Portrait Of The Artist

The intersection of 53rd Street and 3rd Avenue lies just a couple of blocks from the plush record company offices where Patti Smith is conducting a roundtable interview on this bright spring day. Once, this stretch was notorious as a cruising spot for hustlers. The Ramones immortalized it in the song ‘53rd and 3rd’, allegedly written about Dee Dee Ramone’s unsuccessful stint as a part-time prostitute (a song made that much more harrowing by the fact that Dee Dee sings the bridge in his off-tune caterwaul).

But that was then—the early 1970s in fact—and times have changed. The gay bars on 53rd were flattened to make way for lustrous skyscrapers. Times Square traded peep shows and adult movie theatres for souvenir stores and busloads of tourists. The Bowery lost most of its bums. The New York that Patti Smith moved to in 1967 at the age of twenty is gone.
“It’s not the city that I came to, where you could get a little bookstore job and live in a crappy apartment,” she reflects. “Now you can still live in a crappy apartment but it costs thousands of dollars. But there are certain things I just love about New York. The light at twilight gets sort of this pink colour. I love the East Village and going to Tompkins Square Park.”
In her memoir, Just Kids, winner of the 2010 National Book Award, Patti Smith details the gritty, sleazy, oddly benevolent New York of the late ’60s and ’70s, her life-changing relationship with artist and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and her own evolution into a poet, artist, and rock star — all with astonishing candour and insight. Just Kids is a tender, beautiful book but not a sentimental one. Nor is she unduly nostalgic now about an era that many view as halcyon days in New York’s art and
music scene.
And Patti Smith was not just there, she was there—sharing a room at the Chelsea Hotel with Mapplethorpe, watching Kris Kristofferson play ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ to Janis Joplin, getting hit on by Allen Ginsberg (under the impression she was a cute young boy), making the scene at Max’s Kansas City and the Factory. And yet, as she says, “I didn’t come to New York City because it was the coolest city on earth. I came to New York because it was near and I could get a job… When we started building CBGB’s as a place to play, it’s because there was no place to play for people like us. There was no place in New York City in 1973 for a poet, and a couple improvising with a guitar player and a piano player. You make it. I wasn’t in New York City living some hipster dream. When I first came Robert and I were living in Brooklyn, we never went anywhere, we didn’t have anything, we hardly ate, we lived in a shitty little apartment, and it could have been anywhere in
the world.”

In a 1999 interview with Peter Murphy in Hot Press, Michael Stipe—long one of Patti’s most vocal admirers—suggested that “She’s really a very different person from her work, and yet both inform the other,” and that talking to her might be “not at all what you would expect.” (Stipe has a tendency to get dramatic where Patti is concerned—elsewhere, he famously proclaimed that hearing Horses for the first time at the age of fifteen “tore my limbs off and put them back on in a whole different order. It was like, ‘Shit! Yeah! Oh my God!’ Then, I threw up.”)
But as far as meeting Patti Smith goes, he had a point. The iconic images that are most people’s introduction to her — especially Mapplethorpe’s black-and-white portraits — convey an uncompromising aloofness that’s alluring and not a little formidable. In person, however, she is forthright, approachable, and sincere, not to mention scrupulously fair — all four journalists present get to ask the same number of questions and she is articulate and open whether the topic is Russian art, detective novels, or good coffee.
At 65, Patti Smith radiates the kind of energy that leaves you both envious and inspired. Everything she does she does with passion, especially when it comes to admiring other artists. But while many of her heroes lived fast, doomed lives, she’s generally eschewed self-destructive behaviour herself. It’s not purely good luck that she’s still here, when so many of the contemporaries looming large in Just Kids
are not.
“A lot of people think that because I admire a lot of great artists or musicians who had a self-destructive bent that I romanticize self-destruction — I don’t at all,” she observes.
Likely to be one of the most talked-about songs on her new album, Banga, ‘This is the Girl’ is, in her words, a “pretty little song” about Amy Winehouse – but it’s the artist, not the tragic flaw, that always attracts her.
“I really admired Amy as a singer. That girl was amazing. She had sophistication, and instinct, and her voice was spectacular but so was her comprehension and her authenticity. She sang songs from my generation, R&B songs, and jazz and doo-wop with no retro sound and no six degrees of separation. She really comprehended this music and delivered something extra, some modern spin.
“But for myself… I’m a very optimistic person. I always wanted to be an artist; I always was just enthralled by the things, the possibilities in life — books and art and architecture and travel and love. There’s so much out there. And also I was a very sickly child, and my mother had to nurse me through everything from tuberculosis to scarlet fever and every type of mumps and measles and influenza. By the time I was a teenager, I just was happy to be alive. And I certainly wasn’t going to destroy what my mother had spent almost two decades preserving.
“I never really developed any vices,” she adds. “I’m very grateful to have the imagination I have and the children that I have. I ain’t going nowhere.”
While it’s a challenge to find a successful female musician who doesn’t cite her as an influence — Carrie Brownstein, Shirley Manson, Courtney Love among them — what’s most liberating about Patti Smith
is not that she’s a powerful female presence but
that her presence and power seem to transcend gender altogether.
“I’ve never been concerned about my gender,” she insists. “Never, since I was a child. And because I was never worried about it I haven’t been fettered about it, and maybe it gives me an air of freedom.
“There is sometimes a cross to that. Sometimes the guys that you like aren’t as attracted to that type of girl — you’ll lose out to a different type of girl. But I am the way that I am. My work is for all people, my work is not gender specific. When people want to paint me or get me in a corner, I always tell them as a mother, I have a son and a daughter, I’m into human rights, my son’s rights, my daughter’s rights, and in terms of people’s sexual or religious persuasion,
if they’re good people I don’t care what choices
people make.”
Nor has she ever shown much interest in commercial success, even over the course of eleven studio albums, several books of poetry and prose, and photography and art exhibits that have criss-crossed the globe. In her earliest days as a performer, in poetry readings at the Church of St. Mark’s, accompanied by Lenny Kaye on guitar (still her guitarist today), it was connection and impact she sought rather than fame.
“I don’t work really hard on getting noticed. There’s a difference between working really hard on a career and working really hard on being a celebrity. It’s a different kind of work, and I don’t want to do that work. I don’t want to sit in a chair and have someone do my hair and makeup for four hours and then put on some outfit that takes three people to put on me.
“People make their own choices. Nobody has to do anything. People used to say, you have to do this! Or you have to put this record out then, or you have to take ‘pissing’ off that song. No, I don’t, it’s not in the Constitution. I don’t have to. And they say well, if you don’t you’ll sell a lot less records, or you’ll be banned in the South. Okay.”

The unwillingness to go along with everybody else’s plans for her career was most in evidence when she withdrew from touring and performing in 1978 and moved to outer Detroit with Fred “Sonic” Smith, former guitarist for the MC5. Her joke that she married him only so that she wouldn’t have to change her name did nothing to appease fans, horrified by the notion of the Poetess of Punk moving to the suburbs to raise two children.
She is uncharacteristically unapologetic about that semi-retirement and says simply, “I was with my husband, I raised my children, so it was a different kind of stimuli, but I wrote quite a bit. I was happy there. I loved my family.”
Fred’s death in 1994 left her adrift. It was friends and a need to provide for her children that brought her back — to performing and recording, and eventually to New York. First came Twelve, an album of covers ranging from unsurprising choices (‘Gimme Shelter’) to unexpected ones (‘Smells like Teen Spirit’). Banga is her first album of original material since 1994’s Trampin’ and it’s a richly melodic, invigorating collection. The title, she explains, comes from the book The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov — Banga is the faithful dog who sits by the side of Pontius Pilate while he waits for 2,000 years for a chance to ask forgiveness of Jesus.
“Finally he goes off to talk to Jesus and Banga trots by him. I thought, in all of literature, was there ever a dog more loving and loyal than to sit quietly for 2,000 years? He wasn’t running all over heaven looking for dog bones, he was there with his master. And I thought, I’m gonna write that dog a song.”
The song ‘Banga’ also features Johnny Depp — far more of Depp than Smith originally bargained for.
“I got the idea for ‘Banga’ in my head and I told Johnny, and I said I don’t want to forget this. He records a lot, and he had a little recording set up, so he recorded me singing. The first minute I was just singing a cappella, so Johnny said he would send it to me so I wouldn’t forget. So I’m waiting and waiting and he didn’t send it, and I says to Johnny, where’s ‘Banga’? And he says ‘oh, you’ll get it’. And then I got it and he’d put drums, guitars, everything. So in the recording studio the band listened to Johnny’s track and then came in on the chorus.”
She also wrote another album track, ‘Nine’, especially for Depp.
“I lost my brother in 1995 and I was very close to him. Johnny’s really like having another brother. He’s a wonderful person. And it was his birthday right around the same time and so I wrote the song for him.”
Patti’s son and daughter both feature heavily on Banga. Jackson plays guitar and, on the title track, also contributes some extremely convincing barking sound effects. “Jackson is married to Meg White,” she explains. “The two of them have five dogs and Jackson can imitate all of them.”
Jackson and Jesse are also prominent on the final track, a lovely, stripped-down version of ‘After the Goldrush’. Were her children at all apprehensive about recording with her?
She laughs. “My children are both more talented than I am, they’re true musicians. My son is a master guitar player, my daughter composes and plays beautiful piano. They both play great on ‘Tarkovsky’. It’s an improvisation. Jesse, she’s holding those chords down like McCoy Tyner, Jackson does all these jazz runs. Jackson plays a beautiful, very emotional solo on ‘Maria’, and plays fantastic guitar throughout the whole record. They’re not intimidated by their mom at all, believe me.”
What specifically drew her to ‘After the Goldrush’?
“The last song on the album was ‘Constantine’s Dream’ — a very dark apocalyptic vision. Sort of environmental apocalypse. I didn’t want to end an album like that. I wanted to write one more little song that was like a breath of spring or the dawn. And I was just sitting in a café, having coffee, and ‘After the Goldrush’ came on, and I realized that the first two verses said everything I wanted to say in this last little song. And I thought well, Neil has already said it, and I didn’t think I could say it any better. But I wanted to do it very clean. It’s just a simple live performance. It’s really just to get those words across.”

Banga was recorded at the legendary Electric Lady Studios in New York, the studio where she recorded Horses in 1975. It was there too, in 1970, that she met Jimi Hendrix for the last time. She had been invited to a party celebrating the studio opening but was sitting outside, trying to steel her courage before entering. By chance, Jimi passed her on the stairs. As she recounts in Just Kids, “When I told him I was too chicken to go in, he laughed softly and said that contrary to what people might think, he was shy, and parties made him nervous.”
The album reunites the musicians who have formed the nucleus of Smith’s group for many years — Tony Shanahan, Jay Dee Dougherty, and Lenny Kaye. “I’m really lucky because Tony has been playing with us since ’95 and I’ve been working with Lenny since ’71 and Jay since ’75 so, that’s a Banga band. A lot of loyalty between those fellas.”
Also featured on guitar is the legendary Tom Verlaine (ex-Television), who she can’t praise
highly enough.
“He’s just amazing. To be in a studio with him and just watch him…cause we’re all in the studio and there’s all these glass windows and we have a small breakdown and he does all of this interesting rhythm structure… And my band is such a great improvisational band so they’re just following along and then all of a sudden he makes another breakdown and goes into this other guitar figure that’s so vintage Tom. For me the record’s worth getting just to hear Tom.”
What does she get from recording that she doesn’t get from drawing or writing?
“Two things. One is the camaraderie aspect of it. I work solitary, when I draw or paint or take photographs, all of these are solitary endeavors that require my solitude and contemplation. But making a record is a collaborative experience — you have your technicians and musicians, the people that you write songs with. It has its trials and tribulations but
it’s fun.
“The main thing, though… Making records is one of the most direct ways to reach the world. To reach the people. Obviously I’m not a pop star, I don’t sell millions of records, but the potential is there to reach a lot of people, and that’s exciting politically, and it’s exciting artistically, and just humanistically.”
It’s evident that she still believes “people have the power.” And frankly, when she says it, you can’t help wanting to believe it.
“The arts is the spiritual core of our culture…the arts are always important, potentially they can always inspire, incite people, help focus people. But I think in the end, the people make change. Artists don’t make change. Artists can inspire the people. In these times when globally we have so much corruption, such powerful governments, powerful corporations, what we need is to shake all of this up. And how we’re going to shake it up is by
our numbers.
“It’s the one thing that governments and corporations fear,” she continues. “They don’t fear anything else; they have such hubris and such power. The only thing they fear is our numbers. And if we as a people figure out, how, through technology, whatever, to unite for global strikes — and I’m talking about millions of people, I’m talking about the Gandhi thing, just globally going on strike, not buying their products, not going to work. I mean, there are things that people could do by the millions. Short of stopping the planet, we have a lot of power, we just don’t use it.”

Though the album and accompanying world tour (which will include a stop at the Electric Picnic) are taking most of her attention for now, she is still writing every day. Among her projects is a follow-up of sorts to Just Kids.
“When I was working on the book for Robert, which Robert asked me to do, I wrote a lot more material than I needed because I wanted to keep the book close to Robert and because that is the book he asked me to write: our story. But there are a lot of other things, especially musically, that were happening at the same time. And as I’ve travelled the book, so many people have asked me the same questions or wanted to know about the same type of things – about my husband or how songs were written. So if I can find an organic way to present all of the answers in a similar format, then I will. I’m working on it.”
More surprising, though also welcome, is confirmation of the rumor that she’s working on a detective novel.
“I just once mentioned it casually, you know, I didn’t think anybody would care! But I’ve been working on it now for a few years. I’ve so many disciplines, I gotta work at my pace. But my detective is moving along. I hope people won’t be disappointed because my detective is like me, he lives in his head a lot. He’s not an action hero. He’s sort of like a Camus-style detective. Things move a little slow in his world.
“I can see you’re really excited by this!” she adds in reaction to my enthusiasm. I can’t help it, a detective novel written by Patti Smith just sounds like the kind of book I want to read.
“I love detective stories. Right now I’m in a [Haruki] Murakami period. Murakami is a good writer to read when you can’t find a detective but you want to be in some strange world that is sort of a mindfuck.”
The allotted hour is winding down and Patti is asked to address her status as a rock icon and anointed godmother of punk.
“I used to be the queen of punk. Now I’m the grandmother or godmother.” She gives a ‘whatever’ shrug. “I don’t even know what my status is. Status is an illusion. You can seem really big for a while, and then you walk out the next day and nobody cares. I’ve been on the outs, and then a fashion icon, and then really thought of as out of touch. If you live long enough, you’ll be in and out so many times.
“What I wanted, and still want, is to do great work. It wouldn’t mean anything to me to sell a million records that sucked and had nothing to offer the people. Or to make a huge amount of money and then compromise myself. That all falls away. The only thing that endures is great work, and that’s worth struggling for.”
Before we leave, she signs a copy of her book Woolgathering for me. She pauses midway through writing and then continues before handing it back with a grin. I look to see that she’s written. “My detective sends love.”
Simple, sweet, and generous. Not what I would once have expected. But now I know better.

Banga is out now on Columbia Records.