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You are here: Home / Culture / Books / LIGHTNING STRIKING compacts transformative rock’n’roll history into one, slick package

LIGHTNING STRIKING compacts transformative rock’n’roll history into one, slick package

November 24, 2021 Category: Books, Reviews
Lenny Kaye, Lightning Striking - credit Ulf Holberg
Lenny Kaye - credit Ulf Holberg
Lightning Striking - Lenny Kaye
Lightning Striking – Lenny Kaye

At first glance, the premise of Lenny Kaye’s Lightning Striking has the air of clickbaity listicle about it: the tale of rock’n’roll boiled down to “10 transformative moments” in 10 (well, 11) urban epicentres, from Cleveland in 1952 to Seattle in 1991. But in Kaye’s hands, it’s a rich and stimulating read – a journey through time and place narrated by a beat historian with an encyclopaedic knowledge of, and boundless passion for, his subject.

RELATED: ‘Unzipped and Hot Stuff provide colourful insight into rare Rolling Stones memorabilia and the music icons’ working process.’

He’s often writing not merely as an expert witness but as an eyewitness – someone who, as Patti Smith’s guitarist, was at the heart of the CBGBs scene in 1970s New York; who opens the chapter on UK punk recalling watching Zulu round Mick Jones’ flat; who, as a record producer, was passed a pre-Nevermind Nirvana demo.

The “moments” of the subtitle is slightly misleading: arguably, the book is as much about the cultural momentum that culminates in rock’s great leaps forwards as those leaps themselves. As Kaye underlines, the Beatles’ story didn’t begin in 1962, and neither did Never Mind The Bollocks spring up out of nowhere. In a “world of immediate gratuity” globalised by technology, Kaye briefly ponders whether such transformative moments and the vibrant, independent, localised music scenes that birthed them might now be a thing of the past. If so, then Lightning Striking is an evocative epitaph.

Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments In Rock & Roll, Lenny Kaye (White Rabbit)

Price: £20. Info: here

words BEN WOOLHEAD

KEEP READING: ‘In a nearly 40-year career, it’s astonishing that punk legends The Offspring’s Motorpoint Arena Cardiff show is only their second in the UK.’

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About Noel Gardner

Noel is the listings, reviews, music and books editor at Buzz and has been doing some or all of these things here since the days of dial-up internet. He was raised in Cornwall, lives in Cardiff and that is more or less all he has ever known.
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Tag: ben woolhead, buzz book review, lenny kaye, patti smith, Ulf Holberg, white rabbit

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