Patti Smith, pioneering punk diva, has always worshipped at the altar of the word, and she opens this book with a quote from her mentor and friend, the late Allen Ginsberg: "The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy." If that is true, then this volume serves as Smith's Book of Common Prayer, containing all the lyrics from her past seven albums, and spanning two and a half decades. She picks out both salient and arcane compositions and annotates them with an unstinting eye for detail and history, allowing us to stand a moment in her flat-heeled karate shoes and see what inspired her to pen these songs. Who among us suspected that 1971's "Redondo Beach," with its grizzly images of loss and suicide, was written about an argument Smith had with her sister? In addition to the thumbnail sketches and the unexpurgated journal entries, Smith has collected more than 150 photographs (some never before published) by the likes of Annie Liebovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Michael Stipe, and Linda McCartney. There is one particularly disturbing image of the singer during her painful recovery from a broken back, which she suffered as a result of a stage fall in 1977, proving that there is little that the singer has held back in her effort to communicate who she is to her fans.Why did she go to all the trouble? According to Smith, her fans had been clamoring for her to publish her lyrics for years, but until recently she didn't feel she had a substantial enough body of work. Besides, she claims that she was tired of everyone else deconstructing her songs and publishing what they thought she meant. "And they were always inaccurate," she writes. So, now, Patti Smith is finally able to set the record straight. --Jaan Uhelszki
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
To Find a Voice
The first song I remember singing is "Jesus Loves Me." I can picture myself singing it while sitting on a stoop in Chicago, waiting for the organ grinder to come up the street with his pet monkey. I can hear the songs that were in the air. "Day-O" and "Shrimp Boats" and "Heart of My Hearts." I can hear my father whistling "Deep Purple" and the voice of my mother as she sang us to sleep.
I recall my first record player, only slightly larger than a lunchbox and my two records, one red and one yellow: "Tuby the Tuba" and "Big Rock Candy Mountain." I loved watching them spin, contemplating the worlds they evoked. But the song that made the deepest impression, that produced my first visceral reaction, was sung by Little Richard.
It was Sunday. My mother and I hand in hand. She was taking me to Bible school. She had kid gloves on like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. They gave her a special air and I admired them tremendously. We passed the boys' clubhouse--two huge refrigerator boxes cut and pieced together. Ritchie Glasgow was spinning sides and what wafted from the hand-cut window (more for breathing than for seeing) stopped me dead in my tracks, causing me to let go of my mother's hand so abruptly as to remove her glove.
I didn't know what I was hearing or why I reacted so strongly. It wasn't "Shrimp Boats" or "Day-O." It was something new and though I didn't comprehend what drew me, drawn I was. Drawn into a child's excited dance. That was "Tutti Frutti," so alien, so familiar. That was Little Richard. That was for me the birth of rock and roll.
For a time we lived in Philadelphia. Everyone liked to sing and dance. My sister and I would jitterbug. People sang a cappella on the street corners. When I was nine, we moved to South Jersey. My music teacher adored opera. He would bring his albums to class and play us selections from Verdi and Puccini. I was taken with this music and I was especially moved by Maria Callas. Her emotional intensity. How she seemed to draw from every fiber to create a whisper. Her arias soared from the turntable--especially my favorite, the opera hit single, "Un bel de." For a time I dreamed of being an opera singer, but I didn't have the calling, the discipline, or the necessary physical frame. My teacher, sensing my desire, gave me a glorious task. As Manrico I sang the lullaby from Verdi's Il Trovatore. For a brief moment I was able to feel the troubadour's expansive love for his home in the mountains.
I dreamed of being a jazz singer like June Christie and Chris Connor. Of approaching songs with the lethargic charge of Billie Holiday. Of championing the downtrodden like Lotte Lenya's "Pirate Jenny." But I never dreamed of singing in a rock and roll band. They had yet to exist in my world. But my world was rapidly changing.
I was privileged to evolve during an inspired period of spiritual and cultural revolution. And the music was the revolution where all had a voice and through this voice we united. Our battlefields were Ohio, Chicago, the Fillmore. We gave new meaning to the word "soldier." We were slinging an electric guitar instead of a machine gun.
I broke from the confines of a rural existence. Farewell the factory, square dance hall, the withering orchards. I headed for New York City. I had in mind to become a painter and through that pursuit I found my beat and the root of my voice. Standing before large sheets of paper tacked to a wall, frustrated with the image I'd draw words instead--rhythms that ran off the page onto the plaster. Writing lyrics evolved from the physical act of drawing words. Later, refining this process led to performance.
In 1969 I moved to the Chelsea Hotel with Robert Mapplethorpe. By then I had abandoned hope of becoming a painter. I was offered work in underground theater. It was too confining. I longed to spar with the people, to make contact. Robert encouraged me to perform my poetry. I attended readings but found them even more confining than theater. Bob Neuwirth suggested I put my lyric style to music and Sam Shepard used two pieces in his play Mad Dog Blues.
On February 10, 1971, I gave my first poetry reading, opening for Gerard Malanga at St. Mark's Church on the Bowery. In desiring to project a raw energy, I recruited Lenny Kaye. We climaxed the reading with his sonic interpretation of a stock car race with electric guitar while I read "Ballad of a Bad Boy." It seemed to have a negative effect. I took that as a positive sign.
In the next few years I took to studying Hank Williams, got me a Bob Dylan songbook, banged away on an old thirties Gibson. I worked in a bookstore. I drew. I modeled for Robert. Scrawled in my notebooks. I wandered through the debris of the sixties. So much joy yet malcontent. So many voices raised, then snuffed. My generation's heritage seemed to be in jeopardy.
These things were on my mind: the course of the artist, the course of freedom redefined, the re-creation of space, the emergence of new voices.
And these things I came to express--albeit somewhat awkwardly--through the form of rock and roll. Perhaps I have been none but a scrappy pawn, but I am nonetheless grateful for the moves I came to make.
And salute all who helped me make them.
