Terry Gross: ...the New York Times
recently called her the Godmother
of Punk. In the
'70s she created a hybrid of poetry and rock, and developed a high-
Patti Smith: Thank you.
TG: I think some of the songs on this new CD are really unlike some of the
songs you've done in the past, such as the song we just heard, "My
Madrigal." There's, an emotional straightforwardness in this song? and
that almost chant quality of "Til death do us part," that I just find
different from your previous work. Do you feel like you're writing out of a
different kind of energy now?
PS: Well, definitely. [Laughs.] Well, the, for, I mean, Horses, a lot of
the material in Horses was gleaned from 4 or 5 years' work before it
was recorded so I really started working on the work that came out on
Horses when I was about 21 years old, so naturally a lot of the work
encompasses a lot of the anarchistic, adolescent energy of a y'know,
sort of a late-
TG: "Til Death Do Us Part," I'm assuming of course is about the loss of
your husband. How long did it take before you started writing songs
about his death?
PS: Well actually not the first month. I really think I really started
writing a little more than a month after he passed away, when my brother
passed away. That actually had a different type of effect on me. My
brother was the same age as Fred, they were both 45, my brother was a
very very supportive, high-
TG: For many years, for about 16 years, you had basically been at home
with your family
PS: Yes
TG: Raising your children and ...
and not being on the road and not being in the recording studio,
outside of one 1988 session that you collaborated on with your husband,
after your husband died, did that life no longer make sense to you, the
life of being at home and not performing anymore. Did, did...outside of
your brother encouraging you to perform again, did you feel in your own
heart that it was time to make a change?
PS: Well, no, it wasn't like that. Fred and I had already started
work on a new album. We are parents and we have financial concerns,
y'know we have to make a living as well as express ourselves as
artists. And y'know we had a lot of things we wanted to express, I,
Fred, wanted to do another rock album. He wanted to do a very
globally-
TG: I wanta play another track from your new CD, and this is a song called
"Fireflies." Would you tell us what you were thinking about when you
wrote this?
PS: Well, actually, "Fireflies" came out of a piece of music written by
Oliver Ray, who I've been collaborating with. He also wrote the song
"Walking Blind," which I performed on the Dead Man Walking
soundtrack. And Oliver's also a poet, so he gave me some of the first
lines for it, he gave me the "11 steps til I am, til I can rest, 11
steps 'til I am blest by you" are Oliver's words. So I took those words, and
just went on the journey of the song. And I think, I think it's really
just, it's the last one we did, it's like my last wailing, I would
think, my last, well I can't think of it any better than that. But,
I think, when I listen to it now, it seems like a sort of a painful but
successful journey of one who didn't want to get out of bed [laugh] or
didn't want to rise, to feel life again and to keep, and to keep going.
And, and I suppose y'know it's also in some ways a love song for Fred.
TG: This is "Fireflies," Patti Smith, from her new CD, Gone Again.
PS: Yeah, I've been...If one went through all my albums, every single one
of them, including the first, is, is littered with Christian
imagery, I think. I've, it's because I've been reading the Bible since I was
a child and always found it, inspiring not only spiritually but
poetically. And I have a tendency to do that. I think, there's
hardly, I don't, I can't think of any piece of work I've done that doesn't
have some at least abstract allusion to the scriptures.
TG: Now I know when you were young you were a Jehovah's Witness for several
years. Was that the religion of your parents, or something that you joined
independently?
PS: My mother's religion. I was a Jehovah's Witness until I was about 12
and, in those days Jehovah's Witnesses were stricter about one's
pursuits outside of being a Witness, and I decided I wanted to be
an artist. I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art with my father, and saw
art in person, and immediately wanted to become a painter and it, it, some
of my desires sort of collided with their teachings, so I made the
choice, I left the Witnesses to become an artist. I think they're a much
more benevolent, and more understanding group right
now, and but at that time they, I didn't get any sympathy or
encouragement for that kind of way of life [laugh], so I ... my drive to be
an artist was extremely strong, as a 12 or 13 year old, and ...
TG: And did you try other organized religions or was that the end of
organized religion for you, for some time?
PS: No, I looked in, I thought of for a while I wanted to be Jewish,
but I think that was my Anne Frank period...
TG: [Laughs.]
PS: It was, I didn't realize that you just can't be, y'know, y'don't
turn Jewish, I, well, I had great sympathy. I mean when I grew up, y'know
in the late '50s and early '60s, there's, y'know, of course, a lot of
information came out about the holocaust and there were trials, and things,
and, I felt devastated about that as a young girl, and, and I got
very interested in the the Jewish faith. But I never really I
think once I left my first organized religion, I, I found as I checked
each one out, that it really wasn't for me. Because I really don't like
the idea of exclusion. Y'know, I think all people, y'know, y'know,
return to god, or whatever god is, or the energy of god. And I think all
manners to get to him, whether it's, y'know through Islam, or,
whether one's a Buddhist, or a Christian, or a Catholic, or, I think, I
think they're all beautiful, y'know, really.
TG: What's the nature of your faith now? Are you in an organized religion?
PS: Oh no. No. [Laughs.] Not at all. I just, I say my prayers and, and,
continue, my studies but I basically, for me I don't really
prescribe or need a religion. I what's important to me is my
communication with what I perceive to be god.
TG: Now what a lot of people might find confusing or
paradoxical is on the one hand this kind of spiritual inclination you've
had since childhood, and never stopped having, and at the same time your art
is the kind of art a lot of people would describe as blasphemous.
PS: Well, I think blasphemy is just a form of exploring, y'know, it's just
a, y'know, youthful exuberant manner of exploring the whole, the whole
concept. I think I've often found the people that are the most
blasphemous are often the, wind up to be the truest believers, because
they've taken the time actually to question, pull things apart, be angry and
then, either submit or, y'know, or find certain answers. People, a lot
of people, misconstrued, for instance, the statement "Jesus died for
somebody's sins but not mine." People constantly came up to me and said
"you're an atheist, you don't believe in Jesus," and I said "obviously I
believe in him," I've stated, y'know, I've made a statement y'know, which,
y'know, I'm, I'm saying that, y'know, that the concept of Jesus, I
believe in, I just wanted the freedom, I wanted to be free of him. I was 20
years old and I, when I wrote that, and I, I, it was sort my youthful
manifesto. In other words I didn't want to, I guess, I didn't want to be
good, y'know, and I didn't want to, but I didn't want him to have to
worry about me, or I didn't want him taking responsibility for my
wrongdoings, or my youthful explorations. I wanted to be free. So it's
really a statement about freedom.
TG: That line comes up in a couple of places. It opens up your recording of "Gloria."
PS: Mmm-hmm.
TG: And it's also in a poem that you wrote in the early 70's called "Oath."
PS: Yeah, well that's where it came from.
TG: Yeah.
PS: I wrote it like in 1970 and used it...
TG: ...in "Gloria."
PS: And really, I just, it just evolved that way. A lot of the work on
Horses was not preconceived. It's just, I started out as a
performing poet, and when Lenny and Richard Sohl were working with me,
a lot of the poetry began to evolve, and merge with music, and, ...So
a lot of Horses was to do with the chemistry between Lenny, Richard, and I,
and how they helped me further evolve my poetry.
TG: Now, when you were young, did you feel, set apart from other kids
your age?
PS: Definitely. [Laughs.] Definitely.
TG: By what?
PS: Everything. Well, I was just, physically I was kind of, well I felt
sort of like an ugly duckling, I was sort of like skinny and, clumsy
and not very athletic. I had a lot of guts though and I was a fast runner,
but, I, and I was sick a lot, y'know I had scarlet fever and measles
and mumps and chi...I was, always had somethin', and a little, frail...but I
also, was the oldest of three children so I had a lot of responsibility.
I don't know, I just generally felt estranged. But not only estranged from,
the other kids. I felt estranged from the planet, and truthfully I spent
most of my childhood believing that I was, adopted by my parents and I
was actually an alien...I know...
TG: Like from another planet?
PS: Yeah, I know it sounds funny, but I perceived an alien, I used to have
this, this idea, that I was sort of like, part of, like, this alien race
that were part Venus and part American Indian. Now this sounds kind of funny
now, but I was very serious about it as a child. [Laugh.] I had a whole
cosmology and a whole universe, formed around these thoughts. But,
I definitely didn't feel, at home on the planet. I felt much more at
home when I'd read books about the Aztecs, or about, or if I'd read
stories about aliens on other planets. Or I just, I didn't really
feel like I belonged.
TG: Now I know your parents didn't have a lot of money, but if you
were, say, middle-
PS: lower middle-class...
TG: If you were like upper middle-class, you probably would've been sent to a, psychiatrist, for help.
PS: Well, not by my parents. [Laughs.] I don't think so. No, I wasn't a
child in pain or anything. I was actually proud of my ... secret...
TG: ...heritage [laughing]...
PS: ...heritage...No I wasn't like that, I wasn't a disturbed child. I was
actually, had a happy childhood. I loved my brother and sister. We were
inseparable. They, they thought the world of me and, y'know, I, in
fact, I found something my brother wrote, after he passed away, about
our childhood, and he talks about how I was like King Arthur, and they were
like the knights in my court, and, I mean, they always believed in me,
and I invented endless games and plays and stories for us to be
involved in, and my parents were, my mother was, they were both
hard-
TG: Patti Smith has a new CD called Gone Again. She also has a new book
of short prose pieces, dedicated to her long-
[short break]
TG: Coming up, we continue our conversation with Patti Smith and talk about
her early days as a performer, when she read poetry in bars, and had to
verbally spar with the audiences to keep the mike....
TG: This is "Fresh Air," I'm Terry Gross. Back with the second part of our
interview with Patti Smith. She left the music scene in 1980 to raise a
family. Her husband died a couple of years ago. Now she's performing and
recording again. She has a new CD called Gone Again. And Arista Records is
re-issuing her earlier recordings. Now you wrote for several years
before actually performing in a rock-
PS: No, not really. I dreamed when I was a kid about being an opera singer.
And I loved Maria Callas. And my mother's a really nice singer. She
y'know had a sort of like a '30s-
TG: Well, speaking of guts, when you first started reading, you've
said that you were reading, y'know, early on, often in bars that, that
weren't places you'd be very likely to hear a poet.
PS: No. [Laughs.] They weren't.
TG: What kind of places did you, did you read in, before you started
adding music?
PS: Wherever I, wherever I could. Y'know I wasn't really accepted in the
poet clique. I didn't have a lot of respect for poets and I thought most of
the poets, y'know, and y'know, the, the more academic way of
breaking into the poetry circle wasn't interesting to me. I didn't really
relate to them, and I thought most of the poetry readings I went to were
boring and, it just wasn't my scene. So I started, pursuing
different, venues to perform my poetry. And I just read anywhere that
anybody would take me. Usually for free, just to get the experience, or for
five, fi-dollars, or ten dollars, and sometimes I'd be the opening act's
opening act [TG laughs], so I played like in a bar that had a little rock
band and some little blues band and I'd go on before the blues band and,
y'know, nobody was interested in what I had to say. Y'know, they weren't
interested in hearing poetry, or y'know, they wanted to hear music, and
they were half drunk or whatever. But I just, I figured if I had, they told
me I had 15 minutes, or 20 minutes, on that little stage, that was my stage,
and I was gonna fight for it. So I usually spent, if I had 20 minutes, 14
minutes arguing that I had the right to be there...
TG: Arguing with the audience?
PS: Yeah, and then finishing with "Piss Factory." And which, usually, I did
such a strong reading of it, that it would take "em off guard, and they'd
kinda like it, and then I was gone, but ...
TG: What was the arguing with them like?
PS: Aww, like sparrin'. Y'know like the, I can't, y'know like "get a
job...go in the kitchen where you belong." And y'know I'd, I always, I was
really good at sparring. I really loved Johnny Carson, and I really studied
his whole monologue thing. The way Johnny Carson would go back and
forth with the audience, and that was actually more in my mind of what
I wanted to do, sort of be like Johnny Carson.
TG: Let me play the first track of your first LP. And this is
"Gloria." What made you decide to re-work this song?
PS: Well, truthfully, it was, in the beginning it was just Lenny and
I, and then we brought in a piano player, who was Richard Sohl, he was
quite young, quite gifted, he was actually a classical piano player, but he
had a great sense of rhythm. So it was just the three of us, a guitar,
piano, and I, and we did very simple songs, because the configuration
was so simple. And, we just chose songs that were basically 3 chords,
so I could improvise over them. 'Coz I didn't wanna just like do "songs,"
like I didn't wanna do like lame approximations of, songs...So...
TG: [Laughs.] "Patti Smith Covers The Hits."
PS: [Snorts.] We did , we did what we called "fieldwork," so we'd pick
songs that had basically 3 chords that I could, like, and just sort of use
'em as a springboard. I didn't really have any interest in covering "Gloria"
but it had 3 chords and I liked the rhythm, and we just sort of used it for
our own design, the same as "Land of 1000 Dances." "Land of 1000 Dances"
became really like a, a battleground for all kinds of adolescent
excursions and, so that's why we picked songs like that. Our, I
remember I had to write, I wrote the ad copy for our first album, and
the ad copy I wrote for Horses was, "3 chords merged with the power of
the word."
TG: Yeah, that's great, yeah.
PS: That was our philosophy.
TG: I was wondering who wrote that, 'coz I thought that was good. [Laughs.]
PS: Yeah that was me. Wrote my own ad. I don't do it anymore, but I used to
write my own ads.
TG: Did you feel that no one else would know what, the right thing to say?
PS: Right. Yeah, I didn't trust anybody. [Laughs.]
TG: Well, this is "Gloria," from Patti Smith's first LP, Horses, and
I should say, the LP's on Arista are all getting re-issued.
PS: Well, I never really felt like I created myself, 'coz I'm the kind of
performer that y'know, I roll out of bed, whatever I put on. Y'know, I roam
the streets for a few hours, it's time for a job, the job, and I go to the
job. I don't like, do any special type of thing. Y'know, I might
meditate with my band for a few minutes before we go on, but, my, my,
my task as a performer was the opposite, I always have worked to strip away
the idea of a stage persona.
TG: Uh-huh...
PS: Y'know, I, I mean what happens when I'm on stage is a lot of the
different things within me, of course, because it's such a high-
TG: When you looked at other people in rock, men and women, was there
anybody you particularly, felt a kinship to in terms of what they were
like onstage and the kind of energy they gave off?
PS: Well, when I was younger I mean in the, I never thought that I'd ever
be involved in, be a performer, in the arena of rock-
TG: So did you feel like you were drawing on a masculine part of your own energy?
PS: Well, I didn't think about it, but I can say that all my, most of my
influences were male, except for ones that are kind of obscure. Somebody
like Lotte Lenya was a big influence.
TG: She was a big influence on you? That's interesting. She, she was
married to Kurt Weil for many years. A singer born in Germany who
specialized in singing Kurt Weil's music and was an extraordinary
singer, although...
PS: Well, she was a really, great performer too, if you see her in
like "Pirate Jenny," y'know, "Threepenny Opera" or something. She was very
inspiring because she was very, y'know, she didn't have the greatest voice,
she was more a personality voice, like Bob Dylan.
TG: Exactly, right, but she understood the meaning of a song so well...
PS: ...just like Bob Dylan
TG: Yeah, uh-huh.
PS: So, I, I was influenced by her, and I listened to a lot of Edith Piaf,
and y'know, like June Christy or, ...
TG: Now June Christy's a cool singer, so unlike you...[laugh]...You're hot.
PS: But I like, I, that's the kind of singer, y'know, I always, I always
think, I always thought when I grew up I'd sorta sing like that, but it
hasn't happened yet.
TG: Like June Christy?
PS: Yeah, I was like, well, like June Christy or , y'know, singers like
that, I always liked Chris ...
TG: Chris Conner...
PS: I love her. She's like my favorite.
TG: No, I'm really still trying to imagine you singing, say June Christy
and Chris Conner , kinds of songs, y'know, kind of cool jazz type
of feel, it seems...
PS: Well, I do around the house...
TG: Really...What kind of songs do you like to sing around the house?
PS: Well, I like "Slow Boat to China," and...
TG: Oh I love that song! [Hearty laugh.]
PS: Well, I was, y'know, my mother listened to all those, my father...
TG: It's a great Frank Loesser song
PS: Yeah, my dad used to listen to Duke Ellington and, we listened to
Stan Kenton, and I've always, I've always loved jazz, y'know, and so I
saw that progression, y'know, and my dad sort of stopped at early Miles
Davis, but then I kept moving, through Coltrane, and Albert Eiler, things
like that, but, ...
TG: OK, feel free to say "no" to this, but would you feel like singing a
verse of "Slow Boat to China?"
PS: Aw, geez, I don't know. My voice is kind of, you see, ahhh...
[sings] "I'm gonna get you, on a slow boat to China, all to myself alone..."
...S'mp'n like that.
TG: Ohhh, thank you. [Laughs.]
PS: How embarrassing. Now I'm embarrassed, but y'know...
TG: Oh no, it's wonderful
PS: ...sorta sound like my mother.
TG: Y'know, what I'd like to ask you about...in 1977 you fell off the stage
in Tampa and broke, fractured a couple vertebrae in your neck, and were out
of commission for about a year. I always wondered if that was embarrassing
to you, to fall off the stage.
PS: Oh, no, not really, I mean it was, not really, because it was, it
was a product of, I thought, I've talked about this a lot with Lenny, it
was really a product of high commitment and, from the part of our
band and, and sort of, and, and a lack of support from the band that
I was opening. We were opening up Bob Seger and they didn't give us
much light or much space on the stage, and it was a fairly high stage and,
when I asked for a little help, y'know, a little more light, or a little
more, y'know, room, not, for any egotistical reason, but because I was
frightened of the stage, I was ignored, so, so I really look at that
accident as a product of, y'know, their, their lack of,
community, and really the fact that, y'know, if I would've, like, just stood
there, y'know, I, I tried, to just stand there and perform, y'know, and not
move too much...
TG: Not your style...
PS: ...because I really couldn't see the edge of the stage, and we had so
little room, and, but we had a lot of people, for some reason, even
though we were opening, we had a really very verbal following there,
and our people, were so exciting, [laughs] it was partially the people's
fault, they were, y'know, just so full of energy, and us, and, and
we were doing "Ain't it Strange," which is one, which is one of our most
physical songs, that, y'know, I pretty much, I think I tripped over my
monitor, or my monitor was on the lip of the stage and I went over...
TG: What went through your mind as you started to go over?
PS: I just tried to relax. Y'know I just thought "Well, this is bad,"
but just, I just tried to submit to the situation, and I thought if I
submitted, I, it wouldn't, I wouldn't get hurt as much, but it was
pretty rough for a while. Y'know, people said all kinds of things. They
said I was totally stoned and fell off the stage, and all these things
are, y'know, a total lie. It had nothing to do with that. If I, if I was
in any special state, it was more of a, y'know, we would really drive
ourselves to some kind of fever pitch or spiritual state in that particular
song, and, as a band, we were in the top of our form.
TG: Do you feel like you're a different person on stage than you were, 20
years ago?
PS: Well, if I don't feel like a different person, after 20 years [laughs],
I mean, that would be a sad state of things. I mean hopefully I've evolved
as a human being and, I have, y'know, hopefully new things to offer,
and, a range of experience to offer but there are still certain aspects
within myself that I had when I was 8, and I still have "em. Y'know, I mean,
we, we do evolve as human beings but we also, have within us all those different stages that, brought us to where we are, so,
when I, when I'm on stage, y'know, you have someone who's like, y'know,
y'know, before the year's over, will be 50 years old, but also,
sometimes has the energy of a 22-
TG: We only have a couple of seconds. I wanna end with your song "Farewell
Reel." And I see this in a way as a song of goodbye and a song of getting on
with life, continuing with life, in spite of a loss. Would you say just a
couple of words about writing this?
PS: Well I, I really, Fred, I wrote the little piece of music after
Fred taught me to play guitar, and he actually really liked it, he said I
made a nice piece of music, which was encouraging. And the first few
lines, "it's been a hard time, and when it rains, it rains on me," Fred wrote,
I didn't even write "em. He just wrote 'em, or he just spoke them, just
about, I don't know, a month or, before he died, and I said I really like
those words, and I said can I have 'em? and he said yes. And then when he
passed away I finished the song, and I actually finished it very quietly,
and very, I just ne night, I sat up all night and wrote it, and
wrote it for Fred.
TG: Patti Smith, thank you so much for talking with us...
PS: You're welcome.
We waltzed
Terry Gross: That's Patti Smith from her new CD, Gone Again. Patti Smith, welcome
back to "Fresh Air." It's a pleasure to have you back.
beneath
god's point of view
knowing
no ending to
our rendezvous
We expressed
such sweet vows
Oh, til death do us part
Oh, til death do us part
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh...
11 steps
TG: That's "Fireflies," from Patti Smith's new CD, and Patti Smith is my
guest You know, I think of this in a way as a love poem with some very
Christian imagery in it, like "I will wash your feet and dry them with my
hair."
til I can rest
'leven steps
til I am blest by you
I am but alone
what can I do for you
twist in my hands
the thorn thy youth
to draw thy seed
to turn in birth
thy sighs
thy moan
I can't rest
9 steps
til I am blest by you
All I ever wanted
All I ever wanted
Oh I wash your feet
and dry them with my hair
aww, aww, aww
Oh to cry
[short break]
Not any cry
People say beware
TG: Music from Patti Smith's 1975 album, Horses... What was it like for you to create yourself on
stage, to find out who you were onstage?
Mmm but I don't care
The words are just rules and regulations
to me
mmmeeee
I walk inna room
y'know I look so proud
Movin' in this here atmosphere....
where anything's allowed
I go to this here party
'N I just get bored
Until I look out the window
see a sweet young thing
sittin' on the parkin' meter
leanin' on the parkin' meter
Oh she looked so good
Oh she looked so fine
And I got this crazy feelin'
That I'm gonna uh uh make her mine
Whoa put my spell on her
Here she comes
Walkin' down the street
Here she comes
Walkin' through my door
Here she comes
Walkin' up my stairs
Here she comes
Walkin' through the hall
In her pretty red dress, yeah
Oh she looks so good
Oh she looks so fine
And I got this crazy feelin'
that I'm gonna uh uh make her mine
then I hear this knockin' at my door
hear this knockin' at my door. . .
So, darlin' farewell
all will be well and all will be fine
the children will rise
strong and happy be sure
'Coz your love flows
and the corn still grows
and god only knows
we're only given as much
as the heart can endure
But I don't know why
but when it rains
it rains on me
the sky just opens
and when it rains it pours
When I look up and a rainbow
appears like a smile from heaven
and darlin' I can't help
thinkin' that smile is yours
Copyright © National Public Radio 1996
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