\n<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter 55 years of collaboration, Lenny Kaye<\/a> still managed to surprise Patti Smith<\/a> when he played her his new album, Goin\u2019 Local<\/em>, due July 29.\u00a0 \u201cI never heard you sound like this,\u201d she told him.<\/p>\n \n\tThe album marks Kaye\u2019s belated official debut as a solo artist at age 79, following a wildly diverse career \u2014\u00a0 in addition to his decades-long gig as Smith\u2019s guitarist and key collaborator, he\u2019s written numerous books, produced artists from Suzanne Vega to Soul Asylum, and compiled the legendary garage-rock boxed set Nuggets<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve always written songs,\u201d Kaye says. \u201cSometimes they\u2019re very personal. Sometimes I do them for my own amusement. The timing? As Orson Welles said, there is no wine before its time. I can really sometimes only concentrate on one side of my personality at a time. And of course, with the writing of the books and the work with Patti and all the other things that I do, it always seems that I was the last person to move to the priority list.\u201d<\/p>\n