Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, y'all, today we have the one and only
Speaker 1: Patty Smith on the show. Patty's the prototypical downtown New
Speaker 1: York City artist. Her nineteen seventy five debut album, Horses
Speaker 1: is credited as one of the masterpieces of its time.
Speaker 1: It also cemented her as one of rock and roll's
Speaker 1: great lyricists, but her writing extends far beyond music. Her
Speaker 1: twenty ten memoir Just Kids won the National Book Award
Speaker 1: for its brilliant portrayal of the late sixties bohemian art
Speaker 1: scene in New York and Patty's experience living in the
Speaker 1: Chelsea Hotel with famed photographer Robert Maplethorpe. During those years,
Speaker 1: Patty hung out with Andy Warhol at the Factory and
Speaker 1: was mentored by great writers like William S. Burrows and
Speaker 1: Alan Ginsburg. Today, Patty publishes near daily offerings of poems, songs,
Speaker 1: and serialized fiction on her sub stack. It's a journal
Speaker 1: of sorts that she started during the solitary days of
Speaker 1: the pandemic. On today's episode, Malcolm Gladwell talks to Patti
Speaker 1: Smith about her writing in the studio Jimi Hendrix built
Speaker 1: Electric Lady. It was there, she tells Malcolm that she
Speaker 1: met Hendrix in nineteen seventy, just weeks before he passed.
Speaker 1: She also talks about hanging out with and writing lyrics
Speaker 1: for Janis Joplin, and she recalls the fund that she
Speaker 1: had during a failed attempt to cover Adele in concert.
Speaker 1: This is Broken Record liner notes for the Digital Age.
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond. Here's Malcolm Gladwell and Patti Smith. Patty,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us on Broken Record. Thank you.
Speaker 1: We are here in Electric Lady Studios, a place that
Speaker 1: you have a special relationship too, and little bits of
Speaker 1: you are all around this place. I noticed as I
Speaker 1: came in. When did you first come here? What's your
Speaker 1: what is your history with Electric Lady? Well, my very
Speaker 1: first time I came was Jimmy's opening party, which I
Speaker 1: think is August twenty six, nineteen seventy. Jimmy Andris Jimmy
Speaker 1: Hendricks had a party to open it, and I was
Speaker 1: writing record reviews and things at the time, and I
Speaker 1: was invited. So I was very excited because he was
Speaker 1: one of my favorite artists, and I came, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't used to going to high profile parties, and so
Speaker 1: I wound up sitting on the steps and just watching
Speaker 1: people go back and forth because I didn't I just
Speaker 1: didn't have the nerve to go in. And Jimmy had
Speaker 1: to leave the party early. I think he had a flight.
Speaker 1: He was going to the Isle of Wight and he
Speaker 1: had that big festival. He was going to London in
Speaker 1: any event, and he saw me sitting on the steps,
Speaker 1: and this was nineteen seventy. I was, you know, I
Speaker 1: had a certain look, you know, I was probably appealing
Speaker 1: in a certain way. And he laughed and he said, uh,
Speaker 1: you're not going. He had that really that soft voice,
Speaker 1: not going to the party. You know, I can't do it.
Speaker 1: But and I said, well, I'm a little shy, and
Speaker 1: he said, and he told me he was shy too.
Speaker 1: He said, actually people didn't understand that about him, but
Speaker 1: he was shy. And he said it was interesting how
Speaker 1: you could be such a you know, an aggressive performer,
Speaker 1: yet still be shy around people. And he told me
Speaker 1: that he was going to go and do these shows,
Speaker 1: a handful of shows, and then he was going to
Speaker 1: come back, go to Woodstock and gather musicians from all
Speaker 1: over the world and then have them sit in a
Speaker 1: circle and play just like like or Nick coleman is,
Speaker 1: as you know, ofteness or whatever, out of tune, different keys,
Speaker 1: instruments that didn't normally go together meld together, play and
Speaker 1: play and play till they connected and found a common language.
Speaker 1: And to him that would be the language of peace.
Speaker 1: And then he left, and of course we never saw
Speaker 1: him again. He died in London only maybe a couple
Speaker 1: weeks later, a few weeks later, I think, which was heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: So that was my introduction to Electric Ladies studios. I
Speaker 1: didn't even have the nerve to come into inside, and
Speaker 1: never dreamed that I would one day be recording because
Speaker 1: I was working in a bookstore and writing reviews. But
Speaker 1: subsequently I recorded my independent single, Piss Factory Horses here
Speaker 1: and just a plus of other albums. Over half my
Speaker 1: albums I've recorded here, including my last album. So it's
Speaker 1: become quite a home for me. And in terms of
Speaker 1: you mentioning bits and pieces of me here, you can't
Speaker 1: imagine what an honor it is still after all these
Speaker 1: years to walk in here and see horses on the wall,
Speaker 1: other pictures on the wall. It means a great deal
Speaker 1: to me. When you came in, you were pointing at
Speaker 1: a collage on the wall that's not yours is no,
Speaker 1: the collage is just part of the art that was here.
Speaker 1: If you go in the bathroom, have you gone to
Speaker 1: the bathroom here yet? It's Daykupa and it's the same.
Speaker 1: All the art is the same. All these murals were
Speaker 1: here when the studio opened. Jimmy commissioned all of these murals.
Speaker 1: And the bathrooms, the lady and men's room are all
Speaker 1: dey Coupa, which was very it was a very sixty
Speaker 1: late sixties thing, and you know, varnished, lots of collage
Speaker 1: material varnished over and that is probably a piece of
Speaker 1: artwork that was in one of the offices. But you
Speaker 1: have to go in the bathroom before you left. But
Speaker 1: who wait, who else was at the party? Do you remember? No?
Speaker 1: Because I was, I mean probably Eddie Kramer. And you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know any of these people. As I said,
Speaker 1: I was working in a bookstore and I knew a
Speaker 1: handful of people. I knew some writers from Maxis Kansas City,
Speaker 1: or had met lou Reid and a few people. But
Speaker 1: you know this these were like probably you know, maybe
Speaker 1: there were a lot of celebrities or models or producers,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't part of my world, so I only
Speaker 1: cared about Jimmie Hendrick. So I don't know who else
Speaker 1: was at the party at that point. You'd been in
Speaker 1: New York for how long? I came to New York
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven, July nineteen sixty seven, so like
Speaker 1: a couple of years. But I went to Brooklyn. I
Speaker 1: moved to Brooklyn with Robert Maplethorpe, and then we moved
Speaker 1: to the Chelsea Hotel in August of sixty nine, So
Speaker 1: this was a year later, so I was still quite
Speaker 1: the fledgling. Yeah, I want to come back to that period,
Speaker 1: but I want to do this little exercise first, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, as I look back on your career, it's
Speaker 1: unusual in many respects, But one of the things it's
Speaker 1: most unusual about it is it's like, it's really kind
Speaker 1: of you can give me the exact number, it's really
Speaker 1: four or five different lives. It's a few. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want you to go through your tell me all the
Speaker 1: Patti Smith lives. Well, funny enough, I'm writing a book
Speaker 1: about that, so but I can I mean, in terms
Speaker 1: of my public life, my public life started quite slowly
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one. I did you know I came
Speaker 1: to New York. Really I wanted to be an artist,
Speaker 1: a visual artist, and really I felt like language for
Speaker 1: some reason. I was also writing a lot of poetry,
Speaker 1: and poetry really sort of eclipsed the visual arts. So
Speaker 1: I really dedicated myself to poetry in the late sixties
Speaker 1: and early seventies, and I was working in a bookstore.
Speaker 1: So I would say that period of my life from
Speaker 1: sixty seven to seventy five was really devoted to writing poetry,
Speaker 1: starting to perform publicly, and of course being greatly influenced
Speaker 1: and shepherded by Robert Maplethorpe and then Sam Shephard. These
Speaker 1: formative years that I had. I was very lucky to
Speaker 1: have so many good teachers, you know, and breaking my
Speaker 1: life up. I would say that period from sixty seven
Speaker 1: to seventy five was my university. I was friends with
Speaker 1: William Burrows and yes, you've skipped childhood. Yeah, well I'm
Speaker 1: number nine. I'm not going through that with you. I'm
Speaker 1: just say poor one is pre New York. Yeah, Part
Speaker 1: one is pre New York. But in terms of the
Speaker 1: work that I do, yeah, it would really start when
Speaker 1: I came to New York because when I came to
Speaker 1: New York, I was twenty. I was excited about everything.
Speaker 1: I was well read, I had a good work ethic
Speaker 1: in terms of writing and doing jobs. You know, I've
Speaker 1: been working since I was about fourteen, whether in factories
Speaker 1: or picking blueberries or working in bookstores. So in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, when I came to New York and met Robert,
Speaker 1: that was when I really, along with him, made a
Speaker 1: vow to you know, pretty much to art, art being
Speaker 1: all the fields of art, but I was I became
Speaker 1: much more devoted to poetry, and that that period was
Speaker 1: really my learning period. I met a lot of people
Speaker 1: who helped me along encourage me. Bobby new Wirth encouraged
Speaker 1: me to write lyrics, Jim Carroll to write poetry. I
Speaker 1: was so lucky to know William Burrows and Gregory Corso
Speaker 1: and Alan Ginsburg, and not just as friends but teachers.
Speaker 1: They looked at my work, they encouraged me, They invited
Speaker 1: me to read with them and to be somewhat part
Speaker 1: of their world. Where are you meeting these people in
Speaker 1: the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel? Mostly, I mean back
Speaker 1: then Robert and I moved there in sixty nine and
Speaker 1: there was the l Kyote Bar next door to it,
Speaker 1: and they all went there. I mean I didn't really drink,
Speaker 1: but they all went there so you could go and
Speaker 1: sit in the bar and sit next to Carl Solomon
Speaker 1: or Terry Southern and William and I had a big
Speaker 1: crush on Williams, so you know, we became friends. But
Speaker 1: back then everybody was around, you know, there wasn't the
Speaker 1: same cult of celebrity. It was just like in the Chelsea.
Speaker 1: I was living there and so was Janis Joplin living
Speaker 1: there for a while. Only we all dressed the same.
Speaker 1: We all listened to the same music. They were a
Speaker 1: couple of years older than me, some of these people,
Speaker 1: but we were of the same mindset. And yeah, some
Speaker 1: of them are real well known, but we all commingled.
Speaker 1: And because every all of us were like as I
Speaker 1: would say, outside society. Janis Joplin was big, but also
Speaker 1: she couldn't go into fancy hotels because of the way
Speaker 1: she dressed. And we all talked and hung out together.
Speaker 1: But I had very good mentors very early on. For instance,
Speaker 1: Bobby knew Worth, who I recognized from being and don't
Speaker 1: look back. Bobby was also a painter and a songwriter,
Speaker 1: is I mean? And Bobby introduced me. He was tour
Speaker 1: managing Janice Joplin at the time, and she was writing material,
Speaker 1: and Bobby liked my poems and he wanted me. He
Speaker 1: encouraged me to write some lyrics for her. You know,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of encouragement from people. I was
Speaker 1: sort of an unusual I was like Colden Coffield at
Speaker 1: the Chelsea, a little mix of Holden Coffield or Eloise
Speaker 1: at the Plaza. I don't know, I was not even
Speaker 1: though I was sort of a South Jersey hick. But
Speaker 1: I was really well read. And I was also probably
Speaker 1: one of the few people who wasn't stoned or speeding
Speaker 1: half the time because I didn't take drugs and I
Speaker 1: had a steady job, which meant I could be hit
Speaker 1: for a couple of dollars here and there. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I can't say why these really great people, you know,
Speaker 1: took me in under their wing, but they did. I'm
Speaker 1: struck in that era, that world that you're inhabiting, in
Speaker 1: this sort of first stage sixty seven to seventy five,
Speaker 1: how many people are like you, outsiders who come to
Speaker 1: New York I'm fascinated by the notion of people who arrived.
Speaker 1: The difference between arriving to New York from as you did,
Speaker 1: you know, as you call yourself a hick from South Jersey,
Speaker 1: difference between encountering all of what was going on culturally. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you one thing. I came to New York
Speaker 1: for a job. That's why I mean. In South Jersey
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of work. And then they had
Speaker 1: the New York Shipyard closed down in nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 1: or sixty six, and thirty thousand people went out of work,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't any work. I mean yet the Columbia
Speaker 1: record pressing plant near where I lived, or the Campbell
Speaker 1: soup plant. But all the factory jobs, any kind of
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, any kind of bookstore job, anything was taken.
Speaker 1: And I had no real skills. So I actually went
Speaker 1: to New York looking for work. That was my first preoccupation.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to meet
Speaker 1: people like me who were more outsider types or more
Speaker 1: devoted to art. But the first thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: find was a job. New York at the time was
Speaker 1: great for people like me because you could get an apartment.
Speaker 1: Even if you only made like sixty dollars a week,
Speaker 1: you could get an apartment for eighty dollars a month.
Speaker 1: I mean it might be filled with cockroaches and stuff,
Speaker 1: but you know, when you're young, I mean I didn't care.
Speaker 1: It was a really good time for people like me.
Speaker 1: And they came from all over. There was also the
Speaker 1: fact that a lot of kids that were you know,
Speaker 1: gay kids, which we didn't even have that term then,
Speaker 1: but a lot of kids that were from all over
Speaker 1: America who were thrown out by their families, disowned or
Speaker 1: were abused in their neighborhoods or down south or wherever
Speaker 1: they were from. They all migrated to New York City
Speaker 1: because New York City was you know, you can say
Speaker 1: anything about, you know, the problems with the police or stuff.
Speaker 1: And but at that time, considering where a lot of
Speaker 1: us came from and what the kind of abuse you
Speaker 1: would get if you were different, just dress indifferent was
Speaker 1: so strong that to come to a place like New
Speaker 1: York City where nobody cared, you could dress the way
Speaker 1: you wanted. You know, you could reinvent yourself, you could
Speaker 1: be you know, really you know, any sexual persuasion at
Speaker 1: least to a point at least among a like minded society. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how did you meet Robert Maplethorpe. I met him, you know,
Speaker 1: first I met him in Brooklyn. I had nowhere to
Speaker 1: I came to New York with about five dollars and
Speaker 1: no job and nowhere to stay. I knew a couple
Speaker 1: of people who went to Pratt University, but I had
Speaker 1: forgotten that it was summertime and there was nobody there.
Speaker 1: And when I went to their apartments, some of them
Speaker 1: had moved out, and one of the people I was
Speaker 1: looking for had moved out, and Robert was staying there.
Speaker 1: And I was just directed to Robert. Asked Robert, asked him.
Speaker 1: They didn't even tell me his name. Ask asked my roommate,
Speaker 1: if they know where your friend lives? And he did
Speaker 1: so he led me to where my friend lived. My
Speaker 1: friend was away, and I wound up sleep in the
Speaker 1: hallway or on the stoop on the third of July,
Speaker 1: because I remember I woke up it. I woke up
Speaker 1: at the fourth of July, you know, sitting asleep on
Speaker 1: the stoop with firecrackers going off, and it was all
Speaker 1: these kids setting off firecrackers. Because I had forgotten that
Speaker 1: it was Independence Day, and indeed I was independent, and
Speaker 1: then I just surened upitously met him a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and one afternoon or one evening he sort of rescued
Speaker 1: me from a difficult situation and we started talking. And
Speaker 1: we walked around the village all night for hours, talking,
Speaker 1: and Robert was on acid. But I had never even
Speaker 1: seen acid in person. I had only read about it
Speaker 1: like an Anais Ninn or Henry Miller books. I'd never
Speaker 1: seen anybody on acid. And we just talked all night,
Speaker 1: and then in the end he said, do you have
Speaker 1: a place to stay? And I said no, and neither
Speaker 1: did he because of different circumstances. Neither one of us
Speaker 1: had an apartment, but he had the key to somebody
Speaker 1: else's apartment who was away. And then we went there
Speaker 1: and sat up talking till dawn, and then we never
Speaker 1: parted until we did. Yeah, well, I'd found somebody like me,
Speaker 1: somebody who had been disenfranchised, someone who had been sort
Speaker 1: of disowned by his father, someone who wanted to devote
Speaker 1: himself to art. You know, the perfect boy to meet
Speaker 1: at twenty years old. I mean, just kids, it's this
Speaker 1: beautiful thing about your career, that you've produced these transcendent
Speaker 1: things in more than one genre. I mean, there's such
Speaker 1: a rare thing to have. I mean, I remember, I
Speaker 1: didn't really know much about you until I read Just Kids.
Speaker 1: I thought was one of the most beautiful love stories
Speaker 1: I've ever read. Oh thank you. But then I realized, oh,
Speaker 1: this has written by someone who has also produced a
Speaker 1: kind of the whole series of iconic albums as well.
Speaker 1: I mean that that kind of double threat is very impressive. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's just the way I am. I mean,
Speaker 1: believe me. When I was young old, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be was an abstract expressionist painter. I would have been
Speaker 1: happy just being like Joan Mitchell or Dakooning or somebody.
Speaker 1: And I do produce. I have produced a lot of
Speaker 1: visual work, but it's just part of me. What made
Speaker 1: it even more complicated wasn't just that I wrote poetry
Speaker 1: and then you know, obviously have written books and recorded.
Speaker 1: Then to throw performing into the mix, which that that
Speaker 1: was just another one. I thought, Oh my god. I
Speaker 1: just Robert always used to worry about me, say can't
Speaker 1: you just pick one? You know, he would he would
Speaker 1: worry that I would spread myself too thin. But it's
Speaker 1: just as part of my jumping being personality, I suppose.
Speaker 1: But I do what calls me for different reasons. Does
Speaker 1: it feel different to create music than to create other
Speaker 1: kinds of art? Well, I'm not really a musician. I
Speaker 1: don't create a whole lot of music. I mean, I
Speaker 1: write little melodies and they're often similar. It's like, left
Speaker 1: to my own devices, I would be sort of a
Speaker 1: poler you know, polar music player or porch song writer,
Speaker 1: because when I write things on my own, they're like
Speaker 1: little porch songs. And I don't really play anything except
Speaker 1: feedback and about four or five chords. And I don't
Speaker 1: think like a musician. I have a natural feel for
Speaker 1: melody and might sing to myself walking down the street.
Speaker 1: But I'm not I was married to a great musician.
Speaker 1: I know, I've seen how a musician's mind works, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm more prone to language. Yeah. Wait, talk about
Speaker 1: this a little bit more. What exactly do you mean
Speaker 1: by the way a musicians minds works? Well, I mean
Speaker 1: I can't. I'm just saying that the way that I'm
Speaker 1: obsessed with writing and the way that I really have
Speaker 1: to write every day, I've written almost every day, most
Speaker 1: since I was a kid, and whether anyone sees it
Speaker 1: or not, I would say seventy percent of my writing
Speaker 1: has never been published. I am compelled to write, and musician,
Speaker 1: at least my husband was compelled to translate his you know, dreams,
Speaker 1: his thoughts, his vision into music. And I don't really
Speaker 1: think like that. Yeah, I'm more a performer. And people say, oh,
Speaker 1: you're too modest, you don't want to be called a musician. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be called a musician because I
Speaker 1: haven't earned that. But I am a performer and I'm
Speaker 1: a strong performer and I have earned that, and that's
Speaker 1: good enough for me. We're going to take a quick
Speaker 1: break and then come back with more from Malcolm Gladwell
Speaker 1: and Patti Smith. We're back with more from Malcolm Gladwell's
Speaker 1: interview with Patti Smith. Let's go back to many lives
Speaker 1: of Patti Smith. So life number one is as you
Speaker 1: say that that period ending in seventy five for two
Speaker 1: is what I would say. The next stage is really,
Speaker 1: you know, going out into the world, performing, having a
Speaker 1: public life, which part of me is, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: very reclusive, not very social, and I could spend fourteen
Speaker 1: hours just working on you know, the end of chapter seven.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't crave public life, but it has
Speaker 1: called to me in the seventies. Of course, until I
Speaker 1: left in seventy nine, I became the leader of a band,
Speaker 1: and I'd like that. I'd like that position of being
Speaker 1: sort of a you know, having my people. My brother
Speaker 1: was the head of my crew. I had a small
Speaker 1: loyal group and see in the world and having some
Speaker 1: effect on people, a positive effect on people, or having
Speaker 1: an effect on new artists, or having an effect on
Speaker 1: the disenfranchised all over the world, and that was meaningful.
Speaker 1: So I would say that period it was very demanding
Speaker 1: and very demanding on me physically. But I would say
Speaker 1: that entering public life that took up a lot of
Speaker 1: my time till the end of the seventies, which in
Speaker 1: some ways it had its great greatness in it its excitement,
Speaker 1: but in terms of being a writer, it definitely interrupted
Speaker 1: my evolution and interrupted my evolution as a human being.
Speaker 1: Because the stress and the demands of a life like that,
Speaker 1: sometimes one develops demanding habits, or you know, a less
Speaker 1: caring or you might be compassionate in terms of the world,
Speaker 1: but in terms of interaction. You know, I was I
Speaker 1: had a lot of hubrists and I had to as
Speaker 1: a girl moving through this period of time, you know,
Speaker 1: I had to be tough, and I could be tough.
Speaker 1: I could be mean as a snake. Actually, what was
Speaker 1: your first important performance as a musician. Well, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of them, but I would say
Speaker 1: one of the most important, just in terms of comprehending
Speaker 1: where we were at, was performing in London at the
Speaker 1: Roundhouse in seventy six. When you know, you go to
Speaker 1: Europe and I think, well, whoever heard of us? You know,
Speaker 1: we didn't have social media and stuff like that. You
Speaker 1: might have your picture in some rock magazines or something,
Speaker 1: and we didn't have any hits or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of word of mouth, and so
Speaker 1: we went to play the Roundhouse. It was so packed
Speaker 1: and there were actually young guys coming through a hole
Speaker 1: in the roof jumping down into the crowd to get in.
Speaker 1: And later when I met Paul Simonon from the Clash,
Speaker 1: he told me that he was one of those kids
Speaker 1: who really yes because he didn't have the money to
Speaker 1: get in, so that's how he got in. Was that
Speaker 1: your first international tour. Yeah, it was maybe our first
Speaker 1: job was in Brussels, which was even crazier. It was
Speaker 1: just that first tour. It was just suddenly saying that
Speaker 1: people liked our work in places we never been. Brussels, Finland,
Speaker 1: you know, it was awesome. You know, Sweden we went to,
Speaker 1: and you know, being from you know, lower middle class
Speaker 1: background and never having any money to travel, getting to
Speaker 1: see all these places was awesome. We didn't make all
Speaker 1: that much money or anything, but we didn't care. We
Speaker 1: were getting to see the world and getting to meet
Speaker 1: new people and see, you know, what they were doing.
Speaker 1: And because I started out a little older, because I
Speaker 1: was in my I don't know how old I was,
Speaker 1: but you know, we had a lot of younger kids
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty who wanted to do things, and a lot
Speaker 1: of girls checking out the situation. And what I always
Speaker 1: told him is I had no particular gifts. If I
Speaker 1: could do it, you could do it. If you have
Speaker 1: a vision and if you have will and you have
Speaker 1: a benevolent vision that you want to share with people,
Speaker 1: you know, in some guts, you can do it. I'm
Speaker 1: curious about that era in rock and roll is the
Speaker 1: relationship of the artist to the audience in that era
Speaker 1: mid seventies, different than it is today. I don't know mine,
Speaker 1: isn't you know. I can't say because I don't really
Speaker 1: go to concerts, you know, I don't really. When I
Speaker 1: was younger, I learned a lot about how to interact
Speaker 1: with the audience from Johnny Winter because I had a
Speaker 1: job sort of helping with Johnny. Johnny was completely color blind,
Speaker 1: and when I was living at the Chelseas, so was
Speaker 1: Johnny and Steve Paul, his manager, actually gave me a
Speaker 1: job because I was very trustworthy, just you know, walking
Speaker 1: with Johnny when he had to cross a lot of
Speaker 1: streets and things because he couldn't tell the red from
Speaker 1: the green traffic lights, things like that. I went to
Speaker 1: London once with them, just to make sure Johnny was
Speaker 1: maneuvering the streets well. And so I went to a
Speaker 1: lot of his concerts. And Johnny was one of the
Speaker 1: most in all my life, one of the most electric
Speaker 1: performers I ever saw. Just such a great singer, such
Speaker 1: a great guitar player, and fearless. He was the first
Speaker 1: person I saw jump into the crowd with an electric guitar.
Speaker 1: Just so much energy and so much interaction with the
Speaker 1: people looking them straight in the eye. I mean because
Speaker 1: I had I was like into like Bob Dylan, or
Speaker 1: when I was younger, Lou Reid or the Velvet Underground.
Speaker 1: They were all were really cool, you know, they didn't interact.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that critically. I love that, you know,
Speaker 1: but Johnny Winner was a totally different animal, and where
Speaker 1: I would have imagined I would have been more like
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan, because I really modeled myself after Bob Dylan,
Speaker 1: I was really more like Johnny I just I don't
Speaker 1: know where it comes from, but I can be sort
Speaker 1: of like stand there like Edith poff into a little song.
Speaker 1: But especially when I was young, I was I was
Speaker 1: an animal. Tell me what that means, well, I just
Speaker 1: mean I was fearly. You know, I was fearless. I
Speaker 1: would jump off at piano on my knees. I you know,
Speaker 1: I would play like I had the loudest amplifier in
Speaker 1: you know when we played like improvation or feedback and
Speaker 1: put my foot through an amp. If I was pissed off,
Speaker 1: I would just could rip. I had the heaviest strings
Speaker 1: on my electric guitar. I could just slide my hand
Speaker 1: to rip them out. In one I ripped a pickup
Speaker 1: out of my duasnic Ones. I just had so much
Speaker 1: concentrated energy. And I'm not saying I don't have energy now,
Speaker 1: but at seventy five, I paced myself different. Yeah. Every
Speaker 1: once in a while though that comes through. You know,
Speaker 1: I still she's still there, She's just paces herself. What
Speaker 1: is it? Is it? You call it energy? Is it frustration?
Speaker 1: Is it anger? Is it enthusiasm? Now? It's just pure energy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: pure energy. And that's what you saw on Johnny Winter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it was It wasn't even political. I didn't really
Speaker 1: have I mean, of course being it's always been a
Speaker 1: humanist or something, but I wasn't. What I did was
Speaker 1: only political. It was personally political. What I wanted to
Speaker 1: do was create space for new people because I perceived
Speaker 1: that I loved rock and roll. I loved it. I
Speaker 1: was brought up with it, danced to it, listened to it,
Speaker 1: daydream to it. And I didn't want to see it
Speaker 1: become like stadium ACX, glamorous acts, all about just indulgence,
Speaker 1: and uh, I don't know. I didn't really like the
Speaker 1: direction it was going into. I wanted to preserve some
Speaker 1: of the I mean it might seem like a lot
Speaker 1: of hubrists for a young girl that you know, but
Speaker 1: I had a lot of hubrists. I mean I could
Speaker 1: have liked played Coreolanus or something. I had so much
Speaker 1: humorous but I mean, think of like who we lost
Speaker 1: my generation. We lost when I was a teenager, President
Speaker 1: Kennedy got shot, and then Martin Luther King, you know,
Speaker 1: then Bobby Kennedy, and then you know, we have our
Speaker 1: our musicians that we love, and then Brian Jones died,
Speaker 1: and Jimmy Hendricks died, and Jim Morrison died, and Janis
Speaker 1: Joplin died. I mean, these were like such important voices,
Speaker 1: and you know, they were just how I imagined. I
Speaker 1: imagined that, you know, music of the future was going
Speaker 1: to be Jimmie Hendricks, Coltrane, you know, all the all
Speaker 1: the people that I loved, and we just lost them
Speaker 1: really quickly, lost Coltrane early, that poetic voice that was
Speaker 1: so strong in the late sixties. And I didn't want
Speaker 1: to see it go. I didn't want to see it
Speaker 1: diffused into some other place. But you know, also I
Speaker 1: was highly opinionated, so I was just trying to kick
Speaker 1: open doors. I only expected to do one record, you know,
Speaker 1: Clive Davis asked me to do a record. I was
Speaker 1: amazed at that. Fine. I did a record, and then
Speaker 1: I was just going to go back to you know,
Speaker 1: back to the bookstore, back to Ryton poetry. But I
Speaker 1: did have an aim with that record was to create
Speaker 1: space for new people, for people who became Michael Stipe,
Speaker 1: you know, for whoever. That was my goal. So when
Speaker 1: you're on that initial tour of Europe and though you
Speaker 1: know the kids are climbing through the hole in the
Speaker 1: in the roof to get into the crowd, is that
Speaker 1: were there, that's what they're responding to. I didn't take
Speaker 1: it personally like they were responding to me. They were
Speaker 1: responding to something new that they could do themselves, or
Speaker 1: maybe Eclipse. And that's what I wanted. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be the king or queen or princess of anything.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to, you know, shake things up. What
Speaker 1: were you playing in those concerts other than your own work?
Speaker 1: What were you playing? Well? I mean, my own work
Speaker 1: also incorporated you know, our version of Land of a
Speaker 1: Thousand Dances and Gloria and just our songs, reggae songs.
Speaker 1: If I liked a certain R and B song. We
Speaker 1: try it, but mostly our own stuff. Is there a
Speaker 1: difference in the way you approach covering a song verses
Speaker 1: one of your own. It depends on the song. Like
Speaker 1: sometimes Land of a Thousand Dances really a catalyst for
Speaker 1: an apocalypse, you know, it was sometimes a song because
Speaker 1: I was just starting out. We started out with piana
Speaker 1: like Lenny K my pianist and I and it was
Speaker 1: basically we started out musically mostly for three chord songs
Speaker 1: that I could rap over. I wasn't particularly a great singer.
Speaker 1: I didn't know much about singing. I mean I sang
Speaker 1: in like the school choir and stuff. But it was
Speaker 1: more a vehicle for me to improvise poetry. You know.
Speaker 1: Horses grew from a lot of improvisation, like being at
Speaker 1: CBGB's in doing a twenty two minute version of Land
Speaker 1: of a Thousand Dances. That was a lot of poetry.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think like William Burrows and Allen
Speaker 1: Ginsberg and Gregory they liked me. They liked the fusion
Speaker 1: of this energy and youth but with a semi sophisticated
Speaker 1: poetic aspect. Yeah, But then you know, also there's certain
Speaker 1: songs that I'll just do as the song. I do
Speaker 1: it much better now because I'm a better singer than
Speaker 1: I was when I was younger. I mostly sang out
Speaker 1: on my nose when I was younger. You know, for instance,
Speaker 1: what song these days we did, um Blame It on
Speaker 1: the Sun by Stevie Wonder, just do it really nice,
Speaker 1: respectful version? I covered Stay, the one that Rhiannon Mickey
Speaker 1: Echo did. I love covering songs. Every once while, I
Speaker 1: have a disaster where I try to cover a song
Speaker 1: where I don't really I don't really have the range
Speaker 1: or the technique to do that song, but I'll get
Speaker 1: so enamored with a song I was trying. Example of
Speaker 1: a disaster, Oh I did the worst. It was rolling
Speaker 1: in the Deep. I tried doing that and it was
Speaker 1: so bad that I just was laughing, and the people
Speaker 1: knew it was bad, and they were just saying, do
Speaker 1: it anyway. But I just loved I loved that chorus,
Speaker 1: you know. And I used to try to do four
Speaker 1: top songs, but I couldn't quite get like Bernadette or
Speaker 1: I'll be There. I'd love these great choruses. But you know,
Speaker 1: I've gotten better. I do a lot of Neil Young
Speaker 1: covers because I love his lyrics, but also we sing
Speaker 1: pretty much in the same key. I can keep the
Speaker 1: songs in Neil's key and do them. You've never collaborated
Speaker 1: with him, have you? No? I mean I've improvised on
Speaker 1: stage with them, but no, I haven't really collaborated with
Speaker 1: really anybody. Yeah, you mentioned Michael Stipe. We talked with
Speaker 1: that idea of creating opportunities for others. Does he fit
Speaker 1: into that well, Michael Stipe. When I heard his music
Speaker 1: or saw you know, sometimes Fred would watch MTV to
Speaker 1: see what was happening musically, and I was very taken
Speaker 1: with rim. And Fred used to tease me when, you know,
Speaker 1: because I'd be like washing dishes or something. He'd say, Tricia,
Speaker 1: you're boys on and I come out and it would
Speaker 1: be like Michael singing losing my religion or something. And
Speaker 1: because because I really liked his music. And when Fred died,
Speaker 1: my first Valentine's Day without Fred, the phone rang that
Speaker 1: night and this voice came over the I don't think
Speaker 1: Michael would mind me. I think I've told this before,
Speaker 1: but it was Michael, Michael Stipe calling me from Barcelona.
Speaker 1: He was on the road and he was a bit
Speaker 1: I think he had had a couple of drinks and
Speaker 1: it had occurred to him. I guess he really he
Speaker 1: really liked me, He really liked our music. He was
Speaker 1: inspired by horses when he was younger, and it occurred
Speaker 1: to him. Because this is the beauty of Michael, He's
Speaker 1: so human and has such a compassionate, empathetic sense. It
Speaker 1: occurred to him that I was recently widowed and I
Speaker 1: was going to have my first Valentine's Day without my husband,
Speaker 1: who obviously I greatly loved. So he called to wish
Speaker 1: me happy Valentine's Day, and slowly, I mean eventually I
Speaker 1: got to meet him. Saul's concerts and when I came
Speaker 1: to New York it was a huge challenge for me
Speaker 1: to really came financially empty handed with my kids, and Michael,
Speaker 1: who I was just getting to know without going into
Speaker 1: a lot of details, made it possible for me to
Speaker 1: start a new life in New York City, and we've
Speaker 1: been so close ever since. I mean, he just did that,
Speaker 1: and of course I did. It inspired me to work
Speaker 1: as hard as I could to earn his trust in
Speaker 1: me and also his belief in me that I could
Speaker 1: get back on my feet and take care of myself
Speaker 1: and my family if I just had a helping hand.
Speaker 1: And I'm not ashamed to say that I needed one.
Speaker 1: And now we're just loving friends. It was interesting, though,
Speaker 1: just by chance, I got nominated to be in the
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame like seven or eight times, and finally
Speaker 1: I did get in. I think it was two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, the same year as Michael, and I always
Speaker 1: imagined that if I ever did, I would ask Michael
Speaker 1: to speak for me, and Michael secretly imagined that I
Speaker 1: might speak for them. But we neither one of us
Speaker 1: could speak for each other because we both we made
Speaker 1: it at the same time. Did you play together that evening?
Speaker 1: I'm sure we did. It's like such a blur. I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody sort of played together, but I don't remember, truthfully.
Speaker 1: What I do remember was sitting in Michael's sweet He
Speaker 1: had a beautiful suite in the hotel I think it
Speaker 1: was the Waldorf Astoria where they used to have the ceremony,
Speaker 1: and he had a beautiful white suit on and I
Speaker 1: was all in black, and we went to the elevator
Speaker 1: hand in hand together, and that picture of him all
Speaker 1: in white and me all in black heading to our
Speaker 1: ceremony is still in my head. We'll be right back
Speaker 1: with more from Patti Smith after this break. Here's the
Speaker 1: rest of Malcolm Gladwell's conversation with Patti Smith. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about your next life Detroit in marriage and it seems
Speaker 1: to announced er like a very dramatic change in the
Speaker 1: kind of life you are living. Well. I mean it
Speaker 1: was in the fact that I went from playing for
Speaker 1: eighty thousand people in a stadium in Florence, which was
Speaker 1: my last job. It was just our job. We had
Speaker 1: no opening act and that was my last job, to
Speaker 1: living a quiet life in Detroit. But what I've always
Speaker 1: wanted more than anything else was simply to do good work,
Speaker 1: work of quality. And I could see my future. I
Speaker 1: was in Europe. I was getting quite big. I know
Speaker 1: that sounds conceited, but it's the truth I was at
Speaker 1: We were huge, and we were as big as the
Speaker 1: Rolling Stones in Italy. Really, I mean in terms of performing,
Speaker 1: not recording wise. But where was that all going for me?
Speaker 1: As an artist? I wasn't growing, you know, I wasn't
Speaker 1: evolving as a human being or as an artist. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't really have fame and fortune goals. Ever, I
Speaker 1: always had a goal to do something great, which is
Speaker 1: actually takes his a little more conceited than thinking I
Speaker 1: want to be rich and famous. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: be great, to do something great, to do something you know, worthy,
Speaker 1: to do something that will endure, to do something to
Speaker 1: add to the pantheon of all the great work that's
Speaker 1: been done. So it gave me an opportunity to really
Speaker 1: think about, you know, for sixteen years, what direction do
Speaker 1: I want to go to to develop a writer discipline,
Speaker 1: which I did, and to reacquaint myself with being a
Speaker 1: citizen and being you know, a human being, you know
Speaker 1: who doesn't place themselves in the center. How old are
Speaker 1: you when you get married? I was thirty three. And
Speaker 1: where did you meet Fred? I met him in Detroit
Speaker 1: at a job. You know, we played the Ford Theater
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six. But really, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: comfortable with talking a lot about that period of my life.
Speaker 1: It's really private. But the thing is, I love my
Speaker 1: I love my kids. I loved Fred. It was and
Speaker 1: we didn't have the perfect It wasn't like always a paradise.
Speaker 1: We had our problems. I don't mean just with each other.
Speaker 1: I mean we had, you know, things our own, you know,
Speaker 1: all the things that people go through. You know. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it was hard. Sometimes it was financially hard because we
Speaker 1: really left everything, all of our options. We were sort
Speaker 1: of cut off. But I have to say they're probably
Speaker 1: the most precious years of my life. I loved Fred.
Speaker 1: I've never met anyone else like him. I love my kids.
Speaker 1: He gave me these, you know, a son and a
Speaker 1: daughter that you know, magnify my life and for myself personally,
Speaker 1: I think I evolved quite a bit in that time period,
Speaker 1: and I became a writer, not just writing poetry late
Speaker 1: at nights, stoned on pot or something. I mean a writer.
Speaker 1: I wrote every day. I developed, you know, a really
Speaker 1: strong work work ethic, which I still have today. And
Speaker 1: because of those years, I was able to write just
Speaker 1: kids that just kids didn't come out of anywhere. It
Speaker 1: came out of all those years of writing and rewriting
Speaker 1: and learning about writing. What's fascinating is you go from
Speaker 1: being part of this alive, diverse, creative community in New
Speaker 1: York to Chelsea Hotel, all those names, and then in Detroit,
Speaker 1: is there a community in Detroit like now there isn't.
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't experience it. But Fred was like
Speaker 1: a one man community. I mean, he had, first of all,
Speaker 1: such a history. He was intelligent, and beautiful, and athletic
Speaker 1: and interested in so many things political, such a good father.
Speaker 1: But he was, you know, a very private man. You know,
Speaker 1: I've all always been in my life, in my young life,
Speaker 1: I always had some person in my life that was
Speaker 1: meaningful and that I had a meaningful and fruitful relationship with.
Speaker 1: You know, it was Robert and then Sam Shephard. You know,
Speaker 1: I had other relationships that were important, but you know,
Speaker 1: it was important for me something I always wanted as well,
Speaker 1: not just to be an artist, but to have a
Speaker 1: person in my life. And he was the person. So
Speaker 1: and as I said before, I have a loner aspect.
Speaker 1: I missed, if I missed anything, from the two things
Speaker 1: I missed the most, I missed the camaraderie of my
Speaker 1: band and my brother was the head of our crew,
Speaker 1: and I missed that lively relationship we had. You know,
Speaker 1: I missed, you know, seeing him on the side of
Speaker 1: the stage, watching every move. You know, I missed him
Speaker 1: handing me my guitar. I missed the camaraderie. And I
Speaker 1: also missed having a cafe on every street. I missed
Speaker 1: New York in that way. I missed, you know. But
Speaker 1: I came from rural South Jersey. I was the oldest
Speaker 1: of four children. Came from a very lively, chaotic household.
Speaker 1: So this was not an unfamiliar life, No, I mean
Speaker 1: it was. It was a life that I could adapt to. Also,
Speaker 1: I was with a fellow artist and a fella thinker.
Speaker 1: Who would you say you learned how to write in
Speaker 1: those years? They turned you into a writer? Can you
Speaker 1: talk about what that? I mean, were you you were
Speaker 1: writing every It's just like anything else, you know, there's
Speaker 1: that I don't know if it's a joke or like
Speaker 1: a cliche where it says writing is one percent inspiration
Speaker 1: in ninety percent or whatever. Perspiration. Well, I learned about
Speaker 1: that ninety percent. I learned about the manual labor of writing,
Speaker 1: and I learned, well, it's just it became my discipline.
Speaker 1: I got up early in the morning when everyone was sleeping.
Speaker 1: When I had the kids, they'd be sleeping. I'd get
Speaker 1: up at five in the morning and write from five
Speaker 1: to eight every morning, and then they get up as
Speaker 1: they got older, get them ready for school, and do
Speaker 1: whatever tasks I had to do. But I always took
Speaker 1: at least three hours whenever it was to just concentrate,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have the prolific skills you know of
Speaker 1: other writers. I don't how explain it. It's just like
Speaker 1: anything else. It's a discipline. It's like if you start
Speaker 1: out with your muscles weak, and then you start exercising
Speaker 1: or doing certain things, and by you know, after several months,
Speaker 1: you crave exercise, you know, and then it becomes not
Speaker 1: so painful. It's it's it's just part of your regiment.
Speaker 1: It's just part of the work that I do. I
Speaker 1: can't really break it down. I'm just simply saying by
Speaker 1: the fact that I did it every day. And if
Speaker 1: you want to learn to play the oboe and you're
Speaker 1: not a prodigy, you might have to work harder, practicing
Speaker 1: several hours a day till you get just the hang
Speaker 1: of them out of the read Would you share that
Speaker 1: writing with people? What were you doing with it? I
Speaker 1: just did it and moved on. I mean, I really
Speaker 1: it's still I have notebooks full of stuff, but it's
Speaker 1: like I just keep going, so, you know, I imagine
Speaker 1: that one day i'd look back, or I'd sit and
Speaker 1: work on it and maybe publish it. But what really
Speaker 1: happens is we really write in a certain way. It's
Speaker 1: almost organic. We write the same thing over and over
Speaker 1: in a different way. I'm also so immersed with the
Speaker 1: present and also being at my age, I finally grasped
Speaker 1: being happy with present tense, that I'm more immersed in
Speaker 1: the writing that I'm doing now. I look at all
Speaker 1: these notebooks and I know that in there there's probably
Speaker 1: some jewels, but there's probably a lot of stuff that's
Speaker 1: just really the genesis of what I'm writing. Now, when
Speaker 1: do you start working on just kids? Well, Robert asked
Speaker 1: me to write it the day, well, only hours before
Speaker 1: he died, which I never expected. And that was in
Speaker 1: eighty nine. You never expected him to ask you to write, now,
Speaker 1: why didn't you expect? Well, I don't write. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wrote poetry and fairy tales and little story I mean,
Speaker 1: I never I'm not a non fiction writer. I wrote
Speaker 1: a lot of pieces about Robert, about Robert's work, for
Speaker 1: his catalogs and things. But what he asked me to
Speaker 1: write was our story. And our story was very specific
Speaker 1: because he used to have me tell it to him.
Speaker 1: Just some nights. He'd say, tell me our story. And
Speaker 1: we'd be at the Chelsea and maybe we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: enough to eat and couldn't sleep, and he'd say, tell
Speaker 1: me our story. And so I would start, well, there
Speaker 1: was a girl she wanted to be an artist, and
Speaker 1: she came to New York City she was, And then
Speaker 1: I tell how we met and keep updating it. So
Speaker 1: I knew what he meant by our story. It was
Speaker 1: sort of a game that we played. So yeah, he said,
Speaker 1: will you write our story? And I said do you
Speaker 1: want me to? And he said, you have to, no
Speaker 1: one else can write it. And I perceived what he
Speaker 1: wanted wasn't just for him, you know, there our story
Speaker 1: or the romance of our friendship, but also the genesis
Speaker 1: of Robert as an artist, because I knew more than anybody.
Speaker 1: I lived with them, I know, watched him work for
Speaker 1: twelve thirteen hours sometimes on one drawling. I you know,
Speaker 1: we went through so many different shed so many skins
Speaker 1: together that I knew that I could, that I had
Speaker 1: the information. I knew that I had lived it. We
Speaker 1: had lived it. So I promised him I do it
Speaker 1: not really not knowing how I'd do it. I didn't
Speaker 1: have a book contract, I didn't have any connection with
Speaker 1: you know, writing a non fiction book. But then a
Speaker 1: series of things happened. My pianist, who I really loved,
Speaker 1: who was only thirty seven, died suddenly of a pulmonary defect,
Speaker 1: which was terrible. When Robert died, I had just had
Speaker 1: my second child, and then my husband started being ill,
Speaker 1: and you know, by the end of ninety four, my
Speaker 1: husband died. My brother died also of the same pulmonary
Speaker 1: defect as just by chance of Richard's soul. For the
Speaker 1: next years, my preoccupation was how to take care of
Speaker 1: my children. You know, I couldn't live the same way
Speaker 1: that Fred and I had lived because I don't drive.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a support system, a big support system
Speaker 1: in Michigan. So I decided to take our children back
Speaker 1: to New York and find work. So the book was
Speaker 1: set aside. And then finally I I met an editor,
Speaker 1: Betsy Lerner, who became not only my best friend but
Speaker 1: my savior at the time, because she got me a
Speaker 1: really really great contract to write the Robert book, which
Speaker 1: gave me some income. But I had so much trouble
Speaker 1: writing it. I was still processing all the loss around me.
Speaker 1: My life had changed again. I was now performing again,
Speaker 1: but without my brother, without my pianist, and having two kids.
Speaker 1: So I was negotiating a very hard see. But eventually
Speaker 1: Betsy helped. She was my editor through that process, and
Speaker 1: it took a while. So he asked me to write
Speaker 1: it in eighty nine and it came out twenty ten,
Speaker 1: which can give you some idea of what a struggle
Speaker 1: it was to write it. Also, I wanted it to
Speaker 1: be I wanted him to be something he would have
Speaker 1: been proud of. I wanted it to be as accurate
Speaker 1: as possible, and to give people a sense not just
Speaker 1: of Robert and I Robert's work, but the atmosphere of
Speaker 1: our time. So there were a lot of challenges and
Speaker 1: emotionally difficult. It was emotionally difficult because it's sort of
Speaker 1: like bringing Robert to life for the people. Was also sad.
Speaker 1: It was painful, you know, and also reverberated other losses.
Speaker 1: But I was so happy. I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: happy I was. Because I vowed to him I would
Speaker 1: do it. So I completed my vow. I did as
Speaker 1: I promised, and once again. It's just you know, when
Speaker 1: we did Horses, I just thought, well, we'll do a
Speaker 1: record and some I was hoping, like, you know, a
Speaker 1: small disenfranchised group of people would like it, you know,
Speaker 1: would dig it, you know, and that would be it.
Speaker 1: And with this book also, I thought, well, a certain
Speaker 1: group of people will like it. But that's okay. I've
Speaker 1: done it. I've done my best. But somehow I don't
Speaker 1: really to this day understand. But I mean, one a
Speaker 1: National Book Award and it's sold over well over a
Speaker 1: million copies globally, It's in forty three languages, and to
Speaker 1: this state the most successful thing I ever did. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've never even had a gold record. Even Horses didn't
Speaker 1: go gold. I don't have one gold record, and I'm
Speaker 1: not complaining about that. I'm just simply in comparison, just
Speaker 1: kids eclipsed in terms of I don't know how other
Speaker 1: way to say it, but success, in that kind of success,
Speaker 1: it eclipsed everything else I did. It's a masterpiece. Oh thanks,
Speaker 1: you know what. Johnny Depp was my first reader, and
Speaker 1: I actually was staying. I was struggling with the end
Speaker 1: of it so much, and I just needed to get
Speaker 1: away and he has a compound in the south of France.
Speaker 1: So he let me come to the compound and they
Speaker 1: have he and Vanessa had renovated a little chapel into
Speaker 1: a guesthouse and he, you know, I stayed there until
Speaker 1: I finished it. And every day he would just even
Speaker 1: he'd bring me, like, because they had a cook there,
Speaker 1: bring me a little tray of food and leave it outside.
Speaker 1: And finally I finished it and I came out, are
Speaker 1: you there. I don't know. A month, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I actually I don't remember. Yeah, But when I finished it,
Speaker 1: and then I called in all of my changes or
Speaker 1: any you know, I went through the whole thing. It
Speaker 1: was done. It was it was absolutely done. And I
Speaker 1: had my manuscript, you know, with all these all the
Speaker 1: little changes and stuff. And he came to the door
Speaker 1: and I gave it to him and I said it's done.
Speaker 1: And he was the first, other than Betsy or the publisher,
Speaker 1: the first person to read it. And then he disappeared
Speaker 1: for like thirty hours or something, and then he came back.
Speaker 1: He knocked on the door and I opened it and
Speaker 1: he said it's a fucking masterpiece. And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. And I only mentioned that because you
Speaker 1: said that. You know, I'm not bragging or anything, but yeah,
Speaker 1: he said that, and he liked meant it with all
Speaker 1: his heart. And I thought, well, I don't know who's
Speaker 1: going to like this book, but Johnny likes it and
Speaker 1: he's well read, you know. So you know, it's funny
Speaker 1: because that book, like yourself, has many different lives. You know,
Speaker 1: it's simultaneously a love story, but it's also this picture
Speaker 1: of New York. It's the best picture of seventies New
Speaker 1: York that I thank you ever read. If you had
Speaker 1: no interest in the love story part, or no interest
Speaker 1: in you or Robert Mapplethorpe, you could still read it.
Speaker 1: I think it's a masterpiece. Oh that's so nice. It
Speaker 1: goes back to a question I asked the very beginning,
Speaker 1: is that always in New York. The weird thing about
Speaker 1: New York is the people who see it most clearly
Speaker 1: and beautifully and live it most are the outsiders, the
Speaker 1: ones who didn't, Well, you come to New York. That's
Speaker 1: interesting that you should say that, And I think perhaps
Speaker 1: it's because for myself, but I think I could see that,
Speaker 1: like even in the people that really struggled back then,
Speaker 1: you know, I would see like Candy Darling and Jackie
Speaker 1: Curtis and all these different artists that came from all
Speaker 1: different places. For myself, it was gratitude because I was
Speaker 1: you know, where I came from in South Jersey, there
Speaker 1: was no real culture there, not even a good library,
Speaker 1: no cafe, no bookstore. There was you know, you went
Speaker 1: to Philadelphia. You could get on a bus and go
Speaker 1: to Philadelphia for culture, but day to day. And also
Speaker 1: because I was a different kind of I was sort
Speaker 1: of a bohemian kid, and you know, I was looked different.
Speaker 1: You know, I grew up when you know people tease
Speaker 1: their hair and to beehives, and you know, wore a
Speaker 1: lot of makeup, and there was a certain look to
Speaker 1: the late fifties, early sixties, mid sixties. But I was mentally,
Speaker 1: I was not from my own culture. I loved the
Speaker 1: people that I grew up with. They were awesome and
Speaker 1: there were great things about where I came from, and
Speaker 1: I think about it very nostalgically, but culturally there was nothing,
Speaker 1: and there was no work and no real culture and
Speaker 1: not a lot of people of a like mind, no
Speaker 1: real community and going to New York and sitting in
Speaker 1: the East village for a couple of nights, would know where,
Speaker 1: just literally roaming around looking for work, falling asleep on stoops,
Speaker 1: waking up watching all these people, all these people that
Speaker 1: were so you know, they all look like they were
Speaker 1: they could have been in h Sergeant Pepper on the cover,
Speaker 1: Sergeant Pepper, you know, wearing tyed eye or bill bottoms.
Speaker 1: And people were smoking pot and books everywhere and reading
Speaker 1: Ellen Gensburg and playing Ornick Coleman. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: you know, in here, in like Jefferson airplane, like in
Speaker 1: boom boxes or it was just it was such a
Speaker 1: squirrel for a person like me to enter. And so
Speaker 1: many great things happened to me in New York. You know,
Speaker 1: nothing really bad happened to me in New York. Bad
Speaker 1: things happened to people I knew, But for me, it
Speaker 1: was just I met so many great people. I met
Speaker 1: great teachers, great artists and poets. I mean not that
Speaker 1: I got friends with them, but I mean I got
Speaker 1: to shake hands with Auden. You know, he's just like
Speaker 1: you never knew New York City. All these people were
Speaker 1: just there. There wasn't people paparazzis and people asking for
Speaker 1: cell phone picture I remember one day I went to
Speaker 1: the I was giving out flyers or something on the
Speaker 1: steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and then I
Speaker 1: was walking down Fifth Avenue. Coming up this way was
Speaker 1: Lee Raswell, Jacqueline Onassis, and Noriev walking together, just talking
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my god. And you just
Speaker 1: pass them by and think, wow, that was cool. You know.
Speaker 1: When I worked at Scribbners, I used to wait on
Speaker 1: Katherine Hepburn, I waited on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just these saw these people, and it
Speaker 1: was but there was nobody running around and grabbing at
Speaker 1: them and taking their picture. It was just the New
Speaker 1: York was a pretty cool place, you know, and nobody
Speaker 1: asked for it was just considered uncool, just considered uncool.
Speaker 1: You just didn't do that. You see Paul McCartney sitting
Speaker 1: in a bar stool, You just didn't bug them. You
Speaker 1: just didn't do that. You know. It's a whole different
Speaker 1: world now. But the fact that you know, you could
Speaker 1: get apartments so cheap, you could get a job, you
Speaker 1: could meet like minded people. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: gratitude for that period. I have a lot of gratitude
Speaker 1: for the city in general, for the climate in general,
Speaker 1: for the community in general. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: rough spots, believe me, but the overall opportunity, I'm very
Speaker 1: grateful for it, and I think when you have gratitude,
Speaker 1: you're going to look at things different. We have a
Speaker 1: little town left. Talk a little bit about what you're
Speaker 1: up to. Now. There's like, there's Patti Smith's in my inbox.
Speaker 1: You're in my life. Now, tell me a little about
Speaker 1: this is very exciting. Well, I during the pandemic March ninth,
Speaker 1: we played the Filmore West. We did two nice at
Speaker 1: the Filmore. Then we headed to Seattle to do another show,
Speaker 1: and then we were about to embark on a world tour.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do a world tour because at that
Speaker 1: point I was like seventy two or whatever three and
Speaker 1: I felt it was important to while I still had
Speaker 1: good voice and a lot of energy, to do at
Speaker 1: least one more fairly big tour. And it was really
Speaker 1: a world tour. Well, we flew to Seattle and then
Speaker 1: I woke up in the morning and I put on
Speaker 1: the news and it was the mayor of Seattle or
Speaker 1: the governor, and he was telling how they were going
Speaker 1: to go into lockdown. He said, the sold out show
Speaker 1: at State Theater Patti Smith and her Band is canceled.
Speaker 1: And I was like, what I mean, I didn't know
Speaker 1: what was really going on. I knew something, I knew
Speaker 1: the aura of things, but and that's how I found out.
Speaker 1: And so then we left and we went home, and
Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, we have to be in quarantine for
Speaker 1: fourteen days. We have jobs coming up at the end
Speaker 1: of March, and then we were going to Australia. But
Speaker 1: I thought it would be okay, never dreaming that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be leaving my house for almost two years, hardly,
Speaker 1: and that's what happened. So because I was I was
Speaker 1: seventy three, and I have a broncular condition, I was
Speaker 1: deemed a high risk, so I'd obviously be really careful
Speaker 1: New York City. Really, I mean, the amount of illness
Speaker 1: and death was like a real thing. And of course
Speaker 1: I understand the nature of pandemics. I had studied the
Speaker 1: Spanish flu epidemic. I was quarantined as a child with
Speaker 1: a bird flu and tuberculosis, and so I knew a
Speaker 1: lot about quarantines what it all meant. But I still
Speaker 1: never imagined it was going to go on for so long,
Speaker 1: and I'm a restless person. I like movement. I had
Speaker 1: my little suitcase pack to go away for a yeartically,
Speaker 1: and it was a little hard for me to settle down.
Speaker 1: So I just started writing as usual. I just wrote
Speaker 1: every day, and I was approached by someone through Betsy
Speaker 1: from sub Stack, which is it's a subscription based service.
Speaker 1: And I thought this was interesting because I had been
Speaker 1: writing this diary, sort of a pandemic diary, but I
Speaker 1: envisioned it to go to some other places, to move
Speaker 1: into some parallel worlds, and I was interested to see
Speaker 1: where it would go. And the idea of doing something episodic,
Speaker 1: I thought it was really cool, you know because like
Speaker 1: Arthur Conan Doyle and of course Dickens, and then Louisa
Speaker 1: may Alcott, even Joe March her character, they did things
Speaker 1: episodically and that's how they were paid by the word
Speaker 1: back then. And I thought it would be real interesting,
Speaker 1: and well, it would be a challenge to be able
Speaker 1: to deliver things weekly because I'm I had been used
Speaker 1: to being on the road and getting more sporadic as
Speaker 1: a writer. So I accepted that challenge and I found
Speaker 1: it took me a little while to figure out how
Speaker 1: to what to give the people and what they liked.
Speaker 1: But I've been there almost a year and I actually
Speaker 1: love it, and it is growing in terms of what
Speaker 1: I can offer the people because I can do little
Speaker 1: videos live in time, just talk to the people or
Speaker 1: read them a poem. I can do any kind of
Speaker 1: audio I want, send them stories, send them pictures, read
Speaker 1: their comments. And that's what I do. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm developing it as we go along, and I'm letting
Speaker 1: the people at this point help me sort of guide
Speaker 1: me as to where I should go. So the melting
Speaker 1: is my favorite part, although it's not necessarily the most
Speaker 1: popular part, but it's my favorite because it's such an
Speaker 1: interesting challenge. And I love to read the people's comments.
Speaker 1: Because even if you have only fifty comments or maybe
Speaker 1: ninety or maybe thirty, when you write a book, or
Speaker 1: you write you put out a book, you might get
Speaker 1: reviewed a couple of times, or maybe somebody on the
Speaker 1: street tells you they like it, or you can look
Speaker 1: at the sales, but you're not really hearing any kind
Speaker 1: of real intellectual feedback. And I love that. I love
Speaker 1: the comments that people write sometimes the comments are more
Speaker 1: poetic than the posts I've done, and sometimes they're really
Speaker 1: interesting or they really display a real understanding of what
Speaker 1: I'm doing, because sometimes I'm attempting something a bit abstract,
Speaker 1: and they're very accepting because it's really like at this
Speaker 1: point of my melting, it's regressional right now, and I'm
Speaker 1: writing it in time, and I don't really know what
Speaker 1: I'm going to write each week, and so it's sort
Speaker 1: of like not like a drug, but it's it can
Speaker 1: move into hallucinary places, and the people there, even if
Speaker 1: it's a small amount, they're into it, and that's really inspiring,
Speaker 1: you know. And it just like yesterday, I was supposed
Speaker 1: to do the melting, but it was my wedding anniversary. Truthfully,
Speaker 1: I was sometimes I get a little sad. I really
Speaker 1: miss Fred, so I did a little post for Fred
Speaker 1: yesterday and so the Melton's a day late. But it
Speaker 1: was really a life saver for me. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was a nice thing to make to have a job,
Speaker 1: you know, because I lost all of our work, which
Speaker 1: having a job helps me help others. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: just that, like to have any financial reward. It being
Speaker 1: in a lockdown not seeing anybody, not going anywhere, and
Speaker 1: having some kind of feedback creating for people and hearing
Speaker 1: from them. That was really good. I love my substack.
Speaker 1: I'm still developing it, and I think that I've gleaned
Speaker 1: that people really like knowing about music. So when the
Speaker 1: melting's over, what would I do? Maybe take song after song,
Speaker 1: you know, post a song, sing it to the people,
Speaker 1: tell them the story of how the song was written.
Speaker 1: There's so many different things that I can do if
Speaker 1: that's what the people like. And I also have my Instagram,
Speaker 1: which I also like, and they're my two social things.
Speaker 1: The latest iteration in the many lives of yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I never you know, I don't really. It
Speaker 1: took me long enough just to get a cell phone
Speaker 1: and then I wasn't engaging in any social media. But
Speaker 1: my daughter really suggested that I should have Instagram and
Speaker 1: set it up for me. And it's so easy to do,
Speaker 1: and I really like it because I can suggest books
Speaker 1: or there's a lot of different things I can do
Speaker 1: in that small you know, it's just this little thing,
Speaker 1: you know, you put a picture and say a few words,
Speaker 1: but you can bring people a movie they never saw
Speaker 1: or remembering a certain person on their birthday, and I
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, Patty, I think I've occupied you for
Speaker 1: long enough. Thank you. I haven't done a whole lot
Speaker 1: of interviews in the past couple of years, and then
Speaker 1: I found the few that I've done. I tend to
Speaker 1: like I'm just talking away. No, this is fantastic. It was,
Speaker 1: and such an honor. By the way. Oh, since I'm
Speaker 1: such a fan of yours, that was so nice what
Speaker 1: you said about the book. I was the equivalent when
Speaker 1: I read that book of the guys falling from the ceiling. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, Patty. This has been great good Thanks the
Speaker 1: Patti Smith for sharing her inspiration story with Malcolm. You
Speaker 1: can hear a new album and all of our favorite
Speaker 1: Patti Smith songs on a playlist at Broken Record podcast
Speaker 1: dot com, and be sure to check out her substack
Speaker 1: at Patti Smith dot substack dot com. Be sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash
Speaker 1: Broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our
Speaker 1: new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record.
Speaker 1: Broken Record is produced at help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ventaladay,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez with engineering help from Nick Chafe.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Mio Lobell. Broken Record is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and
Speaker 1: others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus
Speaker 1: is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted
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Speaker 1: like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review
Speaker 1: us on your podcast app or theme musics by Kenny Beats,
Speaker 1: I'm just Enrichment