know you play shout for 20 minutes and the fraternity brothers would be swimming in beer on the floor and and that's a great response you know music releases us music elevates us music illuminates us you know and no matter the different styles this is what I've really found given all my many you know you know investigations into different genres is that it's a whole kind of obsessorizing because the basic reasons for us so long stay the same. I want love.

I don't have love. I'm sad. I've lost love. Who am I? I'm peaved at the world. All of these things are universal and no matter the decoration or the genre or or how it's presented these are the 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. Leneke 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. These days it feels like the news changes every hour. Well NPR has a podcast that does that too NPR news now brings you a fresh five minute episode every hour of the day with the latest most

“important headlines in episodes that are clear, fact-based and easy to digest. Listen to NPR news”

now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. From the light bulb to the internet human history has been driven by innovation and shortwave is exploring how the technology of tomorrow will transform our future. Would you write in a flying taxi? Will AI models fight wars? Here about the technological frontier every Monday on tech camp. The new series from shore with. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is fresh air weekend. I'm Tony Mosley. Let's get back to Terry's

interview with Leneke. He's Patty Smith's longtime guitarist and now has his first solo album.

It's called Go and 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 the 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 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 Leneke for you? Well, you know, folk music was happening. 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 Laricusic was a lyricist. Your family name was Kusikov from pronouncing that right. Yes. Your father changed

for was the love theme from the godfather, which was a hit for Andy Williams in 1972. So let's just

“hear a little bit of that. Speak softly, love and hold me one against your heart.”

I feel your words, the tender trending moments start. We're in our, our very own. Sharing a love that only if you have a love. One color day is won by the sun. Deep past the nights. When we are won. I love that line. Wine color days. Kiss by the sun. Warm colored nights. My uncle would, yeah, my uncle wrote a lot of, you know, 60, 70. I have 45s, you know, that nobody ever heard. He was a journeyman songwriter. And 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. And next thing I know, 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, you know, professionally released. And it's called Crazy Like a Fox. So this is my guess, Lenny K. Under the name, link, Cromwell. They say they are crazy and they call me lazy, cos I don't like to. All they love. They call me neurotic and say I'm psychotic, cos I let my hair grow long. Your hair is still

pretty long. Yeah, I, you know, thank you, DNA. 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 cut it back. So I get the proportion right, but I don't know. I just like it. It's who I am. What's it that recording do for you in terms of your sense of identity as a possible, like real professional recording artist? And what gave me a sense of who I could be, even though I didn't dare think about it.

I, you know, I 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 arc. 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, I would might be on PBS's of pro-protest singers of

“the 1960s, but I, I believe the, the musical gods had different ideas for who I might become.”

So you started off as a rock critic. You're still playing, you know, in a band, but you were rock critic, you were reviewing records. You wrote for all the pop magazines, but you also wrote for 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 Accapella music or do-up. 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 in South Jersey and Philadelphia. We both enjoyed Jerry Blavitt to get with the heater the boss, with the hot sauce, playing beautiful, beautiful group harmony. And when I was growing up in Brooklyn,

that that touched my soul. I once had hopes to be a high tenor in a do-up 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. Accapella music was do-up music without, of course, musical instruments, but it was specialized from oldies stores. And this is like 1963, 1962, which meant that the music was already past stated. 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 and for her first poetry reading because she wanted 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 Melangas. 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, live in 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 Mabel Thorpe 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 Tim 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 and inspired like every jazz musician. And so you'd think when you listen to them, it would sound like everything else and so many musicians pattern themselves on it. But both those early Parker recordings in 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, like, recording it together? What it was like for you to be, 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 Soul. 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 Soul was such an accomplished pianist except, you know, he could play rockman or nothing. Want that sure. He was used to accompanying cabaret singers. But he could also not show off and just hit those chords and keep

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 since but not mine which was a poem of hers called Oath. And, you know, and then I connected it with the most glorious of songs. Gloria, of course, is not only the great Van Morrison song done by every garage band but it was also a classic do-op song done by the Cadillac, 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, you know, 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 K. On Guitar.

Jesus died for somebody since but not mine. Milden and Pat Thieves, while called Amazleeve, thick, hot stone, my sins my own, may belong to me, may. People say, beware, the hat don't care, the words are just new, the regulations to me, may, I have a hook in the room, and I look so proud. I'm wearing this dress, no fear, well, and it feels a bowie, now I go to this here, Pony. It's just here, but while I'm in it, you get the wind,

you see, it's my young boy, hoping on the path of me to lean, and on the path of me,

would you let so good? As Patty Smith, Lenny K. My guest, Angatar, from Patty Smith's first album Horses,

what's it she brings 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 hide-bound 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 to 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 ten years ago, at this point, fifty-five 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

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 Nina Rodus music. I took Stefan Isher's music and spun it into English. So, this is a friend like you. From Lenny K's, New album, go in local. Lenny K, it has been such a pleasure to have you back on the show. Thank you. Lenny K, speaking with Terry Gross. Fresh air weekend is produced by Theresa Madden. Fresh air is executive producer, is Sam Bricker. With Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.

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,

be cause a friend like you. You know, every day on our first NPR's Golden Globe nominated morning news podcast, we bring you three essential stories. At the heart of each story, our questions. What really happened? What really mattered? What happens next?

At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and to follow the facts. Follow our first wherever

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