“I Certainly Didn’t Want to Go to Heaven if There Was No Art In Heaven.”
Patti Smith: Godmother of Punk
I didn’t immediately “get” Patti Smith.
Her only commercial hit was “Because the Night,” which I didn’t like when it came out in 1978 and still don’t like. Ok, so crucify me, but I know the back story, and I still think it’s terrible. I did know college classmates who had her albums, so I probably heard other stuff by her, but mainly through the haze of party noise and illicit substances.
It wasn’t until decades later that I circled back and took the opportunity to listen to Smith’s 1975 album “Horses.” It was like being hit by a bomb. What had I missed?
Smith is now revered as one of our time's major poets, songwriters, and performance artists. She is known as the Godmother of Punk and continues to influence musicians, artists, and writers in many genres.
She started off with a pretty unexceptional suburban childhood. However, she recalls it as haunted by a feeling of being a misfit, even an alien, with a case of what we now might call gender dysphoria. She loved art, music, and poetry but had few outlets for her interests. To make things worse, her parents’ religious beliefs forbade artistic expression as the Devil’s work.
At 20, she became pregnant (she gave the baby up for adoption) and then tried a short foray into college life. After she dropped out and moved to New York, she could finally pursue her interests.
Ironically, her initial mission was “not to be an artist, but an artist’s mistress,” i.e., a muse. She had relationships with many of the leading lights of the art, music, and theatre world, including Robert Mapplethorpe, Sam Shephard, and Allen Lanier, and even married one of them (Fred Smith of the band MC5, with whom she had her two children).
By their telling, she did indeed inspire all of them. After the relationships ended, most of these men remained her friends and frequent collaborators. Most importantly, they all encouraged her and pushed her to do stuff under her own name; some even produced some of her work.
Smith ended up recording and releasing over a dozen albums to date. She’s also published some thirty books and received numerous honors and inclusions in various “best of” lists.
The irony of all the establishment accolades is that she was, and remains, about as anti-establishment as you can get.
Most of my writing about women in popular music has focused on those who broke traditional role boundaries by producing, arranging, playing instruments, and managing their careers. Smith is a bit of an odd case because while she did all of those things (except playing instruments), it was almost reluctantly. Yet she ended up in charge.
This is the title track from Patti Smith’s first album, “Horses.” Even then, the world was being taken over by three-minute, content-free songs, so it must have taken courage to put out something like this. Today, it’s hard to imagine anyone doing anything like it.
Rock ‘n Roll N*****
This has always been a “difficult” song, to say the least. Is it racist? Anti-racist? Is this appropriation or a statement of solidarity? It continues to be debated.
Unlike Lennon and Ono’s “Woman is the n***** of the world,” this song takes a first-person viewpoint, making it all the more difficult to parse. Smith continues to perform it as an encore to most of her shows. For a deeper discussion, see the Waterman reference below.
Note: The YouTube clip for this song is available by clicking here.
Sources:
Bockris and Bayley, “Patti Smith, Unauthorized Biography”
https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/DM813EFRYcoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA19
Waterman, 2008 “A Few Observations on Patti Smith’s ‘Rock ‘n Roll N*****’”
http://www.greatwhatsit.com/archives/2336
Sinagra, 2005, “Celebrating ‘Horses,’” New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/arts/music/celebrating-horses-and-everything-after.html
Wikipedia entries on Patti Smith, Sam Shephard, “Horses.”
