WEBVTT - MFM Presents… Disgraceland 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:03.119 Hello, We're here to tell you if you haven't already 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:07.240 heard that Jake Brennan's award winning podcast, Disgraceland is now 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:08.920 on the Exactly Right Network. 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:12.280 Disgraceland's a true crime music podcast that dives into the 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:14.720 real stories behind the dark side of the music business. 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:16.200 And if you're new to the show, we're here to 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:19.200 introduce you by sharing one of our favorite episodes, covering 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:20.880 the legendary Patti Smith. 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:23.160 If you know Patty Smith, you know that she rose 0:00:23.200 --> 0:00:25.840 to rock fame against the backdrop of seventies New York 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:28.240 City when crime was at an all time high and 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:31.600 serial killers like the Son of Sam were terrorizing everyone. 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:34.760 So please enjoy this episode of Disgraceland, and once you're done, 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:36.800 head to their feed to like and follow the show. 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:39.920 Please and new episodes of Disgraceland drop every Tuesday, with 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:42.800 bonus episodes on Thursday and Rewind's on Sunday. 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:46.080 Listen to Disgraceland on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:48.479 wherever you get your podcasts, and make sure to leave 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:49.320 a rating or review. 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:51.640 It really helps enjoy Disgraceland. 0:00:52.120 --> 0:01:10.240 Goodbye. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The story 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:14.680 about Patty Smith is steeped in true crime, everything from 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:18.319 the criminal influence of her artistic heroes Jean Jeanet and 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:21.520 William S. Burrows, to the impression made upon her from 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:25.120 her mother's obsession with America's first true crime of the century, 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:29.120 the Lindberg kidnapping, to the influence of the Manson murders 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:32.119 in New York City's forty four caliber killings that Patty 0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:35.360 lived through in late seventies New York, to the crime 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:39.200 and grime of Central Park, the Chelsea Hotel in forty 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:42.560 second Street, rape and murder, all of it just to 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:47.480 shot away, as they say. But Patti Smith survived all 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:51.160 of it to become one of the last centuries great artists, 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:56.320 a great musician, someone who made great music. Unlike that 0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:58.960 music I played for you at the top of the show. 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:02.840 That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:08.960 my melotron called Falling from Chelsea MK. Two. I played 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:11.680 you that loop because I can't afford the rights to 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:15.679 one Bad Apple by the Osmonds. And why would I 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:19.959 play you that specific slice of plastic sibling cheese? Could 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:24.200 I afford it? Because that was the number one song 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:28.919 in America on February tenth, nineteen seventy one, And that 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:31.960 was the day that Patti Smith first took the stage 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:36.519 with more than just words, with a guitarist at her side, 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:40.639 and began building a previously unimagined bridge between the art 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:44.200 world and rock and roll. And she did it for 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:45.040 the criminals. 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:53.240 On this episode, Junkies, Murderers, poets, playwrights, death, destruction, the 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:57.520 danger of pursuing one's artistic calling, and how true crime 0:02:57.680 --> 0:02:59.920 helped Patty Smith survive at all. 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:02.280 I'm Jake Brennan. 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:21.040 This is Disgraceland. 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.760 Though Patty Smith is known as the godmother of Ponkin 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:30.480 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:34.320 in two thousand and seven, She's much more than just 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:39.400 an iconic rock star. She's a literary luminary, a National 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:43.480 Book Award winner, and the recipient of the Penn Literary 0:03:43.520 --> 0:03:47.200 Service Award. She's been honored by the French Ministry of 0:03:47.240 --> 0:03:51.680 Culture and the Municipal Arts Society of New York, an 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:56.080 organization that in twenty twenty four awarded Patty Smith with 0:03:56.200 --> 0:04:01.200 their highest honor, the Jacqueline Kennedy on Nassis Medal. She's 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:04.560 met the Pope She accepted a Nobel Prize on behalf 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:07.600 of and at the request of, none other than Bob Dylan, 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:11.680 and her name rings true throughout the same universities and 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:16.520 museums that teach and celebrate the author's poets and artists 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:20.400 Louisa may Alcott, Arthur Rimbau, and Fried de Callo, to 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:24.360 name a few that Patti Smith has drawn inspiration from 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:28.800 throughout her life. To dismiss Patty Smith as merely a 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:32.880 rock star is like calling Steve Jobs a computer salesman. 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:37.960 She is not just a musician. She's what I refer 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:42.520 to as the high priestess of art, someone who holds 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:47.279 rare dual citizenship in the gritty origins of punk and 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:52.160 in the highest echelons of New York and European society. 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:59.360 Catholic priests speak of being called to the priesthood that 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.880 moment when to hear God's voice imploring them to serve Him, 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:08.760 to dedicate their lives to him, to sacrifice everything in 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:13.720 his name. Many of them faced not just persecution, but 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:18.400 even death in pursuit of their calling. Jesus' apostle Peter 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:25.400 was crucified upside down. Bartholomew, another apostle was skinned alive, 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:31.919 tortured over days, and eventually decapitated. Deacon Lawrence of Rome 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:35.320 in the year two fifty eight, a d was roasted 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:39.480 to death over an open fire. In seventeen ninety two, 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:43.680 during the French Revolution, over two hundred priests were massacred 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:49.840 by angry mobs in under forty eight hours. Spanish Clarician priests, 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:55.080 Salvadoran Jesuits, Mexican seminary students, and countless others who were 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:59.680 once called have been martyred and suffered horrific deaths for 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:06.279 they're calling. But Patti Smith, who once famously saying Jesus 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:10.480 died for somebody's sins but not mine, was no murdyr. 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:16.960 She was and is an artist, and similar to priests, 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:23.120 artists here recalling they must also navigate danger, violence, and 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:28.040 potential death murder, even in pursuit of their art. So 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:32.760 when and where was Patti Smith, the high Priestess of 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:37.600 art called to become an artist? And what kind of danger, violence, 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:41.480 and true crime did she have to escape to become 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:46.960 the artist we all know her to be. As a 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:50.160 little girl in suburban New Jersey in the nineteen fifties, 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:55.400 the first stories Patti Smith heard were dark. The original 0:06:55.400 --> 0:06:58.520 Brother's Grim collection of children's fairy tales from the eighteen 0:06:58.600 --> 0:07:02.440 hundreds spoke of a stepmother in the Juniper Tree story 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:06.400 who decapitated her step son and cooked his flesh in 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:11.000 a soup to serve to the boy's unsuspecting father. In 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:16.679 the original version of Cinderella entitled Askinputul, one stepsister uses 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:19.720 a knife to cut off her toes, and another hacks 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:23.200 off the heel of her foot. Yet these stories were 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:26.400 nothing compared to what Patty later read in the Bible, 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:32.840 specifically in the Old Testament, where in Judges nineteen, one 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:36.800 woman is severed into twelve different pieces, each given to 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:41.720 a different tribe of Israel. Her sin none. She was 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:46.440 offered up to protect the crimes of a rapist. In 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:52.480 Judges four, Yale offers an unsuspecting enemy general hospitality, but 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:56.440 when the general falls asleep, Yale takes a spike and 0:07:56.640 --> 0:08:00.800 hammers it through his skull. In King's n Eyes, Queen 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:05.120 Jezebel's eunuchs throw her from a window, where she's then 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:10.680 trampled to death by horses, horses, horses and horse, and 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:15.880 later on as a teenager, rape and murder were more 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:22.600 than just shot away. All of these stories were right there, 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:25.640 out in the open, in Patti Smith's Bible, and in 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:29.240 her history books, and in the museums she visited as 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:37.040 a child. If the executioner was feeling merciful, he'd build 0:08:37.080 --> 0:08:40.400 the pire low to the ground to ensure a quick death. 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:45.440 But this executioner was not feeling merciful. He built the 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:49.320 pire extra high so that Joan of Arc would be 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:54.760 guaranteed a prolonged and painful death. And that's exactly what happened. 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:59.240 The flames took their time, and the ancient Greeks used 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:03.040 funeral pyre to honor their departed emperors and heroes. The 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:07.240 Romans too, not the English. When it came to Joan 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:12.440 of Arc. They had something else in mind, revenge, public disgrace, 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:18.199 maximum pain. In the eyes of the English dominated Ecclesiastical 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:21.960 Tribunal of fourteen thirty one, nineteen year old Joan of 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:26.480 Arc was a heretic. She claimed she'd been called by 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:30.280 a divine voice. She cut her hair, she dressed like 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:33.400 a boy. She made a mockery of modern authority in 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:37.559 social norms, and in the process inspired and uprising that 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:41.040 turned the tide of the hundreds years War, driving the 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:46.520 English out of France, and for those perceived sins, she 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:49.520 was now roped to a stake in Market Square in 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:53.000 the city of Ruan high above a gritted stack of 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:57.920 dry wood built to burn slow and fierce, with its 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:01.360 blue flames snapping at the ski of her feet, and 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:06.120 black smoke corroding her lungs, white hot pain piercing every 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:09.760 cell in her body. The blaze rose up over her legs, 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:13.280 her midriff, and no one heard her scream and no 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:17.320 one saw her cry when the inferno engulfed her completely. 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:23.280 Soon enough, Joan of Arc was gone, but embodied only 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:28.520 another martyr, this one officially executed for the crimes of 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:33.240 heresy and cross dressing, but whose life's work would inspire 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:40.800 generations and whose name would forever ring true. In nineteen 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:45.520 sixty six, herself just nineteen years old, Patti Smith stood 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:48.960 outside on the streets of Philadelphia, across from the Museum 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:52.240 of Modern Art, about five miles from the more modern 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:55.360 Market Square, and looked up at a statue of Joan 0:10:55.400 --> 0:11:00.000 of Arc, Emmanuel Fremier's gilded bronze depiction of the young 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:04.760 martyr cast a piercing impression upon young Patty. Here was 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:08.720 this woman her own age, who gave everything for what 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:13.040 she believes. It was then that Patty knew she would 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:16.160 have to do the same. It was then that Patty 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:20.560 Smith heard her calling in the shadows of martyrs and museums, 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:26.439 to become an artist. The stakes of failing to fulfill 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:29.520 her life's goal were, as they are for most teenagers, 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:34.880 dramatic and intense. A life as anything but an artist, 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:39.400 a life as something else in suburban New Jersey, would 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:44.319 be its own kind of death. But art was dangerous, 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:48.240 and not in the fairy tale Old Testament, musty historical 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:51.520 kind of way, but in a real and scary kind 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:57.000 of way. One of Patty's favorite novelists, Jean Jeannet, lived 0:11:57.040 --> 0:12:01.440 in squalor, forced into a life of crime, nearly imprisoned 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:05.280 for life. One of her favorite musicians, the jazz singer 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:10.400 Billie Holiday, died addicted to heroin. In her final living moments, 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.360 she was handcuffed to her bed by federal agents and 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:18.360 placed under arrest for narcotics possession. One of Patty's favorite painters, 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:23.040 Jackson Pollock, was driven to alcoholism and eventually off the road. 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:26.880 In his oldsmobile where he flipped his car, crushed his skull, 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:30.960 and decapitated one of his passengers. And these were just 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:34.720 the artists that Patty knew about. Thanks to her true 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:39.079 crime obsessed mother, Patty Smith also knew about the dangers 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:46.640 of the world right outside her suburban window. Nineteen thirty two, 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:50.680 Patti Smith's mother was traumatized by events that were unfolding 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:53.640 over the radio airwaves, just as the rest of the 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:58.440 nation was One of America's most famous sons, the Aviator 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:01.920 Charles Lindberg, was the victim of what had quickly become 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:07.319 America's most famous crime. Lindberg's twenty month old son had 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:10.960 been kidnapped. The kidnapper used the latter to creep into 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:14.240 the second story nursery of the Limburg's New Jersey estate. 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:18.760 Within twenty four hours of the abduction, the crime was 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:24.000 a national sensation. By daybreak, over one hundred reporters and 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:28.439 photographers had breached the gates of the estate and contaminated 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:33.120 the crime scene. Notorious mafioso Al Capone issued a statement 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:36.200 from a Chicago jail cell offering a reward for the 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:39.160 return of the baby, and before the night of the 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:43.400 crime had ended, newswires like the Associated Press were deluged 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:47.720 with bulletins, transmitting over fifty thousand words in just hours. 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:52.600 Radio stations across the country took the unprecedented step of 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:57.720 canceling all programming to issue a coordinated bulletin describing the 0:13:57.840 --> 0:14:04.720 child's appearance, in creating a complete national radio blackout. And 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:08.280 it was through the radio that Patty Smith's mother became 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:12.240 transfixed with the early details of the crime, as well 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:17.400 as the saga's conclusion. Ten weeks after the kidnapping, the 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:21.680 badly decomposed body of Charles Lindbergh's baby was found by 0:14:21.680 --> 0:14:24.200 a truck driver relieving himself on the side of a 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:29.160 New Jersey highway. The infant's corpse had been partially scavenged 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:33.640 by animals. Just like Jezebel and the horses, and like 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:37.600 Pollock and the crushed skull, like Yale's enemy a hole 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:41.320 through the head, and like Joan of Arc, the Lindbergh 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:46.760 Baby would not soon be forgotten. Young Patty Smith was 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:50.880 transfixed by her mother's retelling of this story. She never 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:54.280 forgot it, just like she never forgot the Brother's Grim 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:58.640 or the Old Testament, where Jean, Billy Jackson or Joan, 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:02.920 and she took was that life was dangerous, and so 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:07.720 too the pursuit of art was dangerous, and in nineteen 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:12.360 sixty seven, the only place to really pursue art was 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:46.160 in America's most dangerous place, New York City. The whispers 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:49.280 Patty Smith heard at night in Central Park where the 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:53.840 stuff of terror. The park was more than a bucolic 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:59.200 playground for New Yorkers to laze away their afternoons. Each 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:03.520 night it became a den of violent criminals, thieves, rapists, 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:07.880 and murderers, all prowling about for the ruination of souls. 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:13.160 Central Park was also Patti Smith's sometime bedroom. It was 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:15.920 where she'd lie down during that first summer when she 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:19.200 arrived in the city. On those nights when she couldn't 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:21.720 find a welcoming doorway in which to lay her head, 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:28.640 Central Park was where she slept. And in nineteen sixty seven, 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:32.680 Central Park was also the place where a fifteen year 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:36.880 old girl was brutally raped and her friend stomped so 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:41.320 severely that he was left in critical condition. It was, 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:45.040 in the mid nineteen sixties a place where nearly one 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:50.320 thousand felonies were committed on average each year in Central 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:53.560 Park during the Summer of Love. For all the groups 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:57.200 of young hippies strewn about on blankets with acoustic guitars 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:00.000 and flowers in their hair, there were just as many 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:04.960 any self described wolf packs, hordes of young neighborhood delinquents 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:08.520 swarming the park in shifts to rob in main not 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:12.120 just the hippies, but the homosexuals cruising the park so 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:19.080 called predatory zones. Patti Smith may have slept in Central Park, 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:21.879 but it was in another park where she met the 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:27.120 first great love of her life, Robert Maplethorpe. She knew 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:30.280 him from the bookstore where she'd taken a job. He 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:33.600 was a customer, and she was in Tompkins Square Park 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:36.760 on a date with an older man, a man who 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:39.000 could afford to buy her a meal that she could 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:42.639 not afford to buy herself. But in New York City, 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:47.360 nothing's free, So just before the man attempted to collect 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:52.200 his payment sexually, Patti Smith recognized the good looking boy 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:54.960 from the bookstore and ran to him in the park, 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:59.240 introducing him on the spot to a predatory lunch date 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:04.080 as her boyfriend. Robert Maplethorpe, who was high on LSD 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:07.399 at the time, went along with the ruse, which he 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:13.120 no doubt thought was hilarious. Robert found Patty Lee Smith 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:17.320 to be not only funny, but also sexy, intelligent, creative, 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:21.040 a perfect partner in crime for his own first foray 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:24.840 into New York City. They shared the same goal to 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:28.879 become artists. They weren't sure what kinds of artists they 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:32.280 wanted to become, just that they were most certainly destined 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:35.040 to create things that would change the world of culture 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:39.359 and art as they knew it. In their first apartment together, 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:42.159 the one in Brooklyn where they had to scrub the 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:46.119 wall of the splattered blood and psychotic scribblings from the 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:52.359 previous tenant, they painted, created drawings and collages, and wrote. 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:55.800 They read the great works of the great writers, those 0:18:55.880 --> 0:19:01.080 who were also criminals, not just Jean Jeanne, but oh 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:05.639 Henry and William S Burrows, Burrows who shot and killed 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:08.600 his wife in a game of William Tell and got 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:11.920 away with it. And they studied to Cooney and Rivera, 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:16.080 Warhol and Picasso, and prayed at the altar of Coltrane, 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:20.359 sympathized with those devils the rolling Stones, and filled in 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:24.880 the ooral gaps with the Cherells and Dylan, Bob not Thomas. 0:19:26.119 --> 0:19:29.359 They had little food, even less money, and they stole 0:19:29.400 --> 0:19:32.840 when they had to, but they never begged. What they 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:38.280 did have was desire, and that desire gave way to faith, 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:43.159 and faith to creation, and soon the artistic callings of 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:48.600 each would bear fruit. Robert with photography and Patty with words. 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:54.840 A new apartment, this one in Manhattan, signified progress, with 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:57.960 the chalk outline of the dead body outside the front 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:02.679 door precipitated another move to a less dangerous neighborhood, so 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:09.800 further uptown they went to the Chelsea Hotel. These days, 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:13.040 the Chelsea Hotel on West twenty third Street, like most 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:17.399 of Manhattan, is a glitzy, gentrified incarnation of what it 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:23.840 once was, a dangerous rooming house for bohemian vagabonds. In 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:28.199 nineteen sixty nine, the Chelsea was part artist colony, in 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:32.440 part central command for the drug fueled late sixties counterculture, 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:36.399 housing and hosting the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:40.480 in the Velvet undergrounds. Nico Salvador Dali stayed at the 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:43.440 Chelsea when there was no room at the Saint Regis 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:47.639 Alan Ginsburg cruised the lobby for dates, even taking Patty 0:20:47.720 --> 0:20:50.920 to lunch one day, mistaking her with her short crop 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:53.879 Joan of arc Hare to be a young pretty boy. 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:58.760 Dylan died at the Chelsea Thomas not Bob, while the 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:01.600 poet fell into a comb in Room two five after 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:05.600 downing eighteen straight whiskies before he was carried off to 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:10.280 be pronounced dead at Saint Vincent's. The Andy Warhol superstar 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:13.320 Evie Cedric set her room at the Chelsea on fire 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:16.760 while high on barbituates. She had to be rescued from 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:19.879 room one oh five, where Warhol had shot part of 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:24.840 his acclaimed nineteen sixty six film Chelsea Girls. In a 0:21:24.880 --> 0:21:28.760 few years prior, a twenty year old dancer named Lucille 0:21:28.800 --> 0:21:32.240 Andell found herself on the roof of the Chelsea Hotel. 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:36.920 She walked carefully on her tiptoes close to the edge 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:40.800 before giving into the darkness that had overtaken her, plunging 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:45.399 to her death ten stories below. Along the way, the 0:21:45.520 --> 0:21:49.600 usually graceful Lucille struck the third floor fire escape with 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:56.560 a thud, partially dismembering herself before pancaking on West twenty third, 0:21:57.600 --> 0:22:00.600 but all the danger that the Chelsea Hotel repres Sena 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:06.840 didn't scare Patty Smith. Instead, it compelled her. Besides, Patty 0:22:06.880 --> 0:22:10.320 could navigate it. She wasn't big into drugs and she 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:14.679 seldom drank. And besides, she and her partner, Robert Maplethorpe 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:18.600 were broke. Which other hotel would take art as collateral 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:20.920 until they could come up with the cash to rent 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:25.879 a room. None and no other hotel had Burrows and 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:30.520 the poet Jim Carroll roaming its halls. Patty befriended both 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:34.440 of them. She also befriended Janis Choplin, who stayed in 0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:36.760 Room four or eleven during her run of shows at 0:22:36.800 --> 0:22:41.520 the Fillmore East. Patty listened to Janis express herself through music. 0:22:42.280 --> 0:22:45.680 Patty worked up poems with Jim Carroll, and Patty met 0:22:45.720 --> 0:22:50.440 Bob Dylan's fixer and confident, Bob Newarth. Bob Newarth encouraged 0:22:50.440 --> 0:22:53.760 Patty to work her poems into songs, to listen to 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:57.600 Hank Williams, to listen to Blind Willie mctel, to get 0:22:57.640 --> 0:23:00.399 down to the root of what she felt, and to 0:23:00.480 --> 0:23:04.000 pull it out and spill it all over open chords 0:23:04.119 --> 0:23:10.000 on an acoustic guitar. Creatively Patty was encouraged and compelled. 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:16.119 Robert was too, but in a darker way. It was 0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:20.800 nineteen sixty nine The Rolling Stones, as Brian Jones had died, 0:23:21.560 --> 0:23:24.399 and so too did the lsd Dreams from the Summer 0:23:24.480 --> 0:23:28.280 of Love. Robert took the Stone's sympathy for the devil 0:23:28.440 --> 0:23:32.439 a little too literally. Charles Manson was all anyone at 0:23:32.440 --> 0:23:35.600 the Chelsea could talk about in nineteen sixty nine. Just 0:23:35.640 --> 0:23:38.520 as Patty Smith's mother had been obsessed with the Lindberg case, 0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:43.200 Robert Maplethorpe was obsessed with this latest crime of the century. 0:23:44.160 --> 0:23:47.480 Out in Hollywood. Seven people were dead in what appeared 0:23:47.480 --> 0:23:50.800 to be a ritualistic murder spree with a decidedly rock 0:23:50.840 --> 0:23:54.760 and roll edge. The Tate LaBianca murders in August of 0:23:54.840 --> 0:23:58.000 nineteen sixty nine were hard not to be affected by, 0:23:59.520 --> 0:24:03.320 and so Robert Maplethorpe began working a darker vision into 0:24:03.359 --> 0:24:08.280 his art. He became obsessed with the concept of evil. 0:24:09.040 --> 0:24:12.399 It was a stark counterpoint to his Catholic upbringing, a 0:24:12.440 --> 0:24:15.639 reflection of what he saw on the street up on 0:24:15.720 --> 0:24:19.640 forty Second, where he hustled sex for cash to help 0:24:19.680 --> 0:24:25.280 support himself and Patty. Patty worried about Robert. Sex work 0:24:25.720 --> 0:24:32.119 was as dangerous as a gun. Nineteen sixty nine, Midtown Manhattan, 0:24:32.640 --> 0:24:38.360 forty second Street aka the Deuce, a neon open air 0:24:38.480 --> 0:24:43.640 sex market, predators and prey pros and junkies applying their 0:24:43.720 --> 0:24:49.200 trade for pimps and pushers, chickenhawks, older skeevy looking men 0:24:49.240 --> 0:24:53.119 in trench coats on the prow for young runaways. A 0:24:53.119 --> 0:24:56.439 few dollars went a long way. A runaway could make 0:24:56.440 --> 0:24:58.680 a buck or two with one job and be able 0:24:58.720 --> 0:25:01.399 to afford a slice of pizza, a coke, and a 0:25:01.400 --> 0:25:04.760 movie ticket into one of the theaters, the Liberty, the Empire, 0:25:04.840 --> 0:25:07.680 the Victory, and be able to pass out in relative 0:25:07.760 --> 0:25:11.480 peace and quiet until the shakedown artist showed up looking 0:25:11.520 --> 0:25:15.840 to rob this using patrons out on the street. Robert 0:25:15.920 --> 0:25:20.080 Maplethorpe kept his cool. It was all about the look, 0:25:20.720 --> 0:25:23.960 the right nod from the right dude, and Robert knew 0:25:24.400 --> 0:25:29.359 it was on. But danger was everywhere. Cops posed as 0:25:29.480 --> 0:25:32.760 John's to entrap hustlers and turn their backs when they 0:25:32.760 --> 0:25:37.480 were harassed and assaulted. Many clients refused to pay. Some 0:25:37.600 --> 0:25:43.320 insisted on rough stuff with hustlers. Strangulation, knife play. Sickos 0:25:43.359 --> 0:25:46.359 were slitting the throats and the theaters, and the working 0:25:46.400 --> 0:25:50.720 boy's screams drowned out by the soundtracks blasting from the screens. 0:25:52.160 --> 0:25:55.439 Robert was a quote unquote rent boy, or so he 0:25:55.520 --> 0:25:58.800 told himself. He worked the streets to help pay his 0:25:58.920 --> 0:26:02.960 and Patty's rent Chelsea. It wasn't the sex so much 0:26:03.040 --> 0:26:07.399 that bothered Patty, it was the danger. Their relationship was 0:26:07.440 --> 0:26:11.119 an open one, and Robert's homosexuality by this time was 0:26:11.200 --> 0:26:14.720 no secret. It was also around this time that Patty 0:26:14.800 --> 0:26:19.440 became romantically involved with the poet Jim Carroll. Jim hustled 0:26:19.480 --> 0:26:23.359 up on forty second Street as well. Robert asked Jim 0:26:23.840 --> 0:26:27.320 how he knew that he wasn't gay. Jim told him 0:26:27.320 --> 0:26:32.600 that he knew because he always asked for money, whereas 0:26:32.640 --> 0:26:38.880 sometimes Robert didn't. Either way, Jim hustled for heroin, Robert 0:26:38.960 --> 0:26:42.680 hustled for rent. For Robert there was no other way 0:26:42.720 --> 0:26:45.600 to support his pursuit of becoming an artist, and for 0:26:45.720 --> 0:26:50.159 Patty there had to be a less dangerous way. Sam 0:26:50.200 --> 0:26:58.240 Shepherd was that way. Sam was a writer, a California cowboy, 0:26:58.480 --> 0:27:03.480 a musician, an established off Broadway playwright, and by the 0:27:03.560 --> 0:27:06.280 time he and Patti Smith began their affair at the 0:27:06.359 --> 0:27:11.320 Chelsea Hotel, already a husband and father. It didn't matter. 0:27:12.320 --> 0:27:15.760 Sam encouraged Patty to sing, He bought her her first guitar. 0:27:16.200 --> 0:27:21.919 He encouraged her artistically, romantically. Sam was dangerous, but compared 0:27:21.960 --> 0:27:23.160 to Jim Carroll. 0:27:23.119 --> 0:27:24.800 He was safe. 0:27:24.880 --> 0:27:31.080 Sam Shepherd exuded life, not junkie death. Sam didn't hustle, well, 0:27:31.440 --> 0:27:34.639 he did, but in a different way. Sam made shit happen, 0:27:35.240 --> 0:27:37.720 and by the time he was twenty seven, he'd won 0:27:37.800 --> 0:27:42.439 four Obie Awards for four different plays. The Obis are 0:27:42.480 --> 0:27:47.040 the highest awards given to off Broadway artists. Sam Shephard 0:27:47.200 --> 0:27:51.879 won three in one year. Sam convinced Patty that she 0:27:52.040 --> 0:27:55.320 had something to say, as if she needed further validation, 0:27:56.240 --> 0:28:00.200 but still hearing that her words carried weight from a 0:28:00.240 --> 0:28:05.399 sexy award winning playwright couldn't hurt. Sam prevailed upon Patty 0:28:05.440 --> 0:28:08.000 to collaborate with him on a new play, and they 0:28:08.040 --> 0:28:13.639 called it Cowboy Mouth. Cowboy Mouth was a semi autobiographical 0:28:13.680 --> 0:28:17.720 account of Sam and Patty's relationship. Both acted in the 0:28:17.760 --> 0:28:20.240 two lead roles. When it was staged in April of 0:28:20.320 --> 0:28:24.680 nineteen seventy one, and there it was Sam and Patty's 0:28:24.720 --> 0:28:29.800 illicit relationship brought to life for all to see. Afterward, 0:28:30.600 --> 0:28:34.120 Sam freaked out, he had a wife and a kid, 0:28:34.280 --> 0:28:37.800 that it was wrong and he knew it. He abruptly 0:28:37.840 --> 0:28:40.880 left New York City to return to his family in Vermont. 0:28:42.040 --> 0:28:46.080 At first, Patty was devastated, but it didn't take long 0:28:46.160 --> 0:28:48.480 before she put a relationship with Sam Shepard in the 0:28:48.520 --> 0:28:53.960 proper perspective. It was brief, explosive, and overall a positive 0:28:54.040 --> 0:28:57.600 experience in the end, despite who got hurt and how 0:28:58.040 --> 0:29:01.040 it was worth it because Sam I'm Shephard helped Patty 0:29:01.120 --> 0:29:08.920