Lenny Kaye on the live album that “touches ground most bands don’t know exists”
The live performance is a sacred art form. It brings with it a sense of community that no other experience can, but how it should be carried out tends to divide opinion. While some believe it should be a case of playing the songs and giving the crowd what they want, others think it should be free and expressive. Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group falls into the latter category, and his love of one particular live album perfectly highlights that.
Notoriously, during the last tour of the Patti Smith Group, the band tried to improvise over their song ‘Seven Ways Of Going’. The track is one of the only ones from their Waves album in which every member has a writer’s credit; as such, everyone had in-depth knowledge of the piece. This left room for them to play with it every night, delivering something different to each crowd and allowing for experimentation.
All musicians know how difficult it can be to improvise with a full band. Finding the right key, tempo and structure at the moment is difficult and something that only the very best tend to do. However, when done right, it is also music in its rawest form. There are no rules, no regulations, just good musicians bouncing off of one another and doing what comes naturally.
There are many jazz and blues outfits whose sound is built upon improvisation; however, it’s not something that rock bands tend to experiment with. Most rock groups usually improvise by having a chord structure and a lead guitarist working a solo over it. One of the leading bands to champion improvisation and live jam is the Grateful Dead, so much so that their live shows and live albums are cherished much more than their studio work.
People are devoted to going to Grateful Dead shows and recording the performance so that fans can enjoy it everywhere. Their ultimate archivist, with his collection known as Dicks Picks, has over 100 hours of material. The band have also released a fair share of live albums, given their improvisational popularity, and one of their most loved ones that truly resonates with Lenny Kaye is Live / Dead.
“Live Dead explains why the Dead are one of the best-performing bands in America,” he said, “why their music touches on ground that most other groups don’t even know exists.”
He explains that much like the Patti Smith Group did with ‘Seven Ways Of Going’, the Grateful Dead will twist and contort their music depending on how they feel on the night. “A list of song titles would mean very little in terms of what actually goes on inside the album. Like the early Cream, the Dead in concert tends to use their regular material as a jumping-off point, as little frameworks that exist only for what can be built on top of them.”
He continues, “Live Dead also exhibits the group’s quite considerable ability in tying together different song threads, letting them pass naturally into one another, almost if they had been especially designed for such a move. A jamming band has to rely on its sense of flow, on its talent in taking that small series of steps which will ultimately bring it to some entirely different place from where it started.”
Musicians understand how difficult it is to come up with genius on the spot, and that’s why groups who rely on improvisation are deemed so important. The Grateful Dead are one of the best examples of a rock band being able to improvise, so it’s hardly a surprise that so many artists and fans view them as some of the best around.
