Caryn Rose - Why Patti Smith Matters

Evelyn McDonnell and Oliver Wang

Series Editors

BOOKS IN THE SERIES

Tanya Pearson, Why Marianne Faithfull Matters

Charles L. Hughes, Why Bushwick Bill Matters

Stephanie Phillips, Why Solange Matters

Adele Bertei, Why Labelle Matters

Fred Goodman, Why Lhasa de Sela Matters

Karen Tongson, Why Karen Carpenter Matters

Tom Smucker, Why the Beach Boys Matter

Donna Gaines, Why the Ramones Matter

WHY PATTI SMITH MATTERS

Caryn Rose

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

AUSTIN

Copyright 2022 by Caryn Rose

All rights reserved

First edition, 2022

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University of Texas Press

P.O. Box 7819

Austin, TX 78713-7819

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rose, Caryn, author.

Title: Why Patti Smith matters / Caryn Rose.

Other titles: Music matters.

Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2022. | Series: Music matters | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021048537 (print) | LCCN 2021048538 (ebook)

ISBN 978-1-4773-2011-2 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-4773-2533-9 (PDF)

ISBN 978-1-4773-2534-6 (ePub)

Subjects: LCSH: Smith, Patti. | Smith, PattiCriticism and interpretation. | Smith, PattiInfluence. | Women punk rock musiciansUnited StatesBiography. | Women poetsBiography. | Punk rock musicUnited StatesHistory and criticism. | Musicians as authors. | Musicians as artists.

Classification: LCC ML420.S672 R67 2022 (print) | LCC ML420.S672 (ebook) | DDC 782.42166092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048537

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048538

doi:10.7560/320112

For my father, Jerome M. Rose: He was a worker.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

It is December 31, 2008, and Patti Smith and her band are ringing in the New Year at the Bowery Ballroom over a three-night stand that had become a grand New York City tradition starting in 1998. Just before midnight, the band played Beneath the Southern Cross, a track from her 1996 album Gone Again, the first record of the second phase of her career. Southern Cross as recorded is a hymn, a dirge, a paean; live, it embodies those elements and then Patti transforms it into something wholly spiritual and uplifting, never failing to raise energy from the music and the notes and the keening of the vocal melody.

Tonight, following a countdown to midnight somewhere in the middlewhere friends hand out party hats, the audience blows noisemakers, and we throw confetti on ourselves and toward the band onstagethe final bridge of Southern Cross, always a wall of undulating guitars and unexpectedly melodic bass, is the backdrop for Pattis improvised recognition of the election of Barack Obama to the White House, relieved and grateful, but still cautioning us to hold the government accountable.

This is followed by a hilariously ragtag rendition of Auld Lang Syne, where Lenny Kaye, Pattis guitarist, majordomo, and earliest collaborator, tries to unite the band to sing in unison. He abandons ship when Patti vamps into What the hell / does lang syne mean? / What the hell does it / mean? Everyone, band and crowd, collapses into giggles. This is probably not what most people would expect from the Godmother of Punk but it actually encapsulates the average Patti Smith live experience perfectly: she can manifest moments of communion and rock and roll ecstasy and in the next breath, tell a joke or make a self-deprecating aside. In the process, she reminds us that our feet are very much planted on this earth.

The encore is the Four Tops Motown classic Reach Out (Ill Be There) and in the middle Patti explains, We have to leave because another band has to come on, so were not gonna leave, make you clap, and come back. We dont want to waste the time, so were going to do one more song. Hope you have a great New Year. She apologizes if she seems a little off, noting that it was very humid and hot onstage.

Any artist would be forgiven at that point for ending the show or throwing the softest of softballs to bring the night to an end. But this is Patti Smith, and in my experience, Patti Smith does not do half measures. So the band responds with a low, vibrating rumble as a backdrop to Pattis passionate invocation that 2009 will be a better year and that we will support and expect a great deal from our new president. And then drummer Jay Dee Daugherty (My only drummer, Patti reminded us when she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame the previous year) strikes the kit with his usual crisp, martial ferocity, and its Rock N Roll Nr, a song from her third album, Easter, and a fairly usual choice for this point of the show. (N.B.: This is not the point in this book where I discuss the continued existence of this song in the set; I will do that later.)

I cannot sing the words to this song, but I can revel in its punk psychedelia, jump around with my friends, and be grateful that I get to experience this in 2008, twenty-nine years after I saw her perform for the first time, twenty-nine years after Patti Smith left rock and roll to get married and raise a family, thirteen years after she returned to the family business. When she left us in 1979, I never thought we would see her again. I certainly did not think that I would watch her performing onstage at age sixty-one with the electric energy and verve of her younger years.

In the bridge, when Patti is attacking the strings of her Fender Duo-Sonic, she steps to the mic and delivers this message: I hope you have a great New Year. Work hard! Dont be afraid to work! Dont be afraid of failure. Dont be afraid if the moneys low. Dont be afraid to drink bread and water. Itll get better. Dont be afraid!

It is as though she is speaking to me directly, and I freeze where I am standing. I have recently finished a novel, gotten an agent, and am now trying to get it published. I have received rejection after rejection. My agent has told me that this is actually good news, and I should just write another. I am in fact writing another (and would then write another, and start a fourth). It is a hard and solitary pursuit, and I work 95 in one job and then write in every other moment that I can. I was at the show for the reasons I am always at a Patti Smith show. I was not, however, expecting to receive what amounted to a surprise benediction from the universe.

That is probably the moment I first started thinking about the day I would be able to write a book on Patti Smith.

Patti Smith was and still is a hero, a goddess, a field marshal, a saint. She was also just an awkward, skinny kid from South Jersey. Whether we were from New Jersey or anywhere else on the planet, we recognized ourselves in her sharp angles and her inability to fit into the normal world. But instead of slinking stealthily through it, she insisted on being seen and heard.

For those of us who felt more comfortable around books than people, Smith made literature and reading not just desirable, but also implicit. Her initial forays into public performance were based on poetry, and she idolized Arthur Rimbaud as much as she did Bob Dylan. She made Jean Genet and William Blake and Allen Ginsberg common interview topics. She saw herself as the next rung in that ladder and paid far more than lip service to that role, both lyrically and in her continued work within the form. She still reads poetry onstage today.