Speaker 1: Hello, We're here to tell you if you haven't already
Speaker 1: heard that Jake Brennan's award winning podcast, Disgraceland is now
Speaker 1: on the Exactly Right Network.
Speaker 2: Disgraceland's a true crime music podcast that dives into the
Speaker 2: real stories behind the dark side of the music business.
Speaker 1: And if you're new to the show, we're here to
Speaker 1: introduce you by sharing one of our favorite episodes, covering
Speaker 1: the legendary Patti Smith.
Speaker 2: If you know Patty Smith, you know that she rose
Speaker 2: to rock fame against the backdrop of seventies New York
Speaker 2: City when crime was at an all time high and
Speaker 2: serial killers like the Son of Sam were terrorizing everyone.
Speaker 1: So please enjoy this episode of Disgraceland, and once you're done,
Speaker 1: head to their feed to like and follow the show.
Speaker 2: Please and new episodes of Disgraceland drop every Tuesday, with
Speaker 2: bonus episodes on Thursday and Rewind's on Sunday.
Speaker 1: Listen to Disgraceland on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts, and make sure to leave
Speaker 1: a rating or review.
Speaker 2: It really helps enjoy Disgraceland.
Speaker 3: Goodbye. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The story
Speaker 3: about Patty Smith is steeped in true crime, everything from
Speaker 3: the criminal influence of her artistic heroes Jean Jeanet and
Speaker 3: William S. Burrows, to the impression made upon her from
Speaker 3: her mother's obsession with America's first true crime of the century,
Speaker 3: the Lindberg kidnapping, to the influence of the Manson murders
Speaker 3: in New York City's forty four caliber killings that Patty
Speaker 3: lived through in late seventies New York, to the crime
Speaker 3: and grime of Central Park, the Chelsea Hotel in forty
Speaker 3: second Street, rape and murder, all of it just to
Speaker 3: shot away, as they say. But Patti Smith survived all
Speaker 3: of it to become one of the last centuries great artists,
Speaker 3: a great musician, someone who made great music. Unlike that
Speaker 3: music I played for you at the top of the show.
Speaker 3: That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from
Speaker 3: my melotron called Falling from Chelsea MK. Two. I played
Speaker 3: you that loop because I can't afford the rights to
Speaker 3: one Bad Apple by the Osmonds. And why would I
Speaker 3: play you that specific slice of plastic sibling cheese? Could
Speaker 3: I afford it? Because that was the number one song
Speaker 3: in America on February tenth, nineteen seventy one, And that
Speaker 3: was the day that Patti Smith first took the stage
Speaker 3: with more than just words, with a guitarist at her side,
Speaker 3: and began building a previously unimagined bridge between the art
Speaker 3: world and rock and roll. And she did it for
Speaker 3: the criminals.
Speaker 4: On this episode, Junkies, Murderers, poets, playwrights, death, destruction, the
Speaker 4: danger of pursuing one's artistic calling, and how true crime
Speaker 4: helped Patty Smith survive at all.
Speaker 3: I'm Jake Brennan.
Speaker 5: This is Disgraceland.
Speaker 3: Though Patty Smith is known as the godmother of Ponkin
Speaker 3: was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Speaker 3: in two thousand and seven, She's much more than just
Speaker 3: an iconic rock star. She's a literary luminary, a National
Speaker 3: Book Award winner, and the recipient of the Penn Literary
Speaker 3: Service Award. She's been honored by the French Ministry of
Speaker 3: Culture and the Municipal Arts Society of New York, an
Speaker 3: organization that in twenty twenty four awarded Patty Smith with
Speaker 3: their highest honor, the Jacqueline Kennedy on Nassis Medal. She's
Speaker 3: met the Pope She accepted a Nobel Prize on behalf
Speaker 3: of and at the request of, none other than Bob Dylan,
Speaker 3: and her name rings true throughout the same universities and
Speaker 3: museums that teach and celebrate the author's poets and artists
Speaker 3: Louisa may Alcott, Arthur Rimbau, and Fried de Callo, to
Speaker 3: name a few that Patti Smith has drawn inspiration from
Speaker 3: throughout her life. To dismiss Patty Smith as merely a
Speaker 3: rock star is like calling Steve Jobs a computer salesman.
Speaker 3: She is not just a musician. She's what I refer
Speaker 3: to as the high priestess of art, someone who holds
Speaker 3: rare dual citizenship in the gritty origins of punk and
Speaker 3: in the highest echelons of New York and European society.
Speaker 3: Catholic priests speak of being called to the priesthood that
Speaker 3: moment when to hear God's voice imploring them to serve Him,
Speaker 3: to dedicate their lives to him, to sacrifice everything in
Speaker 3: his name. Many of them faced not just persecution, but
Speaker 3: even death in pursuit of their calling. Jesus' apostle Peter
Speaker 3: was crucified upside down. Bartholomew, another apostle was skinned alive,
Speaker 3: tortured over days, and eventually decapitated. Deacon Lawrence of Rome
Speaker 3: in the year two fifty eight, a d was roasted
Speaker 3: to death over an open fire. In seventeen ninety two,
Speaker 3: during the French Revolution, over two hundred priests were massacred
Speaker 3: by angry mobs in under forty eight hours. Spanish Clarician priests,
Speaker 3: Salvadoran Jesuits, Mexican seminary students, and countless others who were
Speaker 3: once called have been martyred and suffered horrific deaths for
Speaker 3: they're calling. But Patti Smith, who once famously saying Jesus
Speaker 3: died for somebody's sins but not mine, was no murdyr.
Speaker 3: She was and is an artist, and similar to priests,
Speaker 3: artists here recalling they must also navigate danger, violence, and
Speaker 3: potential death murder, even in pursuit of their art. So
Speaker 3: when and where was Patti Smith, the high Priestess of
Speaker 3: art called to become an artist? And what kind of danger, violence,
Speaker 3: and true crime did she have to escape to become
Speaker 3: the artist we all know her to be. As a
Speaker 3: little girl in suburban New Jersey in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 3: the first stories Patti Smith heard were dark. The original
Speaker 3: Brother's Grim collection of children's fairy tales from the eighteen
Speaker 3: hundreds spoke of a stepmother in the Juniper Tree story
Speaker 3: who decapitated her step son and cooked his flesh in
Speaker 3: a soup to serve to the boy's unsuspecting father. In
Speaker 3: the original version of Cinderella entitled Askinputul, one stepsister uses
Speaker 3: a knife to cut off her toes, and another hacks
Speaker 3: off the heel of her foot. Yet these stories were
Speaker 3: nothing compared to what Patty later read in the Bible,
Speaker 3: specifically in the Old Testament, where in Judges nineteen, one
Speaker 3: woman is severed into twelve different pieces, each given to
Speaker 3: a different tribe of Israel. Her sin none. She was
Speaker 3: offered up to protect the crimes of a rapist. In
Speaker 3: Judges four, Yale offers an unsuspecting enemy general hospitality, but
Speaker 3: when the general falls asleep, Yale takes a spike and
Speaker 3: hammers it through his skull. In King's n Eyes, Queen
Speaker 3: Jezebel's eunuchs throw her from a window, where she's then
Speaker 3: trampled to death by horses, horses, horses and horse, and
Speaker 3: later on as a teenager, rape and murder were more
Speaker 3: than just shot away. All of these stories were right there,
Speaker 3: out in the open, in Patti Smith's Bible, and in
Speaker 3: her history books, and in the museums she visited as
Speaker 3: a child. If the executioner was feeling merciful, he'd build
Speaker 3: the pire low to the ground to ensure a quick death.
Speaker 3: But this executioner was not feeling merciful. He built the
Speaker 3: pire extra high so that Joan of Arc would be
Speaker 3: guaranteed a prolonged and painful death. And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 3: The flames took their time, and the ancient Greeks used
Speaker 3: funeral pyre to honor their departed emperors and heroes. The
Speaker 3: Romans too, not the English. When it came to Joan
Speaker 3: of Arc. They had something else in mind, revenge, public disgrace,
Speaker 3: maximum pain. In the eyes of the English dominated Ecclesiastical
Speaker 3: Tribunal of fourteen thirty one, nineteen year old Joan of
Speaker 3: Arc was a heretic. She claimed she'd been called by
Speaker 3: a divine voice. She cut her hair, she dressed like
Speaker 3: a boy. She made a mockery of modern authority in
Speaker 3: social norms, and in the process inspired and uprising that
Speaker 3: turned the tide of the hundreds years War, driving the
Speaker 3: English out of France, and for those perceived sins, she
Speaker 3: was now roped to a stake in Market Square in
Speaker 3: the city of Ruan high above a gritted stack of
Speaker 3: dry wood built to burn slow and fierce, with its
Speaker 3: blue flames snapping at the ski of her feet, and
Speaker 3: black smoke corroding her lungs, white hot pain piercing every
Speaker 3: cell in her body. The blaze rose up over her legs,
Speaker 3: her midriff, and no one heard her scream and no
Speaker 3: one saw her cry when the inferno engulfed her completely.
Speaker 3: Soon enough, Joan of Arc was gone, but embodied only
Speaker 3: another martyr, this one officially executed for the crimes of
Speaker 3: heresy and cross dressing, but whose life's work would inspire
Speaker 3: generations and whose name would forever ring true. In nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty six, herself just nineteen years old, Patti Smith stood
Speaker 3: outside on the streets of Philadelphia, across from the Museum
Speaker 3: of Modern Art, about five miles from the more modern
Speaker 3: Market Square, and looked up at a statue of Joan
Speaker 3: of Arc, Emmanuel Fremier's gilded bronze depiction of the young
Speaker 3: martyr cast a piercing impression upon young Patty. Here was
Speaker 3: this woman her own age, who gave everything for what
Speaker 3: she believes. It was then that Patty knew she would
Speaker 3: have to do the same. It was then that Patty
Speaker 3: Smith heard her calling in the shadows of martyrs and museums,
Speaker 3: to become an artist. The stakes of failing to fulfill
Speaker 3: her life's goal were, as they are for most teenagers,
Speaker 3: dramatic and intense. A life as anything but an artist,
Speaker 3: a life as something else in suburban New Jersey, would
Speaker 3: be its own kind of death. But art was dangerous,
Speaker 3: and not in the fairy tale Old Testament, musty historical
Speaker 3: kind of way, but in a real and scary kind
Speaker 3: of way. One of Patty's favorite novelists, Jean Jeannet, lived
Speaker 3: in squalor, forced into a life of crime, nearly imprisoned
Speaker 3: for life. One of her favorite musicians, the jazz singer
Speaker 3: Billie Holiday, died addicted to heroin. In her final living moments,
Speaker 3: she was handcuffed to her bed by federal agents and
Speaker 3: placed under arrest for narcotics possession. One of Patty's favorite painters,
Speaker 3: Jackson Pollock, was driven to alcoholism and eventually off the road.
Speaker 3: In his oldsmobile where he flipped his car, crushed his skull,
Speaker 3: and decapitated one of his passengers. And these were just
Speaker 3: the artists that Patty knew about. Thanks to her true
Speaker 3: crime obsessed mother, Patty Smith also knew about the dangers
Speaker 3: of the world right outside her suburban window. Nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 3: Patti Smith's mother was traumatized by events that were unfolding
Speaker 3: over the radio airwaves, just as the rest of the
Speaker 3: nation was One of America's most famous sons, the Aviator
Speaker 3: Charles Lindberg, was the victim of what had quickly become
Speaker 3: America's most famous crime. Lindberg's twenty month old son had
Speaker 3: been kidnapped. The kidnapper used the latter to creep into
Speaker 3: the second story nursery of the Limburg's New Jersey estate.
Speaker 3: Within twenty four hours of the abduction, the crime was
Speaker 3: a national sensation. By daybreak, over one hundred reporters and
Speaker 3: photographers had breached the gates of the estate and contaminated
Speaker 3: the crime scene. Notorious mafioso Al Capone issued a statement
Speaker 3: from a Chicago jail cell offering a reward for the
Speaker 3: return of the baby, and before the night of the
Speaker 3: crime had ended, newswires like the Associated Press were deluged
Speaker 3: with bulletins, transmitting over fifty thousand words in just hours.
Speaker 3: Radio stations across the country took the unprecedented step of
Speaker 3: canceling all programming to issue a coordinated bulletin describing the
Speaker 3: child's appearance, in creating a complete national radio blackout. And
Speaker 3: it was through the radio that Patty Smith's mother became
Speaker 3: transfixed with the early details of the crime, as well
Speaker 3: as the saga's conclusion. Ten weeks after the kidnapping, the
Speaker 3: badly decomposed body of Charles Lindbergh's baby was found by
Speaker 3: a truck driver relieving himself on the side of a
Speaker 3: New Jersey highway. The infant's corpse had been partially scavenged
Speaker 3: by animals. Just like Jezebel and the horses, and like
Speaker 3: Pollock and the crushed skull, like Yale's enemy a hole
Speaker 3: through the head, and like Joan of Arc, the Lindbergh
Speaker 3: Baby would not soon be forgotten. Young Patty Smith was
Speaker 3: transfixed by her mother's retelling of this story. She never
Speaker 3: forgot it, just like she never forgot the Brother's Grim
Speaker 3: or the Old Testament, where Jean, Billy Jackson or Joan,
Speaker 3: and she took was that life was dangerous, and so
Speaker 3: too the pursuit of art was dangerous, and in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty seven, the only place to really pursue art was
Speaker 3: in America's most dangerous place, New York City. The whispers
Speaker 3: Patty Smith heard at night in Central Park where the
Speaker 3: stuff of terror. The park was more than a bucolic
Speaker 3: playground for New Yorkers to laze away their afternoons. Each
Speaker 3: night it became a den of violent criminals, thieves, rapists,
Speaker 3: and murderers, all prowling about for the ruination of souls.
Speaker 3: Central Park was also Patti Smith's sometime bedroom. It was
Speaker 3: where she'd lie down during that first summer when she
Speaker 3: arrived in the city. On those nights when she couldn't
Speaker 3: find a welcoming doorway in which to lay her head,
Speaker 3: Central Park was where she slept. And in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 3: Central Park was also the place where a fifteen year
Speaker 3: old girl was brutally raped and her friend stomped so
Speaker 3: severely that he was left in critical condition. It was,
Speaker 3: in the mid nineteen sixties a place where nearly one
Speaker 3: thousand felonies were committed on average each year in Central
Speaker 3: Park during the Summer of Love. For all the groups
Speaker 3: of young hippies strewn about on blankets with acoustic guitars
Speaker 3: and flowers in their hair, there were just as many
Speaker 3: any self described wolf packs, hordes of young neighborhood delinquents
Speaker 3: swarming the park in shifts to rob in main not
Speaker 3: just the hippies, but the homosexuals cruising the park so
Speaker 3: called predatory zones. Patti Smith may have slept in Central Park,
Speaker 3: but it was in another park where she met the
Speaker 3: first great love of her life, Robert Maplethorpe. She knew
Speaker 3: him from the bookstore where she'd taken a job. He
Speaker 3: was a customer, and she was in Tompkins Square Park
Speaker 3: on a date with an older man, a man who
Speaker 3: could afford to buy her a meal that she could
Speaker 3: not afford to buy herself. But in New York City,
Speaker 3: nothing's free, So just before the man attempted to collect
Speaker 3: his payment sexually, Patti Smith recognized the good looking boy
Speaker 3: from the bookstore and ran to him in the park,
Speaker 3: introducing him on the spot to a predatory lunch date
Speaker 3: as her boyfriend. Robert Maplethorpe, who was high on LSD
Speaker 3: at the time, went along with the ruse, which he
Speaker 3: no doubt thought was hilarious. Robert found Patty Lee Smith
Speaker 3: to be not only funny, but also sexy, intelligent, creative,
Speaker 3: a perfect partner in crime for his own first foray
Speaker 3: into New York City. They shared the same goal to
Speaker 3: become artists. They weren't sure what kinds of artists they
Speaker 3: wanted to become, just that they were most certainly destined
Speaker 3: to create things that would change the world of culture
Speaker 3: and art as they knew it. In their first apartment together,
Speaker 3: the one in Brooklyn where they had to scrub the
Speaker 3: wall of the splattered blood and psychotic scribblings from the
Speaker 3: previous tenant, they painted, created drawings and collages, and wrote.
Speaker 3: They read the great works of the great writers, those
Speaker 3: who were also criminals, not just Jean Jeanne, but oh
Speaker 3: Henry and William S Burrows, Burrows who shot and killed
Speaker 3: his wife in a game of William Tell and got
Speaker 3: away with it. And they studied to Cooney and Rivera,
Speaker 3: Warhol and Picasso, and prayed at the altar of Coltrane,
Speaker 3: sympathized with those devils the rolling Stones, and filled in
Speaker 3: the ooral gaps with the Cherells and Dylan, Bob not Thomas.
Speaker 3: They had little food, even less money, and they stole
Speaker 3: when they had to, but they never begged. What they
Speaker 3: did have was desire, and that desire gave way to faith,
Speaker 3: and faith to creation, and soon the artistic callings of
Speaker 3: each would bear fruit. Robert with photography and Patty with words.
Speaker 3: A new apartment, this one in Manhattan, signified progress, with
Speaker 3: the chalk outline of the dead body outside the front
Speaker 3: door precipitated another move to a less dangerous neighborhood, so
Speaker 3: further uptown they went to the Chelsea Hotel. These days,
Speaker 3: the Chelsea Hotel on West twenty third Street, like most
Speaker 3: of Manhattan, is a glitzy, gentrified incarnation of what it
Speaker 3: once was, a dangerous rooming house for bohemian vagabonds. In
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty nine, the Chelsea was part artist colony, in
Speaker 3: part central command for the drug fueled late sixties counterculture,
Speaker 3: housing and hosting the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen
Speaker 3: in the Velvet undergrounds. Nico Salvador Dali stayed at the
Speaker 3: Chelsea when there was no room at the Saint Regis
Speaker 3: Alan Ginsburg cruised the lobby for dates, even taking Patty
Speaker 3: to lunch one day, mistaking her with her short crop
Speaker 3: Joan of arc Hare to be a young pretty boy.
Speaker 3: Dylan died at the Chelsea Thomas not Bob, while the
Speaker 3: poet fell into a comb in Room two five after
Speaker 3: downing eighteen straight whiskies before he was carried off to
Speaker 3: be pronounced dead at Saint Vincent's. The Andy Warhol superstar
Speaker 3: Evie Cedric set her room at the Chelsea on fire
Speaker 3: while high on barbituates. She had to be rescued from
Speaker 3: room one oh five, where Warhol had shot part of
Speaker 3: his acclaimed nineteen sixty six film Chelsea Girls. In a
Speaker 3: few years prior, a twenty year old dancer named Lucille
Speaker 3: Andell found herself on the roof of the Chelsea Hotel.
Speaker 3: She walked carefully on her tiptoes close to the edge
Speaker 3: before giving into the darkness that had overtaken her, plunging
Speaker 3: to her death ten stories below. Along the way, the
Speaker 3: usually graceful Lucille struck the third floor fire escape with
Speaker 3: a thud, partially dismembering herself before pancaking on West twenty third,
Speaker 3: but all the danger that the Chelsea Hotel repres Sena
Speaker 3: didn't scare Patty Smith. Instead, it compelled her. Besides, Patty
Speaker 3: could navigate it. She wasn't big into drugs and she
Speaker 3: seldom drank. And besides, she and her partner, Robert Maplethorpe
Speaker 3: were broke. Which other hotel would take art as collateral
Speaker 3: until they could come up with the cash to rent
Speaker 3: a room. None and no other hotel had Burrows and
Speaker 3: the poet Jim Carroll roaming its halls. Patty befriended both
Speaker 3: of them. She also befriended Janis Choplin, who stayed in
Speaker 3: Room four or eleven during her run of shows at
Speaker 3: the Fillmore East. Patty listened to Janis express herself through music.
Speaker 3: Patty worked up poems with Jim Carroll, and Patty met
Speaker 3: Bob Dylan's fixer and confident, Bob Newarth. Bob Newarth encouraged
Speaker 3: Patty to work her poems into songs, to listen to
Speaker 3: Hank Williams, to listen to Blind Willie mctel, to get
Speaker 3: down to the root of what she felt, and to
Speaker 3: pull it out and spill it all over open chords
Speaker 3: on an acoustic guitar. Creatively Patty was encouraged and compelled.
Speaker 3: Robert was too, but in a darker way. It was
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty nine The Rolling Stones, as Brian Jones had died,
Speaker 3: and so too did the lsd Dreams from the Summer
Speaker 3: of Love. Robert took the Stone's sympathy for the devil
Speaker 3: a little too literally. Charles Manson was all anyone at
Speaker 3: the Chelsea could talk about in nineteen sixty nine. Just
Speaker 3: as Patty Smith's mother had been obsessed with the Lindberg case,
Speaker 3: Robert Maplethorpe was obsessed with this latest crime of the century.
Speaker 3: Out in Hollywood. Seven people were dead in what appeared
Speaker 3: to be a ritualistic murder spree with a decidedly rock
Speaker 3: and roll edge. The Tate LaBianca murders in August of
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty nine were hard not to be affected by,
Speaker 3: and so Robert Maplethorpe began working a darker vision into
Speaker 3: his art. He became obsessed with the concept of evil.
Speaker 3: It was a stark counterpoint to his Catholic upbringing, a
Speaker 3: reflection of what he saw on the street up on
Speaker 3: forty Second, where he hustled sex for cash to help
Speaker 3: support himself and Patty. Patty worried about Robert. Sex work
Speaker 3: was as dangerous as a gun. Nineteen sixty nine, Midtown Manhattan,
Speaker 3: forty second Street aka the Deuce, a neon open air
Speaker 3: sex market, predators and prey pros and junkies applying their
Speaker 3: trade for pimps and pushers, chickenhawks, older skeevy looking men
Speaker 3: in trench coats on the prow for young runaways. A
Speaker 3: few dollars went a long way. A runaway could make
Speaker 3: a buck or two with one job and be able
Speaker 3: to afford a slice of pizza, a coke, and a
Speaker 3: movie ticket into one of the theaters, the Liberty, the Empire,
Speaker 3: the Victory, and be able to pass out in relative
Speaker 3: peace and quiet until the shakedown artist showed up looking
Speaker 3: to rob this using patrons out on the street. Robert
Speaker 3: Maplethorpe kept his cool. It was all about the look,
Speaker 3: the right nod from the right dude, and Robert knew
Speaker 3: it was on. But danger was everywhere. Cops posed as
Speaker 3: John's to entrap hustlers and turn their backs when they
Speaker 3: were harassed and assaulted. Many clients refused to pay. Some
Speaker 3: insisted on rough stuff with hustlers. Strangulation, knife play. Sickos
Speaker 3: were slitting the throats and the theaters, and the working
Speaker 3: boy's screams drowned out by the soundtracks blasting from the screens.
Speaker 3: Robert was a quote unquote rent boy, or so he
Speaker 3: told himself. He worked the streets to help pay his
Speaker 3: and Patty's rent Chelsea. It wasn't the sex so much
Speaker 3: that bothered Patty, it was the danger. Their relationship was
Speaker 3: an open one, and Robert's homosexuality by this time was
Speaker 3: no secret. It was also around this time that Patty
Speaker 3: became romantically involved with the poet Jim Carroll. Jim hustled
Speaker 3: up on forty second Street as well. Robert asked Jim
Speaker 3: how he knew that he wasn't gay. Jim told him
Speaker 3: that he knew because he always asked for money, whereas
Speaker 3: sometimes Robert didn't. Either way, Jim hustled for heroin, Robert
Speaker 3: hustled for rent. For Robert there was no other way
Speaker 3: to support his pursuit of becoming an artist, and for
Speaker 3: Patty there had to be a less dangerous way. Sam
Speaker 3: Shepherd was that way. Sam was a writer, a California cowboy,
Speaker 3: a musician, an established off Broadway playwright, and by the
Speaker 3: time he and Patti Smith began their affair at the
Speaker 3: Chelsea Hotel, already a husband and father. It didn't matter.
Speaker 3: Sam encouraged Patty to sing, He bought her her first guitar.
Speaker 3: He encouraged her artistically, romantically. Sam was dangerous, but compared
Speaker 3: to Jim Carroll.
Speaker 4: He was safe.
Speaker 3: Sam Shepherd exuded life, not junkie death. Sam didn't hustle, well,
Speaker 3: he did, but in a different way. Sam made shit happen,
Speaker 3: and by the time he was twenty seven, he'd won
Speaker 3: four Obie Awards for four different plays. The Obis are
Speaker 3: the highest awards given to off Broadway artists. Sam Shephard
Speaker 3: won three in one year. Sam convinced Patty that she
Speaker 3: had something to say, as if she needed further validation,
Speaker 3: but still hearing that her words carried weight from a
Speaker 3: sexy award winning playwright couldn't hurt. Sam prevailed upon Patty
Speaker 3: to collaborate with him on a new play, and they
Speaker 3: called it Cowboy Mouth. Cowboy Mouth was a semi autobiographical
Speaker 3: account of Sam and Patty's relationship. Both acted in the
Speaker 3: two lead roles. When it was staged in April of
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy one, and there it was Sam and Patty's
Speaker 3: illicit relationship brought to life for all to see. Afterward,
Speaker 3: Sam freaked out, he had a wife and a kid,
Speaker 3: that it was wrong and he knew it. He abruptly
Speaker 3: left New York City to return to his family in Vermont.
Speaker 3: At first, Patty was devastated, but it didn't take long
Speaker 3: before she put a relationship with Sam Shepard in the
Speaker 3: proper perspective. It was brief, explosive, and overall a positive
Speaker 3: experience in the end, despite who got hurt and how
Speaker 3: it was worth it because Sam I'm Shephard helped Patty
Speaker 3: Smith finally find her voice. Cowboy Mouth wasn't just autobiographical.
Speaker 3: It was also about a character who moves seamlessly between
Speaker 3: art and crime, specifically music, rock and roll, actually and crime.
Speaker 3: To this point in her life, Patti Smith had spent
Speaker 3: her life moving between art and crime, shoplifting, harrowing, hustling,
Speaker 3: Charles Lindbergh, Charles Manson, chalk outlined bodies and bloodstained tenement walls,
Speaker 3: Jean Janet, William Burrows and William Tell, Willie Micktel, Bob Newarth,
Speaker 3: Robert Maplethorpe, and Jim Carroll, Sam Shepherd. It was all
Speaker 3: one big art and crime collage. It was who she
Speaker 3: had become, and now it was time to give voice
Speaker 3: to all of that transgressive influence, to bridge the gap
Speaker 3: between art and artist, to be the voice of the voiceless,
Speaker 3: for those persecuted for following their calling, for their crimes,
Speaker 3: and to do it all with rock and roll. We'll
Speaker 3: be right back after this. We're We're, We're On February tenth,
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy one, Patti Smith stood on stage at Saint
Speaker 3: Mark's Church in New York's East Village and stared out
Speaker 3: at the crowd. By her side, a lanky and musically
Speaker 3: lethal guitar playing friend, Lenny Kay, staring up at them
Speaker 3: from the audience, a who's who of downtown cool, Lou Reed,
Speaker 3: Todd Rudgren, Robert Maplethorpe, Alan Ginsburg, and Moore. The evening
Speaker 3: was billed as a night of poetry featuring the Warhol,
Speaker 3: performance artist and poet Gerard Malanga and Patti Smith. For
Speaker 3: whatever reason, Patty decided to include a musical element. Lenny
Speaker 3: Lenny was already a musical encyclopedia. He wrote for jazz
Speaker 3: and pop rolling Stone Crawdaddy, and at the time was
Speaker 3: busy assembling songs for what would become one of the
Speaker 3: greatest compilation albums in rock and roll history, the Nuggets
Speaker 3: Original Artifacts from the Psychedelic Era nineteen sixty five to
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight set, which would become the definitive collection
Speaker 3: of American garage rock singles and eventually one of punk
Speaker 3: rock's guiding lights. In fact, the Nuggets' liner notes feature
Speaker 3: one of the earliest uses of the term punk rock.
Speaker 3: Lenny Kay not only knew how to play guitar, Lenny
Speaker 3: Kay knew his ship. With Lenny at her side, Patty
Speaker 3: Smith stared out into the audience. As the crowd settled,
Speaker 3: the two performers looked at their guests, their faces flushed
Speaker 3: with anticipation. They could all sense it something different was
Speaker 3: about to happen. New Yorkers know this feeling. It's familiar,
Speaker 3: the promise of the new that feeling that you're about
Speaker 3: to be let in on the secret, in on something special.
Speaker 3: It's a promise that in the nineteen seventies, New York
Speaker 3: City seemed to constantly fulfill. The lights dimmed, guitar feedback
Speaker 3: began to creep from Lenny's amplifier, and the crowd dropped
Speaker 3: the nervous chatter. The feedback unfurled throughout the room, bending
Speaker 3: both piercing and warm at the same time, like a
Speaker 3: blanket of nails, and Patty grabbed the microphone atop the
Speaker 3: stand with one hand, raised her other hand in the air,
Speaker 3: and abruptly brought it down to her side. Lenny muted
Speaker 3: his guitar silence. Patti Smith leaned into the microphone and said,
Speaker 3: this one's for the criminals. With that, Lenny k least
Speaker 3: the squeal and squawk from his Gibson melody maker, and
Speaker 3: Patty meted out the powerful words from the first lines
Speaker 3: of her poem Oath, Jesus died for somebody's sins, but
Speaker 3: not mine. And suddenly it wasn't a poem anymore. It
Speaker 3: was a song, and with Lenny it was rock and roll.
Speaker 3: Patty Smith had answered her calling and people loved it.
Speaker 3: The crowd that night adored her, and Patty was indeed
Speaker 3: something new, something unseen, A transgressive hybrid of poetry and music,
Speaker 3: was something powerful to say. The sins of her generation
Speaker 3: were not yet answered for, and maybe they weren't even sins.
Speaker 3: Who knew that was the point, all the crime, all
Speaker 3: the transgression, the so called sins. The cross was theirs
Speaker 3: and theirs alone to bear heresy. Like all great art,
Speaker 3: the action is in the risk. Patty's words were shocking,
Speaker 3: like Joan of ARC's words. Patty's possessed unyielding conviction, and
Speaker 3: those words had the power to inspire. And inspire they did.
Speaker 3: Patty and Lenny brought their rock and roll poetry hybrid
Speaker 3: to other stages. After this, they opened for the New
Speaker 3: York Dolls that their famed Mercer Art Center gigs. They
Speaker 3: played Le Jardin at the Other End, which had been
Speaker 3: and would again be called the Bitter End. Before long,
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy five, Patty found herself on the Bowery
Speaker 3: in Manhattan's Lower East Side, with all its grit and grime,
Speaker 3: a motley collection of the unhoused and unwashed, derelx and
Speaker 3: artists clinging desperately to a world trying to shake them
Speaker 3: loose like fleas on the backside of a rabid dog,
Speaker 3: all just steps from William S. Burrows's apartment, where the
Speaker 3: iconic novelists lived in squalor and would receive Patty as
Speaker 3: a guest. Whenever she was in the neighborhood. It was
Speaker 3: just Patty in her fearlessness and her curiosity, and Borrows
Speaker 3: and his heroin and his shotgun. Down the street near Bleaker,
Speaker 3: the crowd assembled outside the doors of cebe GEB's A
Speaker 3: Little Die. No one had cared about five minutes before,
Speaker 3: But tonight, Patty, in the new band she'd assembled with
Speaker 3: Lenny on guitar, Richard Sole on piano, Ivan Carl on bass,
Speaker 3: and j. D. Darty was set to perform the Patti
Speaker 3: Smith Group, along with one of the most inventive groups
Speaker 3: to come out of the nineteen seventies in New York television.
Speaker 3: Both bands were in the midst of a multi week residency.
Speaker 3: Just like at the Saint Mark's Church gig a few
Speaker 3: years prior, you could feel the anticipation in the air,
Speaker 3: except now there were actual stakes. Ever since that first
Speaker 3: performance at Saint Mark's, Patty was heralded as a savior.
Speaker 3: This new art was creating, this poetry rock and roll hybrid.
Speaker 3: It was the natural progression of a century long march
Speaker 3: from the romance of Arthur Rimbau to the squalor of
Speaker 3: Jean Jeannet, to the grime of Jim Carroll, to the
Speaker 3: pop of the Andy Warhol, to the music of Patti Smith.
Speaker 3: And therefore, Patty's music was seen as the antidote to
Speaker 3: the poisonous drivel filling airwaves in the mid seventies, soulless, bloated,
Speaker 3: spiritually starved rock music. Patty was unofficially drafted by New
Speaker 3: York's downtown tastemakers and uptown glitterati too. As she said, quote, preserve, protect,
Speaker 3: and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll unquote,
Speaker 3: And that's exactly what the Patti Smith Group did each
Speaker 3: night at CBGB's. Patty drew strength from her mentor, William S.
Speaker 3: Burrows and her best friend, the first great love of
Speaker 3: her life, Robert Maplethorpe, both of whom positioned themselves each
Speaker 3: night right up front. Robert was devoted to Patty's success
Speaker 3: as an artist in the same way he was to
Speaker 3: his own, on a near spiritual level. Soon, the powerful
Speaker 3: executive Clive Davis from Arista Records would also devote himself
Speaker 3: to Patty's success, signing her to a lucrative recording contract.
Speaker 3: The Patti Smith Group's debut album, Horses produced by the
Speaker 3: Velvet Undergrounds John Cale, the one with the stark and
Speaker 3: beautiful Robert Maplethorpe portrait of Patty on the cover, did
Speaker 3: what it was supposed to do, its part to save
Speaker 3: rock and roll. The album begins with a bang, just
Speaker 3: as Patty did at Saint Mark's, with a powerful rejection
Speaker 3: of the past. Somebody sins but not mine. Horses nailed
Speaker 3: the moment. Kids loved it, so did the critics. None
Speaker 3: other than America's greatest rock critic, Lester Bangs said in
Speaker 3: his Cream magazine review that Patty's songs on Horses to quote,
Speaker 3: deep wellsprings of emotion that extremely few artists in rock
Speaker 3: or anywhere else are capable of reaching. Unquote, that was
Speaker 3: just it, few artists in rock or anywhere else. I
Speaker 3: don't know if Lester Bangs intended to cast Patty's are
Speaker 3: outside the parameters of rock or not, but that's exactly
Speaker 3: where her creativity was leading her. She wasn't just a musician.
Speaker 3: She was clearly something else, something new, someone an artist
Speaker 3: who wasn't only revealing something about herself and her listeners,
Speaker 3: she was revealing something that hadn't been revealed before. Here
Speaker 3: was an artist who was reclaiming rock and roll from
Speaker 3: under the safe nightlight of mainstream rocks radio play duvet
Speaker 3: and dragging it back under the grimy blanket of nails
Speaker 3: inhabited by the criminal underworld, both the perpetrators and the victims.
Speaker 3: Patty Smith was a revolution in an iconic twist. Her
Speaker 3: cause was celebrated not only downtown but uptown as well.
Speaker 3: Soon elite culture would take note and open its doors.
Speaker 3: Aside from the predictable growsing from conservative detractors over her
Speaker 3: line about Jesus, everyone it seemed, loved Patty Smith's music
Speaker 3: except Robert Maplethorpe. Well, not exactly. Robert was an ardent
Speaker 3: supporter of Patty's, but ever since their earliest days, when
Speaker 3: Patty would sing to them back in that Brooklyn apartment,
Speaker 3: Robert would always say to her, sing me a song
Speaker 3: I can dance to, Patty. The world didn't dance to
Speaker 3: the songs on horses. They studied them like something worthy
Speaker 3: of a museum exhibit. No, the dancing would come later
Speaker 3: with Bruce Springsteen. Perhaps you've heard of him. At the time,
Speaker 3: Bruce Springsteen had just become the definition of an overnight
Speaker 3: sensation upon relief his third album, Born to Run. The
Speaker 3: previously obscure rock and roll band leader had rocketed to
Speaker 3: stardom when he appeared on the covers of both Newsweek
Speaker 3: and Time magazine simultaneously. Now in July of nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 3: he was filing a lawsuit against his manager, trying to
Speaker 3: extricate himself from a horrible contract, one that he believed
Speaker 3: to be criminal. Patti Smith, at the time, was playing
Speaker 3: shows in support of horses and preparing to record her
Speaker 3: follow up album, Radio Ethiopia, while living with her new boyfriend,
Speaker 3: the guitarist from Blue Oyster Cult, Alan Lanier. None of
Speaker 3: them knew it yet, but all three of these artists,
Speaker 3: much like their New York City fans, were about to
Speaker 3: be gripped in fear. Young lovers like Patty and Allen,
Speaker 3: and like the couples who flocked to record stores to
Speaker 3: purchase Springsteen's records, were about to get swept up in
Speaker 3: a year of paranoia, because, as the New York City
Speaker 3: night now belonged to a lunatic July twenty ninth, nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy six, one ten Am Pellam Bay the Bronx, two women,
Speaker 3: eighteen year old Donna Lauria and nineteen year old Jody
Speaker 3: Valenti sat in a nosemobile on the side of the
Speaker 3: road in the dark of night, discussing the time they
Speaker 3: just had at Peach Trees, a local discotheque, and the
Speaker 3: heavy rhythm from the tramps that's where the happy people
Speaker 3: go supplied the adrenaline still coursing through them. The vibe
Speaker 3: was pierced by a passing car on a not so
Speaker 3: far away street blaring the haunting new hit by Blue
Speaker 3: Oyster Cult, Don't Fear the Reaper. Suddenly the mood turned,
Speaker 3: the street got a little darker, the inside of the
Speaker 3: car a little quieter. Donna opened the door to leave.
Speaker 3: From out of the darkness a man with a gun.
Speaker 3: Donna startled. The man crouched onto one knee, took aim
Speaker 3: at Donna with both hands, and Jody screamed. Donna Lauria
Speaker 3: died instantly. The gunman got off another two shots, and
Speaker 3: one hit Jody in the thigh. She lived to tell
Speaker 3: the harrowing story to the New York newspapers. Three months later,
Speaker 3: the next shootings happened two young lovers, eighteen year old
Speaker 3: Rosemary Keenan and twenty year old Carl Denaro escaped the
Speaker 3: killer who fired into Carl's car and Queen's Carl took
Speaker 3: a bullet in the head but survived and sewed, did Rosemary.
Speaker 3: The cops connected the forty four caliber shellcasings from the
Speaker 3: Queen shooting to the Bronx shooting, and the papers came
Speaker 3: up with a spiffy name for this lunatic terrorizing New Yorkers,
Speaker 3: the forty four caliber killer. Baby. Don't Fear the Reaper.
Speaker 3: That line from the Blue Oyster cult single kept asking
Speaker 3: the impossible from speakers across the city in the spring.
Speaker 3: In summer of seventy six and later in November, another shooting, Seasons,
Speaker 3: Don't Fear the Reaper. Another couple of teenage girls, another Donna,
Speaker 3: this one Donna Demassi sixteen, along with joe Anne Lomino eighteen.
Speaker 3: Two shots and both girls survived, but the papers, especially
Speaker 3: the New York Daily News columns Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill,
Speaker 3: traded inc for industry scale paranoia. New Yorkers sweated out
Speaker 3: the winter La.
Speaker 5: La la la La.
Speaker 3: Don't fear the Reaper. The new year nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 3: new shootings. Another couple alone in the car. Christine Freud
Speaker 3: twenty six and John Diale thirty both were shot. She survived,
Speaker 3: he didn't, And the papers did their thing, and the
Speaker 3: public paranoia ratcheted even high. Love of two is one here,
Speaker 3: but now they're gone. March eighth, nineteen seventy seven, another
Speaker 3: shooting college student, Virginia Vuscashin, was walking back to her
Speaker 3: home in Queen's in the dark after class when the
Speaker 3: gunman appeared out of nowhere. She saw the gun, she
Speaker 3: raised her textbook in front of her face. The gunman shot,
Speaker 3: and the bullet blasted through the book and into Virginia's face.
Speaker 3: Virginia was dead here, but now they're gone. A month later,
Speaker 3: a model and her boyfriend parked at about three am
Speaker 3: on the side of the Hutchinson Parkway in the Bronx.
Speaker 3: One dead model, one dead boyfriend. Romeo and Juliet are
Speaker 3: together in eternity. Come on, baby, don't fear the reaper.
Speaker 3: And on May thirtieth, nineteen seventy seven, when Daily News calmed,
Speaker 3: Miss Jimmy Breslin was revealing to the world the psychotic
Speaker 3: rambling of the forty four caliber killer sent to Breslin
Speaker 3: himself by the Killer, who claimed for all to be,
Speaker 3: in his words, the son of Sam aka the self
Speaker 3: proclaimed Chubby Bohemoth aka Beezobub aka Satan aka Death himself
Speaker 3: aka the Reaper. While Breslin freaked New York City the
Speaker 3: fuck out, while cops hunted for the killer and the
Speaker 3: killer hunted for victims, Patty Smith was planning her next album,
Speaker 3: her third, the follow up to Radio Ethiopia. And while
Speaker 3: the NYPD hunted for the Son of Sam, Patty was
Speaker 3: still hunting for a song her friend Robert Maplethorpe could
Speaker 3: dance to. By June of that year, Bruce Springsteen had
Speaker 3: finally extracted himself from his legal problems. It was beginning
Speaker 3: work on his belated follow up to Born to Run,
Speaker 3: an album called Darkness on the Edge of Town, and
Speaker 3: there was plenty of darkness to go around, especially in
Speaker 3: New Yorktown. Investigators were at a dead end, unable to
Speaker 3: hunt down the Sun of Sam. The Knight no longer
Speaker 3: belonged to the city's lovers, but Springsteen didn't care. There
Speaker 3: was something there, the wisp of a song. As the
Speaker 3: sessions began with producer Jimmy Iavin, Springsteen had the chorus.
Speaker 3: It was defiant, triumphant. It reclaimed something. It went because
Speaker 3: the knight belongs to lovers. But that was it. That
Speaker 3: was all he had. The end of June came and
Speaker 3: the Son of Sam shot another couple, Salvatore Lupo twenty
Speaker 3: and Judy Placbo seventeen, and both survived. The Cobs kept
Speaker 3: up their hunt for the killer, but were still coming
Speaker 3: up empty by the end of the month. July hit
Speaker 3: with the heat of a thousand suns, and that meant
Speaker 3: that it had been a full year of terror in
Speaker 3: New York City. The self proclaimed chubby bohem Is celebrated
Speaker 3: by shooting at a parked car a couple kissing on
Speaker 3: their first date. Stacey Moskowitz and Robert Violente, both twenty,
Speaker 3: both were shot in the head. Stacy lived, Robert did not.
Speaker 3: In August, Patty Smith entered the Record Plant to begin
Speaker 3: work on her new album. That same week, police acting
Speaker 3: on a tip interviewed a chubby twenty something postal worker
Speaker 3: up in Yonkers named David Berkowitz. The following day, Berkowitz
Speaker 3: was arrested. The Son of Sam manhunt had ended. New
Speaker 3: York breathed a sigh of relief. Patti Smith kept her
Speaker 3: head down and worked, still hunting for a hit, a
Speaker 3: song Robert Maplethorpe could dance to. On September twenty seventh,
Speaker 3: Jimmy Iavin, who was also now producing Patty's new album,
Speaker 3: Springsteen's demo of Because the Night, into the studio for Patty.
Speaker 3: Patty heard something in the song that Bruce hadn't not
Speaker 3: just defiance, but again reclamation. She channeled it all into
Speaker 3: verse lyrics, Come on now, try and understand the way
Speaker 3: I feel when I'm in your hands, take my hand,
Speaker 3: come undercover. They can't hurt you now, can't hurt you now,
Speaker 3: can't hurt you now, because the Knight belongs to lovers
Speaker 3: once more, and now the son of Sam was behind bars,
Speaker 3: and young couples in New York were once again free
Speaker 3: to frolic. Because The Night was a massive smash. Patti
Speaker 3: Smith had her hit, and Robert Maplethorpe had a song
Speaker 3: you could dance to. Now Patty Smith was more than
Speaker 3: just an artist. For a minute, it seemed Patty Smith
Speaker 3: was a pop star. Because The Night was Patty Smith's
Speaker 3: commercial breakthrough. It was a top forty hit, top five
Speaker 3: in the UK Easter. The album that the single supported
Speaker 3: sold better than Patty's previous two albums combined. But pop
Speaker 3: stardom was never her goal being an artist was. An
Speaker 3: artist need fuel in inspiration, and sometimes the only source
Speaker 3: for them is love. So naturally, while at the top
Speaker 3: of her game, Patty Smith walked away from the game.
Speaker 3: She fell in love with another artist, another guitarist, this
Speaker 3: one Fred Sonic Smith from the proto punk anarchists and
Speaker 3: Motor City Legends the MC five. In nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 3: Patty moved to Detroit to marry Fred and traded a
Speaker 3: quote unquote career for fulfillment, the kind of fulfillment that
Speaker 3: only creating a family can bring. But soon enough, New
Speaker 3: York City would come calling again with some very bad news.
Speaker 3: By the late eighties, Patti Smith's best friend, the first
Speaker 3: great love of her life, her creative confidant, her literal
Speaker 3: and figurative partner in crime. During those formative years in
Speaker 3: New York, Robert Maplethorpe, after having become one of the
Speaker 3: most successful photographers on the planet, was dying from AIDS
Speaker 3: related complications. On his deathbed, Robert asked Patty appointed question,
Speaker 3: did art get us? Perhaps Art took Robert, but it
Speaker 3: didn't take fred sonicsmith heart failure did Patty's other great love.
Speaker 3: Fred Smith died in nineteen ninety four, five years after
Speaker 3: Robert Maplethorpe, and Patty did what all great artists do
Speaker 3: to process grief. She worked, She made new music, went
Speaker 3: on tour with Bob Dylan, moved back to New York City,
Speaker 3: and she wrote prodigiously, publishing books of poetry, books about
Speaker 3: her obsession with the works of Warhol, books of drawings,
Speaker 3: of photography, a collection of song lyrics, all to critical acclaim,
Speaker 3: and in twenty ten she released Just Kids, a personal
Speaker 3: memoir of her early life in her time in New
Speaker 3: York City with Robert Maplethorpe, and later that year, Just
Speaker 3: Kids won the National Book Award for non Fiction, one
Speaker 3: of the most prestigious literary honors in the world. In
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen, Patty released a second memoir, M Train, which
Speaker 3: focused more on her present life and the unconventional ways
Speaker 3: in which she'd pursued making art and the irredeemable loss
Speaker 3: she felt after the death of her husband Fred. M
Speaker 3: Train was a national bestseller, and Patty followed it up
Speaker 3: with four more titles, including the recent Bread of Angels
Speaker 3: another memoir. Each book was released to more critical praise
Speaker 3: and numerous awards and nominations Grammys, a Pen Award, the
Speaker 3: Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, honorary doctorates from prestigious universities. It's
Speaker 3: now twenty twenty six, and it's clear that Patti Smith
Speaker 3: is still living a life that few artists get to live.
Speaker 3: She is, as I mentioned earlier, the high priestess of art.
Speaker 3: She has enjoyed both critical and commercial success, artistic credibility
Speaker 3: in the underground, and doors that fly open for her
Speaker 3: at elite cultural institutions. Most importantly, she survived. She's seventy
Speaker 3: nine years old and has lived to harvest the fruits
Speaker 3: of her artistic labor, no small feat. Most artists of
Speaker 3: consequence succumbed to the ever present danger that surrounds them.
Speaker 3: Jean Janay and William S. Burrows lived to be seventy
Speaker 3: five and eighty three, respectively, but Rimbaud died at thirty seven,
Speaker 3: Pollock at forty four, Coltrane at forty, Brian Jones twenty seven,
Speaker 3: and too many other artists to name, all of whom
Speaker 3: died too young. And of course there was Robert Maplethorpe,
Speaker 3: who asked, did Art get us dead at just forty two?
Speaker 3: Perhaps the reason Patty Smith survived is something that she
Speaker 3: revealed in Mtrain. When you read it, you can't help
Speaker 3: but feel Patty writing at times in a sort of
Speaker 3: gumshoe detective way, channeling her inner Mickey Spellane, her inner
Speaker 3: Raymond Chandler. It's not full on Philip Marlowe. It's subtle.
Speaker 3: But what isn't subtle is Patty's love of detective fiction,
Speaker 3: both on the page and on screen. In a word,
Speaker 3: Patty Smith is crime obsessed. Law and Order, The Girl
Speaker 3: with the Dragon Tattoo, Midsummer Murders, Sherlock Holmes, Luther, CSI, Miami,
Speaker 3: The Killing. Patti Smith reveals an m Train that she
Speaker 3: is so obsessed with some of these crime series that
Speaker 3: she will sometimes rearrange her travel schedule in order to
Speaker 3: catch various shows when they air on TV in different countries.
Speaker 3: Her obsession with the show The Killing was so intense
Speaker 3: that she wrote to the producers when it was canceled
Speaker 3: to mourn the loss. The producers responded by giving Patty
Speaker 3: a cameo on one of the series' last episodes, but
Speaker 3: Patti Smith's obsession with TV crime shows. I don't believe
Speaker 3: that it's just folly. I believe that it comes from
Speaker 3: Patty's extensive expos to actual crime throughout the course of
Speaker 3: her life. The Lindbergh Baby, Charles Manson, The Son of Sam.
Speaker 3: These true crime stories were formative for Patty Smith, as
Speaker 3: was the ever present danger of New York City in
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixties and seventies. The blood splattered walls of
Speaker 3: her first apartment, the body outlined in chalk on the
Speaker 3: street outside Roberts, the dancer plunging to her death from
Speaker 3: the top of the Chelsea, her friend William S Burrows,
Speaker 3: who shot and killed his wife and got away with it.
Speaker 3: Jim Carroll's deadly addiction to heroin, Robert Maplethorpe's forty Second
Speaker 3: Street Hustling. Not to mention the addiction, violence, and deadly
Speaker 3: recklessness that accompanies most artists lives. Patty Smith was a
Speaker 3: hair's breath from all of it, and she learned from
Speaker 3: it all, learned from the crime, learned how not to
Speaker 3: succumb to the danger of it, but instead to use
Speaker 3: it as creative fuel. Patty Smith survived to become that
Speaker 3: rare type of artists that she became because I believe
Speaker 3: Patti Smith knew what all crime fiction and true crime
Speaker 3: fans know, and that's how to stay safe, to be
Speaker 3: vigilant aware, and like all great artists, to trust her intuition,
Speaker 3: to believe in that calling, because the knight doesn't just
Speaker 3: belong to lovers, it belongs to the criminals. I'm Jake
Speaker 3: Brennan in this is Disgraceland. All right, guys, you've not
Speaker 3: heard the Patti Smith episode of the disgrace Slam podcast.
Speaker 3: The question I want to ask you all is which
Speaker 3: musician's memoir or autobiography would you recommend? Get your answers
Speaker 3: in via voicemail and text to six one seven nine
Speaker 3: oh six six six three eight, or hit me on
Speaker 3: the socials at disgracelampod in the comments. Here comes some credits.
Speaker 3: Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
Speaker 3: partnership with Double Elvis, the Exactly Right Network in iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 3: Credits for this episode can be found on the show
Speaker 3: notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as
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