Testing This Punk Legend's Music Knowledge

- Before we start with the music, introduce yourself. - Hi, I'm Lenny Kay. I'm standing on Great Jones Street. I believe Bob Dylan once stood on this street for the freewheeling. One of my favorite bars over there, the Jones Bar, now sadly closed. I spent many a night listening to their jukebox and learning about the records we'll be listening to today. - They had good tunes in there? - They had the best jukebox ever and the best margaritas. And by the time you got to your third margarita, you were just like aiming at the button because you knew, you knew that whatever button you hit was gonna be a great song. - It was all gonna be good. - Yeah. - Here you go. - Are we doing this on the street? - Oh yeah. - Oh gosh. ♪ It's not Marie ♪ I used to be able to hit those notes. Sorry Earl Speedo, I can't sing it like you. I find this song fascinating. - Yeah? - Because the national anthem of garage rock is called Gloria. ♪ D-L-O-R-I-A ♪ ♪ Gloria ♪ ♪ D-L-O-R-I-A ♪ ♪ Gloria ♪ - The national anthem of doo-wop is Gloria. All the street corner groups would sing this beautiful song. ♪ Gloria ♪ ♪ She's not in love ♪ - And of course, I happened to borrow Gloria with Patti Smith. ♪ D-L-O-R-I-A ♪ ♪ I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-D-L-O-R-I-A ♪ - What do you think it is? Is this a fun thing to sing? - It's got three beautiful syllables. I guess it's got religious connotations as well. It's just a perfect song. - We'll stay in the same realm. ♪ Doo-ba-doo-ba ♪ ♪ Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba ♪ - The five discs, yeah. Never let you go. - They're borrowing from maybe like a jazz tradition. - It's like another language. - Probably the way they came up with that originally was one guy was like, "What if we did ba-ba-ba-do-ba-da-ba?" And then the other guy joins in. - It's like scat singing. It's just a great music. And unfortunately it seems to have kind of vanished. - Yeah. - As a kid growing up in Brooklyn, that was the music that I listened to all the time. I wanted to be a second tenor in a doo-wop group. Then I saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan and my role model for what I wanted to be as a musician changed immediately. ♪ Those are eyes that I'll be seeing ♪ ♪ Tomorrow I'll miss you ♪ ♪ Remember, I'll always be you ♪ - It's interesting that you mention the shift to The Beatles, but it's not that different. - When George and John and Paul put their voices together, they were like amazing. ♪ That boy ♪ ♪ Took my love away ♪ - Okay, what's next? - Yeah! I love reggae. Johnny, you're too bad. - Yes. - I learned about you. I learned about reggae music from the heart of They Come. - Yeah. - In the '70s, what I would do, I would travel out to the West Indian sections of Brooklyn and I'd go into a random record store, me, little white guy, and I'd ask them to play me all the singles on the wall. And like any music, a lot of them are just kind of sound-alikes. They just sound like the same thing, but I wanted to hear the great songs, just great singers, incredible arrangements, not given enough credit to the-- to the instrumentalists who are making these records. And for, of course, the fact that Jamaican Toasters, they're DJs, playing those records. ♪ Me on my way, me a go on the grill ♪ ♪ People come right to you, we talk it through ♪ ♪ They just say, "You know, man, your feet are so skinny" ♪ ♪ Ride a one-wheel bicycle, don't mind me, baby ♪ Provided the foundation for what would become hip-hop in America. The Clash, of course. - Uh-huh. - The Clash, of course. The most righteous, the most political, the most broad-based group out of the UK punk explosion. Of course they loved reggae. - Of course. - That's a very good segue. - Yep. - And they weren't too cool. - Yeah. - You know, they weren't like the Sex Pistols, "Oh, man," you know. They loved old music, they loved new music, they loved black music, they loved white music, they loved green music. They were all over the place. Great, great guys. I miss Joe Strummer, I got to see him, uh, when he was over in Brooklyn at his performances with the Mescaleros. ♪ And all of the young ♪ ♪ Do that one, don't wait ♪ ♪ Short it out, please, don't shoot ♪ And I went backstage and, you know, we gave each other a hug because, you know, we're rock vets, man, we've been through it. - Comrades. - And we're still playing. - Yeah. - And that's the important thing. Paul Simonin, super, super rootsy guy. Mick Jones, what a broad musical imagination. Just a bandful. He's a band for the ages, actually. A lot of bands, they stay in their, in their lane. - Yeah. - You know, we're punk, so we can't do anything because it's not punk. The Clash always sound like The Clash, but to be honest, they don't sound alike from record to record. With the Patti Smith group, we wanted it all. We wanted to be able to have a three-minute hit single that you could dance to. Not that we ever really had one. But we always were trying. And then we wanted to have a field of noise, of inspiration, of improvisation. When you have that kind of breadth of musical ambition, you can't be pigeonholed. Do you feel like the '70s in New York City, especially the late '70s, was truly a time of sort of explosive experimentation? Or is that just what they say in the stories? I wrote a book. It's called "Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments," where all of a sudden, you see a locus of energy develop in a place that really hadn't figured it out yet. I love the San Francisco scene. When I was a teenager, I just thought that was like the greatest assemblage of bands. And I remember that moment standing outside CBGB one day thinking, wait a second. We've got six or seven really important bands. And I'm seeing this thing kind of catch fire in different places. What's crazy to me is at the same time, hip hop, you mentioned it before, that's exploding. A great free jazz scene here. You know, Sun Ra playing over at Slugs. It's a real cultural cauldron. Over at St. Mark's Church, the poets, of which I got to play with the greatest of them all. It's amazing how compressed and creative this scene is. But the real reason is because it was off the radar. And when you have an open field like that, you can become anything who you hope to be. ♪ Be that girl ♪ I'm going back to the summer of love. Ah, The Grateful Dead. What a band. And I have to say, now they're kind of like a cliche. Yeah. But what they did was so amazing. What I liked is their sense of expansive improvisation. That they would continue on and on until they reached a point that was beyond rhythm and beyond melody. ♪ Sarkozy ♪ ♪ Ain't no loser ♪ Classic punk rock. The Dead Boys, they were like the second generation punk because they heard what was happening at CBGB and they came from the Lando Cleve to make their mark here. And they did. And they did. Steve Bader's was hilarious. He once wrapped his microphone cord around his neck so hard that he passed out on stage. That's true punk rock, if you ask me. It really marked the moment when punk became not just an attitude or a sensibility, but punk with a capital P. When did you think about the idea of punk? I used the word punk rock in my liner notes for Nuggets in 1972, but I didn't invent it. It was kind of bandied about by rock writers who wanted a return to the elemental desire of why you make music. Greg Shaw out in California, Lester Bangs up at Cream. So by the time it arrived, it-- a description for music, it was already over. But the core ideas-- It's desire and yearning and wanting to understand yourself through the power of music. That's the journey. And to be honest, it's all about the journey. You know, one of the things I like about what I'm doing now is that I'm still on a journey. How long have you been working on this project? Maybe 15 years. Some of the songs on the album are a little bit younger version of me. I'm not out at 3:30. I'm not out at 3:30 in the morning dancing to "White Wedding." Well, occasionally. It's a nice day for a white wedding. Speaking of "White Wedding." Right on cue. I knew Billy Idol a long time. He lived in New York at the turn of the '80s. He worked in a practice room next to mine up at the music building on 8th Avenue. I think I sold him some mushrooms at one point. But anyway, I saw him a few years ago. And I went up to him and said, you know, Billy, I got to congratulate you. You have my favorite song. You have my favorite song of the 1980s. "White Wedding" is a classic. Thank you for taking the time. It's always a pleasure to be here with "Trackstar." You know, thank you for not really stumping me and saying, that Frank Sinatra song, I don't know that one. I'd rather get the stories from you. Oh, that's awesome. "Cadillacs." Yeah. What a song. We can do it on the street corner. Gloria, it's not Marie. Oh, I hit it. I hit the note. - Thank you, brother. - Oh, thank you.