Patti Smith is one of rock ‘n’ Rolls great icons. Not one to shy away from the subjects that matter, her outspoken comments have gained her respect since her early days performing in New York’s CBGB’s. When Patti commands an audience it is time to sit up and listen. Fused met up with Patti in the legendary town of Lynchburg, Tennessee where she was performing to celebrate the Birthday of Mr Jack Daniel. Here she discusses the importance of dental care, the decline of bohemian New York and her secret addiction to Myspace. Ladies and gentleman here is the world according to Patti Smith…
I loved rock'n'roll so much
I saw the trajectory of music, Little Richard, Bob Dylan, The Animals, and then the 60s, all the great music and I really felt empowered being a skinny, pimply weirdo from New Jersey. I loved rock'n'roll so much, and then in the early 70s it felt like it was going downhill, politically and sexually, it was losing its strength, it was getting glamorous and snotty, so I started writing and performing stuff. Just hoping to agitate things. To remind people where rock'n'roll was supposed to be. It was supposed to be grassroots and speak for the people. In 73. But what really happened was Bob Dylan came to see me in some shitty little club and he never did stuff like that. For me, he was like Bob Dylan, you know, I loved him. It got so much media attention that I got signed. His endorsement got me signed.
Rock 'n' Roll is in an interesting pivotal state
I don't think it's going down or up, it's like imagine if it's like a war, the people are gathering their forces, they're marshalling their energies so I find it interesting. I feel like the new guard are experimenting and becoming more independent. Record companies are in trouble and scrambling. It’s such a mess that its not owned by anybody. It’s being redefined. It's not a business, it's not supposed to be a business. It's a voice. It's like it's rebirthing itself. I'd rather that than corporatised.
If I can be of help.. I will
I never even expected to be alive at 60 but since I'm here, I'm really happy, I hope I'm alive another 40 years. At this point, I know I'm worse at what I do best. I like to perform, and I like to communicate, and I think I can be trusted because I don't have any ulterior motives. I like to make people laugh, I get angry about things. I want to inspire people to get politically involved. But I'd also like to inspire people to take good care of their teeth, don't eat a lot of salt or fast food. I'm a mum, I can be very irreverent, I can still put my foot through an amp but I can help you with first aid or nutrition. I don't have an image or agenda, I've been here a long time and sadly have outlived a lot of my friends, so if I can be of help.. I will.
The left have been extremely weak
The left have been extremely weak. September 11th is one of the worst things to have happened to my country, and not because of the tragedy – yes it's a tragedy, but when you look at the tsunami that killed 100,00 people... a lot of it wasn't the amount of people that died, it was the American pride. It's as if we have this magic shield around us and all of Europe can experience tragedies – but not us. It seemed to, it struck a pall over the country and the Bush administration crafted everything, so that anything that you said that opposed what he said was unpatriotic. People got very weak, they completely lost what patriotism is – what they really meant was you are not nationalistic. The Bush administration are nationalistic and imperialistic, and most of the American people do not have the sophistication to understand the difference. The word should be humanist.
I don't know anybody or anything that's going on!
The way I find out what's going on is through MySpace. My daughter made me a MySpace and I felt like an intruder: 'They don't want me on the MySpace thing, that's like a secret club'. And then 200,000 people came to visit. For a person like me, who sells 40,000 records in America, to see 200,000 people listening to your music is really exciting.
I like Wagner, Maria Callis, Coltrane and Jimmy Hendrix. I'm not really up on who's doing what.
In the 60s we had all of these gods of the period
That's how things are right now. In the 60s we had all of these gods of the period, you look at the Rennaisance and you have Michaelangelo and Da Vinci, well every generation doesn't necessarily put out these olympian people. I think we're just in a cycle where it is more equalised. But people will rise, someone who will be extra special, have extra charisma or a special gift and they will capture a wider imagination. Right now the playing field is more people orientated. Maybe not as mystically exciting, but I think for the individual it's a good thing. Everyone is learning they can express themselves, yes I can vote, yes I can make change, I can do something for the environment.
I think of it like in sports. I always hated sports but my late husband, who is a great musician and a genius, but he also loved sports and he forced me to learn about sports including golf.
He was from Detroit and he loved his basketball team, the Detroit Pistons. This was in the 80s, which was a period we'd had so many great players, like Michael Jordan, he was like the god of basketball. But then you had the Pistons, who had no god. You had a bunch of scrappy players, each with their own personality.
You had Vinnie, the microwave, who was like 5'8 and he's a basketball player. They had Buddha, who was tall and skinny and very meditative, who would just quietly let everybody else do their thing and then all of a sudden he would just 'boom!', put it in. And then you had Joe Dumar, the good guy, the work horse, and you had Rodman, the worm, who was one of the great defence players.
But none of them were iconic. They were just all of these guys, and they wound up winning three championships, because they were such a collective force. Some might have the great one-god guy that sold all of the t-shirts, and all of America was wearing their sneakers, and nobody gave as much thought to the Pistons.
But the Pistons won three championships. And I thought there's something so metaphorically beautiful about this, and it was out of this atmosphere that my husband and I wrote the song 'People Have The Power', really secretly inspired by the Detroit Pistons.
I like to think that right now, music is in its Detroit Pistons place. We'll see what happens.
I will also give you my dental pitch.
As a parting gift, my dental pitch is, I'm telling you something I was never told because my generation being born right after world war two, dental care was not a big issue and my generation have terrible teeth. I'm telling you, please, save your money, and get your teeth professionally cleaned once twice a year if you can afford it, because when you get older its such a pain in the ass, its so important. It will save you a lot of heartache. You wouldn't think that teeth things were such a big deal but it is such a big pain in the ass.
I worry about people, I do, I want people to come to our concerts and have fun, I want people to have as much information about things, even a little thing because if the revolution comes, you don't want to be with a nerve exposed in your tooth that's so painful that you aren't ready for the revolution.
The closing of CBGB’s, to me, is symptomatic of one of the tragedies of our modern world
CBGBs, to me, is symptomatic of one of the tragedies of our modern world and that is the affluence and the corporatisation of our cities and advertising, money, condominiums... I'm sure you see it where you all live. New York city was always such a great city when I was younger, because it was so cheap, a little dangerous, not so dangerous, but you could come, get a little bookstore job, live in the east village, meet a whole bunch of other artists and poets, create a scene and exchange ideas, and get political ideas and poetic ideas and feel like you were doing something.
Now its become so affluent and expensive, and they just have come in really, at such a speed, I can't believe it, right in front of my eyes, and taken over all our neighbourhoods. Not just some of them, all of them. And these developers and these really evil people like Donald Trump, who's like another evil king, and just buy up all these areas and make condos so expensive so that none of us can live there.
So yes, CBGBs, I feel emotionally sad about losing it physically, but its not just CBGBs, its the whole thing. And it's not just the whole thing in NY, its everywhere I go this is happening, everywhere in the world I go. I was just in Istanbul and kids are saying yeah this is a cool area but the developers are moving in. It doesn't matter where it is, it's the globalisation of our world.
To me globalisation should mean everyone can afford health care, Aids drugs are available to everyone, that no one is starving. That should be globalisation. But globalisation is not that at all. It's becoming that the world is just one big playground for people with new affluence, and a lot of this affluence is made up, because it's built on credit cards. It's not really built on a real working-class sensibility where people work hard, it's more to do with how clever an entrepreneurial you are. And I think that this. I can live with the equal exploration of the arts, but this equalisation of the world for the middle classes, the upper middle classes, its such a class conscious thing. In NY city, I don't have any place left to play any more, all my band have moved out except for me. Every single place we've ever practised, they're finished, they're condos, galleries, I don't know where we're going...
Me myself I'm looking for somewhere to move because it doesn't represent me any more. I'm giving up. It doesn't matter any more. I could hold out on my little street, but for what reason? I have no community. I don't want to be around these people who are basically.. I mean we never had anything, nowadays they've got these stretch hummers and they're dressed up with cell phones hanging out of their ears C'mon – you know, do something, do something else.
You hit a sensitive nerve, but despite all of that, and despite the fact that to me, our world seems really fucked up at the moment, and my country seems in a really bad place, spiritually, socially, economically, I still believe, and I tell my kids this, we get one life, one specific life, and we have the right to navigate the dark sea of the world as well as we can, and be happy and have some kind of joy and I don't think that we need to be depressed, angry and feel defeated every day.
I know things are very bad, I know the Bush administration in some ways has defeated me, but I'm not going to crawl into hole, I'm going to be myself and I'll be a living thorn, and I'll poke him and poke him and poke him until hopefully he bleeds. And maybe that's all I can do, but in the meantime I'm also gonna be happy, and enjoy my kids, enjoy arts, enjoy nature, enjoy this moment. So for a person who's maybe the oldest in this room, I'm just telling you that life, even in its worst, is worth living. There's always something wonderful to wake up to everyday. It really is worth it. I have seen the bottom, and even seeing the bottom, I still wanted to come back up. Its great to be alive.
I don't believe that we all deserve to have a car, or all the different things that are dangled in front of us, but I do believe we have the right to be happy. So even if you feel guilty, don't be afraid to be happy.