PATTI SMITH – Story of the Month (from February 2014)
Patti Smith grew up in Chicago and is of Irish descent. She moved to New York City in 1967 and met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; they had a tumultuous romantic relationship that was exacerbated by their poverty and Mapplethorpe’s struggles with his sexuality. In her multiply-award-winning 2010 memoir, Just Kids about their time together, Patti Smith refers to Robert Mapplethorpe as “the artist of her love”. His photographs of her became the album covers for the Patti Smith Group albums.
Patti Smith was under consideration as the lead singer for the psychedelic/hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult, and she contributed to several songs by the band, including “Debbie Denise” and “The Revenge of Vera Gemini” on what for my money is their best album, Agents of Fortune (1976); the latter song features her memorable spoken introduction: “You’re boned like a saint / With the consciousness of a snake”. Agents of Fortune also includes the biggest hit single by Blue Öyster Cult, “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper”.
Patti Smith began performing rock music in 1974 – another year that popular music changed irrevocably, much like 1963 with the Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion – with music archivist and guitarist Lenny Kaye. While not actually inventing the term “punk rock”, he had popularized it in his liner notes for the first compilation album of garage rock and psychedelic rock music, Nuggets, so this was most appropriate.
The band that became the Patti Smith Group was created when Ivan Kral (guitar and bass), Jay Dee Daugherty (drums) and Richard Sohl (piano) joined Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye. The piano player’s name is fitting, since his understated work at the ivories is in many ways the soul of the Patti Smith Group. The proto-punk band Iggy and the Stooges added Scott Thurston as a frantic pianist in 1973, but a keyboard player in a punk rock band is rare.
Many years ago, I wrote of Patti Smith that she resembled nothing so much as the Beat poets of the 1950’s; but that really is only one side of her music persona. She is a rocker pure and simple as well as a poet and a first-rate vocalist and one hell of a writer besides.
Patti Smith is renowned for reworking well-known rock standards to fit her vision and also of adding shock value to her music that surely made Alice Cooper smile; and that was true of the band’s first single from 1974, “Hey Joe” b/w “Piss Factory”. Patti Smith included a monologue about Patty Hearst (who had been kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army earlier that year) in the middle of her rendition of the 1960’s standard; while the latter song relates the salvation she received from the helplessness of her job on an assembly line after discovering a book by French poet Arthur Rimbaud (Jim Morrison of the Doors was similarly enthralled with Rimbaud).
Patti Smith Group was signed by Clive Davis to a major-label contract with Arista Records; and their debut album Horses was one of the first punk rock albums, being released in December 1975 (four months before the Ramones’ first album came out). Actually, through most of the 1970’s, punk rock was mostly found on 45’s and an occasional EP; except for the biggest punk rockers, LP’s were pretty rare.
While recording their third and most successful album, Easter, Patti Smith Group encountered Bruce Springsteen who was recording his fourth album, Darkness on the Edge of Town in the adjoining studio. The Boss had recorded “Because the Night” but was unsatisfied with it and did not include it on the album. Jimmy Iovine was the producer and engineer on both albums; he passed along a copy of the tape of the song to Patti Smith, who recast the song and included it on their album. The first performance of “Because the Night” was at a Patti Smith Group concert on December 30, 1977 at New York’s CBGB club, with Bruce Springsteen joining in on guitar and vocals. Bruce and Patti share songwriting credits on “Because the Night", which is probably Patti Smith’s best known song. Easter also includes several songs about Patti Smith’s feelings on organized religion, notably her version of Van Morrison’s “Gloria” that has the spoken-word introduction, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine”.
Patti Smith Group’s previous album, Radio Ethiopia was influenced by the fiery 1960’s Detroit band MC5; and Patti Smith later met the band’s guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith. They married in 1980, and the couple raised two children. The joke at the time was that she married him only because she wouldn’t have to change her name. Their son, Jackson Smith married White Stripes drummer Meg White in 2009; interestingly, Meg didn’t have to change her name either when she had previously married the band’s guitarist Jack White.
The Patti Smith Group album Wave (1979) includes a lovely tribute to her husband called “Frederick”; “Dancing Barefoot” on the same album was also dedicated to him.
In 1988, Patti Smith released a well-received album called Dream of Life that included a hit song, “People Have the Power” – in that song, she seemed to anticipate the momentous changes that were coming in the world, including the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but not just that.
Patti Smith suffered a series of losses in quick succession beginning with the death in November 1994 of her husband Fred “Sonic” Smith, followed by the unexpected death of her brother Todd Smith – her band’s keyboard player Richard Sohl and her early love Robert Mapplethorpe had died four and five years earlier. She reemerged from that pain more visible than ever; her next album, Gone Again (1996) was perhaps her most self-assured effort and included a tribute to Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, “About a Boy”. The final track is a heartbreaking tribute to her late husband, “Farewell Reel”.
More recently, Patti Smith made news around the world when she was photographed with a beaming smile while meeting Pope Francis.
(September 2016)
