By 1970 Kaye was playing in various garage bands, while also contributing to publications such as Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy. Jac Holzman, head of Elektra Records – which had released The Doors, Love and the MC5 – approached Kaye with an idea that would eventually morph into the Nuggets compilation. “Jac Holzman had a certain vision of gathering an album of great songs that needed to be in one listening experience,” Kaye says. For inspiration, Kaye turned to the music of his youth for inspiration. “[The bands on Nuggets] were the bands I listened to when I was driving around developing my musical lifeline,” Kaye says. “They were the bands that I most responded to and helped me in my own garage bands.” Famously, Kaye would go on to join the Patti Smith Group in the mid ’70s, continuing to play in Smith’s band until the present day.
Released originally in 1972, Nuggets would go on to become arguably rock’n’roll’s most celebrated cult release. Featuring tracks such as the Thirteenth Floor Elevators’ You’re Gonna Miss Me, the Electric Prunes’ I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night, The Standells’ Dirty Water and The Seeds’ Pushin’ Too Hard, Nuggets laid the groundwork for garage, psychedelia, punk, and rock’n’roll scenes across the world. In Australia, the influence of Nuggets is omnipresent: Radio Birdman covered You’re Gonna Miss Me, the Beasts Of Bourbon included Dirty Water in its live set in the early ’90s, the Dolly Rocker Movement covered Pushin’ Too Hard and The Murlocs regularly play Count Five’s Psychotic Reaction.
While it was only a matter of five or so years between the release of the original songs featured on the Nuggets compilation, and the Nuggets compilation itself, Kaye says that in the early ’70s he felt that rock’n’roll needed to be reminded of its more chaotic roots. “I felt like rock’n’roll was becoming less grass roots, more professional, more predictable, less open to new ideas,” Kaye says. But Nuggets was no rock’n’roll crusade: this was about the songs, and the energy behind them. “It was a very expansive time in terms of musical adventurism. And not only being a part of it, but liking those moments when people are starting out, not quite sure of what they’re doing, making mistakes and putting things together that have never been done before – that’s always appealed to me as a musician,” Kaye says.
In these days of Internet distribution, where anyone with a computer and a modem can stream their music to a global audience, it’s sometimes hard to appreciate the localised character of the original garage scene. “There were local scenes, and perhaps the only way you’d be heard was by having the 45 single gracing the bottom end of the top 40,” Kaye says. “I avoided having massive hits just to be contrary, and also because my brief was to find some unheard stuff, or tracks that weren’t as familiar.”
Perhaps counter-intuitively in an industry obsessed with finding The Next Big Thing, Nuggets has retained its attraction 40 years after its original release. Kaye recalls touring with the Patti Smith Group in Europe, and a Danish fan approaching him to talk about a next volume of Nuggets.
Having been previously re-issued in 1976 by Sire Records, and again in 1998, as well as inspiring a series of related compilations over the next 30 years, Nuggets is being re-released again in 2012 to coincide with the album’s 40th anniversary. Alongside the re-released record, Warner Music will also be releasing two local Nuggets-inspired compilations: Down Under Nuggets, Original Australian Artyfacts 1965-67, a compilation of Australian bands of the same era including The Loved Ones, The Missing Links, The Purple Hearts and The Black Diamonds, and Nuggets: Antipodean Interpolations Of The First Psychedelic Era, featuring covers of original Nuggets tracks by contemporary bands including Baptism Of Uzi, The Laurels, The Murlocs, King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard and The Frowning Clouds.
It follows that garage rock – epitomised by the mixture of simplicity and spirit –remains attractive to young musicians. “It’s returning to the basic building blocks of rock’n’roll – the instinct to start over and wipe the slate clean,” Kaye says. “I think there’s certain elements of garage rock that are universal – the sense of unbridled youth, the sense of not being tamed, the sense of spunkiness, the sense of ‘I’m going to do whatever I like, even if no-one likes it’. I can it the sense of yearning and desire.”
BY PATRICK EMERY
Photo credit: Stephanie Kaye
