Patti Smith.

• Author: Nichols, John
• Position: Rock-music singer - Interview

`To me, rock 'n' roll is a totally people-oriented. grassroots music. But it's not ours anymore.'

Almost thirty years have passed since Patti Smith burst out of South Jersey, with a poem--"Piss Factory"--that declared, "I'm going to be somebody, I'm going to go on that train and go to New York City, I'm going to be so bad, I'm going to be so big, I'm going to be a big star, and I will never return."

Smith did become a star. She published critically acclaimed books of poetry. She traveled in the circles of Warhol and Mapplethorpe. And she did what no woman had done before.

Relying on male icons--the teenaged French poet Arthur Rimbaud, American Beats Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, rock stars Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Bob Dylan--she fashioned a rock-star persona that made the Patti Smith Group an icon for a whole generation of young rockers.

Smith defined the punk aesthetic, wrote a hit single ("Because the Night") with Bruce Springsteen, released four stunning albums, and performed before crowds that numbered in the tens of thousands. Then, in 1979, she "retired" to raise a family in Detroit with legendary MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith. Over the next fifteen years, she brought up a daughter. Jesse, and a son, Jackson. Though she continued to write poetry and songs, she published only sporadically and released just one album.

In 1994, as she and her husband were preparing to record new music, a wave of tragedy hit. Fred died of a heart attack, as did Smith's brother, Todd. In the wake of those deaths, Smith has forged a comeback. Haunted and fragile on last year's album, Gone Again, she emerged this fall with Peace and Noise, which Billboard magazine declared to be "as potent an artistic statement as Smith has ever crafted."

Peace and Noise is Smith's most politically charged album, with songs that address Tibet, the Heaven's Gate suicides, AIDS, memories of Vietnam, and anger at the lingering hangover of the Reagan era.

For all of its politics, however, Peace and Noise retains the reverence for poetry and the faith in rock 'n' roll that has always underpinned Smith's work.

On the eve of a series of concerts in New York, where she now lives, Smith met me at a cafe in Soho. We ate French toast and watched Jesse draw pictures of clouds. Then we wandered over to Patti's house--a venerable 150-year-old structure on land once owned by Aaron Burr. On a wooden table in the kitchen sat a copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

Q: As an artist, did you feel you had to pick up a guitar and form a band to get your message across in an age where there are so many voices competing for attention?

Patti Smith: I've always loved the format of rock 'n' roll. I remember, as a child, watching rock n roll develop. I grew up with it. I was certainly comforted by it, inspired by it, excited by it.

Then in the early 1970s, when I really felt that rock `n' roll was losing some of its strength--when it just seemed like a format people were visiting for some kind of glamorous lifestyle, or to take a lot of drugs, twist people's minds, make a lot of money, and then exit--I reacted. Maybe I overreacted. But I really felt that rock 'n' roll was going into a bad place. I actually worried that it would just disintegrate.

I had never had any aspirations toward being a musician. I m not a musician. I m not really much of a singer. I wasn't brought up in a time where females even thought of things like that. In terms of female performers, we had memories of Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday, jazz singers, then you had Janis Joplin coming up, and Tina Turner. But in terms of a singer-songwriter leading a rock band, there really wasn't anyone I could think of. So I just didn't think about it.

It wasn't my intention to be involved in all this. I really wanted to be a painter, but I just didn't quite have the stuff to be a painter. Parallel to that, I always wanted to write.

But I seemed to have some kind of a natural calling to be a performer, to speak. I always felt comfortable and I had a desire to speak. When I was younger, I thought I'd be a missionary, or a preacher or a teacher. I went to teacher's college. I always liked the idea of talking to people about things, whether it was Moby Dick or the environment or making them laugh. And it turned out that rock 'n' roll was the place for me to do it.

Q: You've been at it for a quite a while. Is the soul still there in rock 'n' roll?

Smith: I don't worry about that so much anymore. I think the soul is there, if you look for it. Luckily, a lot of young bands and new performers have gone the independent route. They exchange ideas through vehicles that I m not even really schooled in--through computers and the Internet. There's a huge independent-music scene in recording, in performing.

But the music industry is worse than ever. It seems to me a lot like it was in the 1950s. I look at it now and the doors need to be kicked through because it's just as bad as any other time I can remember. Radio is more formatted than ever. Music TV is really a disappointment. They never took advantage of the potential that was there. They took advantage of how powerful they could get, and how much money they could make, but...