Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here
Speaker 1: is the Thing Today. We're live from the Mayo Performing
Speaker 1: Arts Center in Morristown, New Jersey, where I sat down
Speaker 1: recently with musician, poet and artist Patti Smith. Thank you
Speaker 1: for coming. We're here at at the Mayo. My guest
Speaker 1: for the show this evening as somebody who is you know,
Speaker 1: a very uh unique person in the world of music.
Speaker 1: You know, a true poet, performance artists. I mean, so
Speaker 1: many things you could apply to her, but I think
Speaker 1: most people know her as a as a great and
Speaker 1: kind of iconic musician. So please join me in welcoming
Speaker 1: Patti Smith. Hi. We were talking backstage about how I
Speaker 1: wonder what it would be like if you and I
Speaker 1: we're kind of starting in our respective businesses. Now do
Speaker 1: you think that you're of your time and you came
Speaker 1: right when you should have come, and and if you
Speaker 1: were to come onto the scene now with what you
Speaker 1: think the music scene is like? Now, well, what would
Speaker 1: you do? I forgot to ask it? What age like?
Speaker 1: My age? I came on? Now? Oh god, no, no
Speaker 1: visits applies to me too, No, no, no, no, I'd
Speaker 1: be agreed or at a Vegas Hotel. If I was
Speaker 1: starting at my age, I actually I have no idea
Speaker 1: because I didn't really come into the music business. I was.
Speaker 1: I came. I wound up in music by mistake. I'm
Speaker 1: not really a musician. I didn't really want to be
Speaker 1: a musician or a singer. I just wanted to I
Speaker 1: wanted to be a poet and a writer, and it
Speaker 1: was accidental. So would it accidentally happen now? I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I think I would have to be more
Speaker 1: focused on what I wanted. But also because I'm so
Speaker 1: on technological and things, I mean, I'm just not really
Speaker 1: suited for right now. So probably I would have to
Speaker 1: be like a physicist the band in the game. You
Speaker 1: don't even drive. No, I don't know how to drive,
Speaker 1: so I couldn't do that. That's true. She doesn't have
Speaker 1: a license. I said, you ever live in l A.
Speaker 1: She said, no, I don't swim and I don't drive.
Speaker 1: That's true. But if you came in now, you'd be
Speaker 1: a scientist, you said, Well, I I don't know what
Speaker 1: I would be, but I don't think I would have
Speaker 1: a problem no matter where I came in. You know,
Speaker 1: I would figure out something I'm pretty scrappy now. But
Speaker 1: when you say that you weren't a musician, how did
Speaker 1: that begin for you? Well, I mean I came to
Speaker 1: New York in Sevan wanted to be an artist, and
Speaker 1: I also wrote poetry. And after I I just started
Speaker 1: writing more poetry. And then uh was shepherded by people
Speaker 1: like Alan Ginsberg and and William Burrows and Gregory Corso,
Speaker 1: and they all read their poetry. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: read poetry, but I didn't want to be boring because
Speaker 1: I went to a lot of poetry readings and they
Speaker 1: were snoresville. You know, they were like, sorry, but really boring.
Speaker 1: So I just started like, at least have good wine. Wine.
Speaker 1: I didn't even drink, and I don't do anything interesting really,
Speaker 1: but I mean, I'll have a shot at to kill everybody. No,
Speaker 1: I mean no, I never had a drug problem. Um.
Speaker 1: Minutes on that I had a drug problem was no. Actually,
Speaker 1: I was such a sickly kid, um that my parents
Speaker 1: worked so hard to keep me alive that you know
Speaker 1: when I when I came out into the world, the
Speaker 1: last thing I was going to do is fuck that up.
Speaker 1: You know, I just I'm not I don't have a
Speaker 1: self destructive vent. But also when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: my mother was a chain smoker, and she I mean
Speaker 1: real true chain smoker, and when she ran out of
Speaker 1: cigarettes and she didn't have money, she would pace all
Speaker 1: night long. I get up at midnight and see my
Speaker 1: poor mom pacing because she didn't have a cigarette. And
Speaker 1: I thought, then I'm never going to be dependent on anything,
Speaker 1: because I thought, what would happen if you got stranded
Speaker 1: on a desert island you didn't have cigarettes, You'd like
Speaker 1: fall apart. So it was like an early lesson in uh,
Speaker 1: what I didn't wanting a desert cigarettes have to grow
Speaker 1: to back end. And then but I feel like somehow
Speaker 1: I didn't answer one of some question. Oh I know,
Speaker 1: because you're yeah, it doesn't matter. You do whatever you
Speaker 1: want to do. How I wound up singing. I just
Speaker 1: wound up singing, like to make up little singing, little
Speaker 1: songs acapella between poems to make it a little more interesting,
Speaker 1: and then sort of wrapping poems. And it was just organic.
Speaker 1: Somebody just did it on your own. You didn't see
Speaker 1: anybody else doing that, No, I mean I saw like
Speaker 1: be poets or I mean just I think of everybody
Speaker 1: that I was influenced by at that time of my life.
Speaker 1: Johnny Carson was the one I just thought, like, you
Speaker 1: didn't have drug problem either. Yeah, I'm not surprised, but
Speaker 1: I mean, but just the fact that Johnny Carson his
Speaker 1: his his ability to improvise or to get himself out
Speaker 1: of any situation, that was always what I was looking for.
Speaker 1: If I was on stage, gotten a bad situation, find
Speaker 1: my way out of it. You grew up in South Jersey,
Speaker 1: and you're kind of tough. The way you grew up.
Speaker 1: Your dad. What did your dad do for a living?
Speaker 1: He was worked in a factory. She's waitress. And how
Speaker 1: many kids in your family? For for how many boys?
Speaker 1: How many girls? Three girls? One boy? And I was
Speaker 1: the oldest. And it was tough, Well yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it was financially tough. We had. It was in those
Speaker 1: ways very tough. But in another way we had it
Speaker 1: was very magical because I had really great siblings. I
Speaker 1: had a great imagination, read hundreds of books. My parents.
Speaker 1: We knew that they had a lot of strife and stress,
Speaker 1: but you know, it was just the world seems so magical.
Speaker 1: It wasn't so bad for us. Books were my salvation
Speaker 1: and so I I didn't think of things. The only
Speaker 1: bad thing was when I'd be hungry. I mean truthfully,
Speaker 1: I like to eat. I was really skinny and a
Speaker 1: real I was always hungry and that was my big problem.
Speaker 1: Skinny back then, Yeah, really skinny. What do you mean
Speaker 1: You don't believe me? I was. I really were very skinny.
Speaker 1: People think he was being a very thin woman. But
Speaker 1: but but you're saying that, So there was. It was tough.
Speaker 1: Like I remember, I got a I wrote a memoir
Speaker 1: it's coming out in April, and I talked about that.
Speaker 1: Like my dad was a school teacher or six kids
Speaker 1: and they didn't have any money either. It was really
Speaker 1: there was a lot of stress man. Really well, you
Speaker 1: didn't have credit cards and stuff like that. I mean
Speaker 1: it was all like you had cash and you got
Speaker 1: you know, if you didn't have money you didn't need.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like you know, sometimes you could get you know,
Speaker 1: like uh, you know a little credit card at Sears
Speaker 1: or something. You know, but um, it was like you said,
Speaker 1: you have to use your imagination and reading was for me,
Speaker 1: it was like such a huge thing. Your TV back then,
Speaker 1: every don't realize who are young here like TV back then,
Speaker 1: you know, they show a TV on TV, they show
Speaker 1: a movie on like NBC. They had like the Sunday
Speaker 1: Night Movie and they're sure a movie that was you know,
Speaker 1: you've everybody's seen a hundred times. You know, they'd say
Speaker 1: the sound of Music Sunday and like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: We're like run to the TV to watch the sound
Speaker 1: of music on TV, which you know, they didn't have Netflix.
Speaker 1: Three three channels that went off at like either ten
Speaker 1: o'clock or midnight, and uh, you know, and then cartoons
Speaker 1: on Saturday. I I love being a kid. It was awesome.
Speaker 1: And then when you left home, where'd you go? New York?
Speaker 1: I left when I was twenty, and basically I left
Speaker 1: to get a job because in South Jersey and Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: the New York Shipyard closed down and there were like
Speaker 1: thirty thousand jobs overnight were lost and there wasn't any work,
Speaker 1: no matter how low a factory job, nothing, And there
Speaker 1: was no more work, and I needed a job. So
Speaker 1: I went to New York City to get a job.
Speaker 1: And where'd you get a job? Um in a bookstore.
Speaker 1: I got a a series of bookstores until I really
Speaker 1: landed a great bookstore job in Scribner's Bookstore, and I
Speaker 1: worked there for about five years. Doesn't it really tells
Speaker 1: a lot about you? That really pretty much sums it
Speaker 1: up your home in Jersey. You can't get a job,
Speaker 1: You're starving. You're going to New York to get a job.
Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna say in a restaurant. Well,
Speaker 1: no idea, soon as you go to a bookstore a
Speaker 1: different kind of food. But no, you know what happened.
Speaker 1: My mother was a waitress and she tried to give
Speaker 1: me a job at her counter, but I was so
Speaker 1: clumsy and such a day dreamer, and she fired me.
Speaker 1: And uh so then she was upset that I was
Speaker 1: leaving home, but she got She let me take my
Speaker 1: white uniform and my wedgies. So the first day I got,
Speaker 1: I'm one Time Square, and of course Time Square was
Speaker 1: all different than you know. And uh I got a
Speaker 1: little a job immediately because they needed a waitress at
Speaker 1: a place a little at town in Plays called Joe's
Speaker 1: Um on Times Square. And within like two hours I
Speaker 1: dumped one of the I had a giant tray as
Speaker 1: tripped and the whole tray of veal parmesan as went
Speaker 1: on This woman's tweed suit. Not only was I fired,
Speaker 1: but my three hours pay went to her cleaning bill.
Speaker 1: So I went back to Port authority, left the waitress
Speaker 1: uniform and the wedgies in the girl's bathroom and thought
Speaker 1: maybe somebody can use them. And then I looked around
Speaker 1: for a better job. How does art, poetry, music come
Speaker 1: into your life when you're in New York when you're
Speaker 1: twenty years old, Well, first it was just getting a job.
Speaker 1: I didn't get a job the first or second day.
Speaker 1: I mean I was sleeping in the subway, sleeping in
Speaker 1: uh Central Park, sleeping at the cemetery and Flushing or
Speaker 1: Greenwood or wherever it was and near where Herman Melville
Speaker 1: was buried. And uh, it took a little while. And
Speaker 1: truthfully it wasn't really until I met I met Robert Maplethorpe,
Speaker 1: and uh we met a couple of times. But I
Speaker 1: was in a bit of a jam because a grown
Speaker 1: up asked me to go out to eat. He was
Speaker 1: probably forty, but I was like twenty. To me, seemed like,
Speaker 1: you know, he was a grown up, you know, And uh,
Speaker 1: I was really afraid that my mother used to say,
Speaker 1: don't go out with a stranger because you know, they
Speaker 1: just want one thing. And I thought, I was so hungry,
Speaker 1: and he said he would take me to dinner, and
Speaker 1: he took me to the Empire State Building diner, and
Speaker 1: I remembered to this day he ordered, uh, we ordered.
Speaker 1: He ordered me swordfish and it was five dollars, and
Speaker 1: I thought, he's going to want everything for five dollars.
Speaker 1: And I was petrified, and so I I ate that
Speaker 1: I couldn't even eat it. And I'm so angry I'm
Speaker 1: gonna eat Maybe I should leave now, Yeah, exactly, we're
Speaker 1: not that door. But these potatoes are so good. Of
Speaker 1: just a couple of more potatoes that I'm going to
Speaker 1: write out that door. He'll never know. No, I didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do. Then when we walked, No, we didn't.
Speaker 1: We didn't have any dessert. We walked all the way
Speaker 1: down to uh Tompkins Square Park and we were sitting
Speaker 1: there and then all of a sudden, he said, uh,
Speaker 1: I have an apartment right around here. Would and he
Speaker 1: asked me if I wanted to see It was really creepy.
Speaker 1: He actually had like it's like like a turtleneck, a
Speaker 1: white turtleneck I remember, and a medallion. I mean it
Speaker 1: was really powers. That's so funny. No, he was supposed
Speaker 1: to be a science fiction writer, but I was. And
Speaker 1: when he said that, I thought, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: is the moment, you know, and everything my mother ever
Speaker 1: told me for like ten years of my life. And
Speaker 1: I was sitting there, paralyzed, figuring out what to do.
Speaker 1: And I looked, and I see Robert Maplethorpe coming, you know,
Speaker 1: up through it just coming. It's almost like a cloud
Speaker 1: parted and here he comes, with like long curly hair
Speaker 1: and a sheepskin vest and you know, and his dungarees.
Speaker 1: And I had only met him once or twice, and
Speaker 1: I didn't even know his name, and I just met
Speaker 1: him sort of. And so I ran up to him
Speaker 1: and I said, uh, do you remember me? And he
Speaker 1: goes yeah. And I said, will you pretend you're my boyfriend?
Speaker 1: And he says okay. So I bring him to the
Speaker 1: science fiction guy and I said, this is my boyfriend.
Speaker 1: He's really mad. I gotta go goodbye. And then I
Speaker 1: said to Robert, this is so stupid, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: I said run and Robert and I ran. We ran,
Speaker 1: we ran, we ran a way, and uh and now
Speaker 1: the guy on the turtleneck with the medallion on is
Speaker 1: the president elect of the United States? Boy, did you
Speaker 1: play your cards wrong? You know? And then my life began.
Speaker 1: Life began that night because Robert and I just roamed around.
Speaker 1: We roamed around the East Village and everywhere all night
Speaker 1: long till two in the morning, just talking away. And finally,
Speaker 1: almost simultaneously, we both said, do you have a place
Speaker 1: to stay? Neither one of us had anywhere to live,
Speaker 1: We didn't have any money. But the differences Robert had
Speaker 1: knew some kids of Pratt and he knew he knew
Speaker 1: how to get the key to this one guy's apartment
Speaker 1: where his art was stored. So we went there, and
Speaker 1: we went to his place, and he showed me all
Speaker 1: his drawings and what he was doing. And after that
Speaker 1: night we became inseparable. And that set us, at least
Speaker 1: me on a path, you know where of drawling and
Speaker 1: painting and evolving and writing poetry. And yeah, we've we've
Speaker 1: yes through through many things. Yeah, well I was going
Speaker 1: to get into that, but you're with him for a
Speaker 1: long long time. And then things changed for you as well,
Speaker 1: in terms of your career. Well, I mean, at first,
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing is is that I never cared
Speaker 1: about a career. I have to say, none of those things,
Speaker 1: um being in a business, music, business, career, money. What
Speaker 1: what I always wanted, no matter how conceded it sounds,
Speaker 1: is I wanted to do something great. I wanted to
Speaker 1: write something as great as Pinocchio or The Scarlet Letter,
Speaker 1: or you know, just do something wonderful, write a wonderful book.
Speaker 1: I didn't really care about and don't I don't care
Speaker 1: about having a career or any of that stuff. I
Speaker 1: do my work and in the process, I've had some
Speaker 1: great successes. I've had things that have had me banned
Speaker 1: from the world. I've had you know, I've I've been
Speaker 1: in trouble, I've done you know, I've left it all behind.
Speaker 1: It's not important to me. It's always important to me.
Speaker 1: Is really just to do something good, to do something
Speaker 1: that's uh endoran So when you started to have success,
Speaker 1: was that something that was because it was so unfamiliar
Speaker 1: to you? There are those people who I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say the word failure. They're more comfortable and anonymity
Speaker 1: than they are being successful and famous because it's familiar.
Speaker 1: Did you find that when you were becoming famous as
Speaker 1: a musician, because primarily you became famous as a musician
Speaker 1: as well. At first in the beginning in eight I
Speaker 1: had my first big success with this song I wrote
Speaker 1: with Bruce Springsteen. Because the night I thought it was
Speaker 1: thank you, I thought it was I thought it was
Speaker 1: exciting to have a song on the radio. I didn't
Speaker 1: think of it in terms of success or failure. It
Speaker 1: was just really cool to be on the radio. And
Speaker 1: back then, you know, having a single and meant, you know,
Speaker 1: your records were in the window and and you could,
Speaker 1: you know, you played bigger places and met more people.
Speaker 1: But by nine seventy nine, truthfully, I could see that
Speaker 1: success was to keep going. You I was doing less work,
Speaker 1: less meaningful work, evolving less as a person and an artist,
Speaker 1: and just get more successful. And I thought, that's that's
Speaker 1: not why I was put on the planet. I wasn't
Speaker 1: put on the planet to you know, climb the ladder
Speaker 1: of success. I was here to do certain kind of work,
Speaker 1: and so um I left. I left the music business.
Speaker 1: In seventy nine. You separated from Maplethorpe point in well.
Speaker 1: Robert and I separated as a couple in like seventy two,
Speaker 1: but never is we were just the same, only we
Speaker 1: weren't you know, doing it anymore, you know, but we
Speaker 1: didn't change how we were. We were always just the same.
Speaker 1: We were just you know, had different physical partners. So
Speaker 1: we never quite really separated until I got married. And you,
Speaker 1: I would think I read it in an interview where
Speaker 1: you said it was difficult for him to admit to
Speaker 1: his sexuality when he was first Well, I think you know,
Speaker 1: it's people. It was a different time. I mean, Robert
Speaker 1: was brought up Catholic. His mother wanted him to be
Speaker 1: an altar boy, as father wanted him to be in
Speaker 1: the military, and he wanted to be an artist, but
Speaker 1: he was suppressed that to try to at least please
Speaker 1: his father. And Robert got a full scholarship. He was
Speaker 1: very smart. He got a full scholarship to Pratt, a
Speaker 1: military scholar ship. But right before I met him, he
Speaker 1: just decided that that's not what he wanted. He wanted
Speaker 1: to be an artist. He didn't want to be in
Speaker 1: the military. He didn't want to be a commercial artist,
Speaker 1: which is what his father wanted him to do. And
Speaker 1: his um his scholarship was based on on on that
Speaker 1: pursuit and in in saying that he didn't want to
Speaker 1: do that, that he wanted to be an artist. His
Speaker 1: father sort of disowned him. He lost a scholarship, lost
Speaker 1: his dorm, lost his stipend, like overnight. But he wouldn't
Speaker 1: he wouldn't back down. He really, he really believed he
Speaker 1: was He knew he was an artist and that's what
Speaker 1: he wanted to do. And that's at the moment we met,
Speaker 1: he was like he had shed his family, his career, um,
Speaker 1: any financial aid that he had, and to you know,
Speaker 1: to devote himself to art. And I had left my family,
Speaker 1: you know, um my home and come to New York
Speaker 1: to pursue to get a job, but also to pursue
Speaker 1: my path. And we met at a very perfect time,
Speaker 1: and they were with him and still connected to him
Speaker 1: even when he was very second, when he was and
Speaker 1: when he died. Oh yeah, I mean we you know,
Speaker 1: I'm still connected with him. I still think about him
Speaker 1: every day, and the things that I learned from him
Speaker 1: or that we we did together inform the work that
Speaker 1: I do. I mean, we we bonded so young through art.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, you know, we were boyfriend and girlfriend.
Speaker 1: We did all the things young people do but I
Speaker 1: think that is as he felt freer and freer as
Speaker 1: an artist in a human being his nature. First he
Speaker 1: had to come out as an artist. Then the next
Speaker 1: thing that happened is he blossomed and felt his sexual nature.
Speaker 1: We had to weather that. We had to, you know,
Speaker 1: try to navigate what this meant, what it meant to
Speaker 1: our relationship, what it meant and and it was difficult,
Speaker 1: and it took a few years because neither one of
Speaker 1: us wanted to part, But eventually we had to part
Speaker 1: as boyfriend and girlfriend because he had to be who
Speaker 1: he needed to be. When did you meet your husband
Speaker 1: you eventually got married. I met my husband in ninety
Speaker 1: six in Detroit, and I was on the road and
Speaker 1: I met him in Detroit and I saw him. It
Speaker 1: was it's like a it's really like a song. I
Speaker 1: saw him across a crowded room. He was just standing
Speaker 1: there and it blew overcoat. I didn't know who he was,
Speaker 1: and I thought, that's the boy I'm gonna marry. I
Speaker 1: swear to you that's true. How old I was about
Speaker 1: seventy six, I was about twenty. I don't know. Did
Speaker 1: you walk up and tell him that right? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: not at all. But Lenny Kay actually introduced us and
Speaker 1: he said, Fred Smith, Patti Smith. We just looked at
Speaker 1: each other and I don't know, and we finally, Um,
Speaker 1: we had a long distance relationship, in fact, because the
Speaker 1: night we had a long distant relationship, and neither one
Speaker 1: of us had a whole lot of money, and to
Speaker 1: make phone calls was expensive, long distance calls I always did.
Speaker 1: This day, I hear people my boyfriend only called me
Speaker 1: three times today, and I think, Jesus, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like I'd have to wait all week to get one
Speaker 1: phone call from from Fred. And um, actually, am I
Speaker 1: going off the course too? There was no core, is
Speaker 1: no course. Yeah, you're my kind of guy. I'm your
Speaker 1: kind of passage. I'm your kind of passenger too, because
Speaker 1: the autopilot about thirty minutes ago. Now, I mean we're
Speaker 1: not going anywhere in particular because I don't know how
Speaker 1: to drive and I have no sense of direction. I'm
Speaker 1: a really good passenger because I can never tell if
Speaker 1: anybody's lost, you know, And I apply that to all
Speaker 1: every part of life. But when you met your husband,
Speaker 1: and what did he do? Was he a musician? He's
Speaker 1: a he was a musician. He played with the MC five.
Speaker 1: He was a master guitarist. He was really one of
Speaker 1: our great guitarist and uh and he's just such a
Speaker 1: beautiful man. You know. We just decided, you know, we
Speaker 1: we wanted to evolve as human beings, and he wanted children,
Speaker 1: and we just we just decided to withdrawal from public
Speaker 1: life and really know each other and when when we
Speaker 1: had children, they would really know who we were. And
Speaker 1: and so we did. How long until his he passed
Speaker 1: away and the end of ninety four, so sixteen years,
Speaker 1: so sixteen years. You go off the grid. I hate
Speaker 1: that phrase, but that's that's okay. You go off the
Speaker 1: grid and just what you do come like blowing out
Speaker 1: of you, like in like weird moments like are you
Speaker 1: looking the check outline? And carrots carrots. Actually they didn't
Speaker 1: care who I was, in fact, because I had no
Speaker 1: driver's license. If I wanted to write a check, they
Speaker 1: always hassled me because I didn't have the right idea.
Speaker 1: I'd have to bring my passport everywhere. So that was
Speaker 1: Detroit sixteen years. What was it like, did you paint?
Speaker 1: I know I didn't paint, because um, it was just
Speaker 1: the way are living quarters were I didn't really have
Speaker 1: the space to do something like that, but I wrote
Speaker 1: every day. I could have never written just kids or
Speaker 1: the books that I'm writing now had I not had
Speaker 1: sixteen years of enforced discipline, because I've always been very undisciplined.
Speaker 1: And then unless I had a job or something, but
Speaker 1: then having a children, um I had. I had to
Speaker 1: learn to wake up at five in the morning and
Speaker 1: from five to eight was my writing time. Everybody was asleep,
Speaker 1: it was my time. And it was really hard at first,
Speaker 1: but then after a while I got in a groove
Speaker 1: and I still right early in the morning, and I
Speaker 1: really learned how to develop my craft. And uh, it
Speaker 1: was hard because there's no cafes around, there was no bookstores.
Speaker 1: A lot of things, the biggest, the most hardest thing
Speaker 1: is in New York. You can walk out the door
Speaker 1: and get a cup of coffee and a out two
Speaker 1: minutes practically anywhere. But where I was, the closest thing
Speaker 1: was seven eleven, which was about, you know, half a
Speaker 1: mile away, so I'd have to every Saturday, I'd walked
Speaker 1: to seven eleven my cafe, get a glazed donut and
Speaker 1: the coffee, and I was I was in town, you know.
Speaker 1: But but I love my life. It wasn't easy because
Speaker 1: you know, I had to do all the we we
Speaker 1: did everything. We didn't have nannie's or housekeepers or even babysitters.
Speaker 1: We did everything. And I'm not the most adept at stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, some of my poor kids, you know, their
Speaker 1: school uniforms and stuff. My daughter's little pleaded, you know,
Speaker 1: Jumper was like always a little jagged e and their
Speaker 1: blouses in their shirts were a little dingier than the
Speaker 1: other because I didn't like using bleach and things like that.
Speaker 1: But but I I love my kids, I love my husband,
Speaker 1: you know. And it was a lot of certain amount
Speaker 1: of sacrifice and and uh, you know, but I was
Speaker 1: talking about you because I just find this so interesting.
Speaker 1: Was there much talk about you, like getting back, getting
Speaker 1: back in there and getting back into your life to
Speaker 1: make money as a breadwinner for everybody's been well, when
Speaker 1: we really really need I always I always feel like
Speaker 1: I got to work all the time. Well, when we
Speaker 1: really needed money, we lived so simply. I mean, we
Speaker 1: never went to Europe. We never went you know, we
Speaker 1: drove anywhere, um that we went when we really needed money.
Speaker 1: In eighty six, we did one record together and that
Speaker 1: kept us going. And but it's just, you know, I
Speaker 1: I I liked my life. I never I didn't expect
Speaker 1: to be on the great stages of your you know.
Speaker 1: To me, it was really fantastic that I got the opportunity.
Speaker 1: I never thought I would do a record, But in
Speaker 1: doing so, I got to travel, which in I never
Speaker 1: thought I would ever have the money to travel and
Speaker 1: go to Finland, you know. But uh, but I mean
Speaker 1: all the places. I'm just joking, but I did get
Speaker 1: to go to Finland, even though I had never dreamed
Speaker 1: of going to Finland. But I mean I got to
Speaker 1: all the places. I saw Paris and Rome and Vienna
Speaker 1: and all these places because I had a band and
Speaker 1: sang and did records. But it wasn't it wasn't my
Speaker 1: focus in life. It wasn't my great great vision. And
Speaker 1: so when I didn't do it, I was grateful that
Speaker 1: I got the opportunity. But I wasn't mourning the situation
Speaker 1: that I wasn't doing it. You know, I wasn't missing
Speaker 1: the applause. It wasn't like a Judy Garland movie or something.
Speaker 1: I just, you know, I felt you know, really happy writing,
Speaker 1: you know, watching my kids grow. I did what I
Speaker 1: needed to do. I was happy. Oh yeah, I love
Speaker 1: my kids are awesome. And the funny thing is, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not embarrassed to say this because my kids know.
Speaker 1: I never wanted kids. I just wanted to be an artist.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to have kids. And I came from
Speaker 1: a big family and I helped raise my siblings, and
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be free. And it was Fred
Speaker 1: who wanted children, and I loved him so much, and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, I can do that, you know I
Speaker 1: But I never expected to just love my kids so
Speaker 1: much and just love being a mother. And since Fred
Speaker 1: died when he was forty five, you know, I have them.
Speaker 1: I have them. I see so much of him in them,
Speaker 1: not just in the way they look or certain gestures,
Speaker 1: but even in their music. The tones of my son's tar.
Speaker 1: He'll be playing a guitar solo. He never heard his
Speaker 1: father play guitar because they were quite young. It's Fred's tones.
Speaker 1: Jesse at the piano, she is just his feel and
Speaker 1: she never heard him play piano, but she has his feel,
Speaker 1: and it's it's awesome to have them as individuals, but
Speaker 1: also how they magnify their father coming up. More from
Speaker 1: my live conversation with Patti Smith explore the Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing Archives, where I talked with another musician, one who
Speaker 1: was transformed by the music of Patti Smith. She represented
Speaker 1: something other and something to me alien, and part of
Speaker 1: that was this this um uh openness is fluidity about
Speaker 1: sexuality that I think certainly resonated with me and with
Speaker 1: with millions of other people who are questioning their sexuality
Speaker 1: or or or emerging into something that they weren't familiar with,
Speaker 1: or it's something that wasn't at the time quite accepted
Speaker 1: or acceptable. Take a listen to my conversation with R. E. M.
Speaker 1: Frontman Michael Stipe at Here's the Thing dot org. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: today live from the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, where I sat down with musician and poet
Speaker 1: Patti Smith. Now, when you uh was writing songs for
Speaker 1: you difficult and incredib laborious, did they come to you?
Speaker 1: Were both well, I mean, writing songs isn't my first
Speaker 1: vocation and I I it's I'm not as fast sole
Speaker 1: at writing songs as other things also since I don't
Speaker 1: really only I play a few chords on the guitar,
Speaker 1: so I can figure out some things. But sometimes songs come.
Speaker 1: Songs are so strange. Sometimes they just come as a gift.
Speaker 1: I've woke up in the morning and there's a song
Speaker 1: there and I quick write it down. It just comes
Speaker 1: full with the music and the words. And then there's
Speaker 1: other songs that have taken three years too, you know,
Speaker 1: have a piece of music and write words, but it's
Speaker 1: it's labor songwriting, and there's a lot of responsibility, um
Speaker 1: responsibility to the composer because most of my songs, the
Speaker 1: music was written by a band member or Fred and
Speaker 1: and and so you want to please them. But it
Speaker 1: also has to be something that I can sing. But
Speaker 1: the easiest, one of the easiest things was to write
Speaker 1: um too. Because the night because Bruce, I had a
Speaker 1: cassette with a it was a demo, and I really
Speaker 1: didn't want to listen to it. You know. It was
Speaker 1: given to me by my producer, Jimmy Ivan, and he
Speaker 1: coax Bruce into let me finish it. Bruce couldn't figure
Speaker 1: out he was having trouble writing verses to the song.
Speaker 1: He had the chorus and Jimmy gave it to me
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to listen to it because I thought, um,
Speaker 1: I wanted to write. I wanted my band to write
Speaker 1: their own songs. And uh and Bruce is from like
Speaker 1: a different part of New Jersey than me, and he's
Speaker 1: sort of in the middle, and I'm from South Jersey
Speaker 1: and it's like, I really I just didn't want, you know,
Speaker 1: and sort of a middle and which don't bring that
Speaker 1: Middle Jersey. I know I'm from New Jersey. It's just
Speaker 1: I'm from like the cooler part of Jersey. But I
Speaker 1: was this is what I was saying before. But one
Speaker 1: night I was waiting. Jimmy had given me this tape.
Speaker 1: We were doing this album Easter, and every night Jimmy
Speaker 1: would say, hey, listen to the tape, to listen to
Speaker 1: the tape, to listen to the tape, and I said, uh,
Speaker 1: not yet, and he called me up to listen to
Speaker 1: the tape, to listen to the tape. Uh not yet.
Speaker 1: So you know, it was just sitting there in my
Speaker 1: little apartment on McDougall Street, and uh So, anyway, Fred
Speaker 1: was supposed to call me and it was like seven
Speaker 1: and I got already I look cool. And I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there and the phone sitting there, and I'm waiting for
Speaker 1: Fred to call, and seven goes by seven thirty. No Fred,
Speaker 1: you know, say eight o'clock. I'm pacing around, and you know,
Speaker 1: I was like obsessive, you know, I wanted, you know,
Speaker 1: the phone call, and I couldn't. I was just pasting
Speaker 1: and pasting, couldn't figure out what to do with myself.
Speaker 1: And I noticed this the darn tape, and I thought,
Speaker 1: listen to that darn tape. So I put it on
Speaker 1: my cassette machine and put it on and I listened
Speaker 1: to it, and it's in my key, perfectly arranged anthemic
Speaker 1: has a really great chorus, and I thought it's one
Speaker 1: of those darn hits. It's just yeah, yeah. So I
Speaker 1: listened to it and it was, you know, it was captivating,
Speaker 1: and I'm waiting for Fred and waiting for Fred. Finally
Speaker 1: he calls me up like eleven o'clock at night. But
Speaker 1: when he called me because it took so long, um,
Speaker 1: I had finished all the lyrics to the song. And uh,
Speaker 1: that's why in the second verse that says Lisie, have
Speaker 1: I doubt when I'm alone Love is a ring the telephone.
Speaker 1: I was waiting for Fred to call so and uh,
Speaker 1: so I wrote the words and uh and and thanks
Speaker 1: to Bruce, I had my uh my first hit. Um
Speaker 1: now um writing books when you did Us Kids and
Speaker 1: m Train was quite a gap in between those two books,
Speaker 1: But I was writing books difficult for you as well. Well.
Speaker 1: Just Kids was really difficult because I'm basically wrote fiction
Speaker 1: and uh and even though it wasn't in poetry. And
Speaker 1: the day before it, literally the day before Robert died,
Speaker 1: he asked me too if I would write our story.
Speaker 1: And our story was something that we cherished. It was.
Speaker 1: He used to like me to tell him our stories.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we didn't have enough food or we were hungry
Speaker 1: and we couldn't go anywhere, and he'd say, tell me
Speaker 1: our story. And so I would start, like a little
Speaker 1: fairy tale, tell the story of how I came to
Speaker 1: New York and how we met. And so I promised
Speaker 1: him I would write it, having no idea how I
Speaker 1: would do that, And it took me a really long
Speaker 1: time because also so many things happened. My Fred passed away,
Speaker 1: then my brother passed away, and I had two young children,
Speaker 1: and so it took a long time for me to
Speaker 1: fulfill this promise. But all the discipline, all what I
Speaker 1: had learned in all those years in Michigan really taught
Speaker 1: me how to sustain writing. Finally I got it done,
Speaker 1: and it was it was so exhausting. When I was done,
Speaker 1: I I could hardly write another thing for a while.
Speaker 1: Two things I want to ask you, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna take some questions I think from the audience. But
Speaker 1: you seem like somebody like I read interviews with you,
Speaker 1: and I I saw clips of you talking to people,
Speaker 1: and and I think the one thing we have in
Speaker 1: common is an appreciation of people that you admire and
Speaker 1: people you worked with and that you liked. And and
Speaker 1: I was wondering when you look back and when you've
Speaker 1: had such a long career and you work around people
Speaker 1: who were these amazing, unique people and during unique times,
Speaker 1: you know, in the sixties and the seventies and so forth,
Speaker 1: and if you can mention just one or two people
Speaker 1: who when you look back now, people you think, man,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I got to know that person, I
Speaker 1: got to hang out with that person. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that just having Alan Ginsberg, William Burrows and Gregory Corso
Speaker 1: as mentors at a very young age, and they really
Speaker 1: did shepherd me. Um and I mean Alan speaking of
Speaker 1: of activism and performance and and serving the people. And
Speaker 1: UH and William in In taught me so many other things.
Speaker 1: How to conduct myself, how to protect my work, um,
Speaker 1: how to try to have a good name. I mean,
Speaker 1: they all had their their advice for me, and UH
Speaker 1: and Gregory was so irreverent, you know, just no bullshit
Speaker 1: and both both a romantic poet and UH completely unbridled.
Speaker 1: I just learned so much from these three men. They
Speaker 1: were so different, and they were so unique and their work. Um,
Speaker 1: all did such great work. And UM, when I looked back,
Speaker 1: I just sort of went with the flow when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, you know, I just thought, you know,
Speaker 1: they were cool and and they were so helpful. But
Speaker 1: when I when I look back now, it's really with
Speaker 1: a sense of wonder that I came from truly such
Speaker 1: a rural area where you know, there was a pig
Speaker 1: you know, we lived in this little house and there
Speaker 1: was a field and then a big pig farm. Across
Speaker 1: the street was a peach orchard, and down the road
Speaker 1: there was a little skate and rink and up the
Speaker 1: road was a little armory where there was school, where
Speaker 1: there were dances with a disc jockey like once a month,
Speaker 1: and there was like nothing there. And how I went
Speaker 1: from there and found these guys is uh, you know magical.
Speaker 1: You can't imagine your child and your brothers and they're gone,
Speaker 1: like it's Saturday afternoon. They're like, what do you want
Speaker 1: to do? An the other brothers like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you want to throw dirt bombs at the pig? Actually,
Speaker 1: we would like want to go skating. I want to
Speaker 1: go get some peaches from the orchard and throw them
Speaker 1: at the pig. Let's do that. Let's do that. Actually
Speaker 1: we we. I was taken to court when I was
Speaker 1: levin because I still we we. My dad was on
Speaker 1: strike and there was like no food in the house
Speaker 1: and my mother could make really good pie. So we
Speaker 1: snuck over to old man Baker's field and he had
Speaker 1: a peach orchard and they were on watch. My sister
Speaker 1: and brother and I climbed up the tree and I
Speaker 1: was getting peaches and just filling up a basket. An
Speaker 1: old man Baker comes and he comes after us with
Speaker 1: salt rock and a gun, and you know, salt rock
Speaker 1: and boy Bernie butt One would have but they got away.
Speaker 1: But he caught me. Then I had to go to court.
Speaker 1: He had a lawyer and he said, you know, I
Speaker 1: was a ring leader of the gang. He was up
Speaker 1: there saying that I was a ring leader of the gang.
Speaker 1: I was there with like so skinny, with these long
Speaker 1: straggly braids and my little, you know, blue checker dress,
Speaker 1: sitting there like this, and like he's talking about this
Speaker 1: ring leader you know that did thousands of dollars worth
Speaker 1: of damage, and on and on, and then they had
Speaker 1: me come up in front of and when I had
Speaker 1: to walk up and everyone looked at me, the whole
Speaker 1: courtyard burst out laughing. It's like a little house on
Speaker 1: the prairie. No, it's just like I was a kid.
Speaker 1: He used to golf on a local golf course next
Speaker 1: door to our house. We'd sneak out in the summer
Speaker 1: at seven o'clock and all the golfers were gone, and
Speaker 1: we take a pitching wedge and a seven iron and
Speaker 1: a putter and we hit on this hole that was
Speaker 1: right near our house. And then and then you're here
Speaker 1: to get them. Go get off of that green boom.
Speaker 1: When you hear all the salt and shoots salt. It's hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard when that's I mean, it doesn't care kill
Speaker 1: you or anything, but it is. Bernie. Yeah, he used
Speaker 1: to shoot us with a salt. Now. The last thing
Speaker 1: I want to ask you is because I think a
Speaker 1: lot about this too, do I have any scars on
Speaker 1: my butt? Put it in the book the next book, Um,
Speaker 1: to talk to people. I I you know, a big
Speaker 1: a piece in my book, not a big piece, but
Speaker 1: an important piece is me talking to people. Is talking
Speaker 1: to myself as a young person, to a young person
Speaker 1: who goes into the arts or goes into theater specifically.
Speaker 1: But you really have to develop a muscle to not
Speaker 1: care what other people tell you about what you want
Speaker 1: to do if you have a really burning passion to
Speaker 1: do something. Because life is so short, I think people
Speaker 1: don't read learned growing up how to be happy and
Speaker 1: how to enjoy themselves enough in a healthy way and
Speaker 1: in a reasonable way. That's so nice, you know, because
Speaker 1: my my father, he was a factory worker, but he
Speaker 1: was really really intelligent, really intelligent, and once I asked him, um,
Speaker 1: I think I don't know. I was probably in my
Speaker 1: early twenties, what is the greatest thing a person could
Speaker 1: strive for? And I imagined he would give me some
Speaker 1: lofty answer because he was reading Carl Young, and he
Speaker 1: was reading Shakespeare and Aristotle and all these guys in
Speaker 1: the Bible, and he said, you know, the greatest thing
Speaker 1: to pursue his happiness. And it's just when I was young,
Speaker 1: I thought, really, yeah, And now now I do I
Speaker 1: I do get it, you know. And it's like, even
Speaker 1: in these times, in these times, it's seems like the
Speaker 1: most terrible of times, I still try to hold onto
Speaker 1: that and remember that that no matter what we have,
Speaker 1: the right, the pursuit of happiness just is our is
Speaker 1: is a right we're born with that. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: some questions. What do we Uh? Are you right here?
Speaker 1: Your hand is raised, Patty. What women inspired you throughout
Speaker 1: your career? Well, that's a simple time. I go all
Speaker 1: the way back. I could start with I loved Madam
Speaker 1: Curie when I was little. I loved Louisa May Outcott.
Speaker 1: I loved Joan of arc I love Dava Gardner, Peggy
Speaker 1: Ann Gardner. Peggy Ann Gardner in In a Tree Grows
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. She was awesome and uh and I loved
Speaker 1: Grace Slick, and I loved John Bayaz, and I love
Speaker 1: Nina Simone, and I love my daughter. And uh, there's
Speaker 1: a million women. I mean, you know, there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of I mean now, lots of really great movie stars.
Speaker 1: You know, Emily or Emma Blunt or Emily Blunt or
Speaker 1: Emma Stone and Kristen Stewart and and all the girl actresses.
Speaker 1: I like them all. You know. I enjoy being a
Speaker 1: girl and I enjoy uh, I enjoy the great things
Speaker 1: that girls do. But um, I am partial to Fyllis.
Speaker 1: I mean, thank God for that. Must say. I've had
Speaker 1: a million we have we have fifty hands up here.
Speaker 1: We try to go boy girl, boy girl, balcony. Um
Speaker 1: you did. You just sang at the Nobel Prize and
Speaker 1: it was really just a beaut of moving performance. Um.
Speaker 1: And I'm as nervous now as you were then. Um.
Speaker 1: But but I was thinking about singing that great Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan song. And I know from reading about Bob Dylan that, um,
Speaker 1: Alan Ginsburg, that was the song where but where Alan
Speaker 1: Ginsburg started to say, this guy really has something. And
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if you connected your your friendship with Alec
Speaker 1: Alan Ginsburg with the performance of that song heart Reign
Speaker 1: is Gonna Fall. Well, it would have been a nice thought,
Speaker 1: but truthfully I didn't and I didn't really know that. Um.
Speaker 1: The thing that I connected, a small personal thing, is
Speaker 1: I do have a blue eyed son, and so singing
Speaker 1: those words where have you been my blue eyed son?
Speaker 1: Takes me right to my blue eyed son. Also, I
Speaker 1: heard it when I was fifteen years old, and when
Speaker 1: I heard that song, I thought, this fella is a poet.
Speaker 1: So I perhaps it's the song that brings those thoughts
Speaker 1: that it Um. It resonated with Alan Ginsburg, but it
Speaker 1: also resonated with me, a fifteen year old school girl.
Speaker 1: It was like a rombo poem or something. But in
Speaker 1: I chose the song because I thought he's winning the
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize for Literature. It was the first song I
Speaker 1: heard of his that I felt that this was a
Speaker 1: poet singing to us. So I went all the way
Speaker 1: back um and chose chose it. From there, we got
Speaker 1: time for one more. We have somebody with the mic
Speaker 1: now hold on. Please Thank you so much, uh Ms Smith.
Speaker 1: It's an honor to speak with you. As an artist
Speaker 1: and art educator. I've used just kids in my classroom
Speaker 1: to basically talk about an artist journey and discovering your path.
Speaker 1: You always do an advice uce to a young artist,
Speaker 1: what immunition would you have to help stockpile that we
Speaker 1: can continue to encourage positivity, creativity and individuality. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: the advice that I have is always very simple, that
Speaker 1: you you want to pursue life as an artist. Um.
Speaker 1: Just I could go all the way back to when
Speaker 1: we first started talking about Robert Maplethorpe. He wanted to
Speaker 1: be an artist and he had to sacrifice a lot
Speaker 1: to make that choice. He sacrificed all his all the
Speaker 1: all his comforts, the support of his family, his scholarship. Um.
Speaker 1: He sacrificed all of that because he knew what he wanted.
Speaker 1: He had a vision, he felt he had a calling.
Speaker 1: And when you have that um and and feel it,
Speaker 1: you can't live without pursuing it. Then you have to
Speaker 1: do everything that you can um to magnify the gift
Speaker 1: that you have, and it's going to cost you. It's
Speaker 1: you have to be willing to sacrifice. You have to
Speaker 1: be willing uh to work really hard. You have to
Speaker 1: be willing to perhaps go years or quite a long
Speaker 1: time without recognition, without acknowledgement, and you have to um
Speaker 1: in the face of all that, maintain your vision as vision,
Speaker 1: you know, being being a real artist. And maybe in
Speaker 1: you know, some old fashioned sense, the way I look
Speaker 1: at art it is it is like it is a
Speaker 1: sacred quest and uh, it doesn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with fame and fortune. You can achieve fame and fortune
Speaker 1: in the pursuit of it, because perhaps the stars are aligned,
Speaker 1: but that can't be your prime directive. Your prime directive
Speaker 1: has to be to do something new, to give something
Speaker 1: new to the canon of art, to give something new
Speaker 1: to the people, and uh, to do something great, to
Speaker 1: do something enduring, something inspiring, something that will take people
Speaker 1: somewhere they've never been taken. And you have to remember,
Speaker 1: you know why you want to create. And so I
Speaker 1: just say again, simply hard work and sacrifice happily, because
Speaker 1: if you can't sacrifice with joy, then it's meaningless. And
Speaker 1: if you sacrifice and you maintain your joy and and
Speaker 1: your enthusiasm and your curiosity and your ability to work hard,
Speaker 1: you'll achieve something. So that's what I got. We're gonna do.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do this one last one because I'm afraid
Speaker 1: you're gonna hurt yourself if I don't go right ahead, Patty,
Speaker 1: when you were starting your career, what musicians inspired you
Speaker 1: the most? Well, first of all, I have to say again,
Speaker 1: I never embarked on a career, so you know, my
Speaker 1: road was so serendipitous that it's not really fair to
Speaker 1: call it a career. But the people that inspired me
Speaker 1: the most when I was young were um eleanor Steber,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, Maria Collis, M. Coltrane, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan,
Speaker 1: of course, and Joan Baez, and and then hearing Grace
Speaker 1: Slicks sing White Rabbit. I mean, there's so many Neil Young,
Speaker 1: we have so many, there's so many people to be
Speaker 1: inspired by. But the animals, you know, they just go
Speaker 1: on and on. But you know, if I had to
Speaker 1: distill it really down, Bob Dylan was really one of
Speaker 1: my greatest influences. I let's have a round of applause
Speaker 1: for Patty's ned. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing makes a fin w