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interview with page seven TODD BAESEN: Did you hear the inane comments Bill O'Reilly made on Fox radio about his apparently sincere hope that San Francisco gets blown up by terrorists, because we not only voted to ban military recruitment in our schools, but we also voted to ban possession of handguns in the city. PATTI SMITH: Oh, yeah and even though I didn't vote here, my obvious love of San Francisco will take me down with you guys. In fact, while l was riding in a taxicab with this Russian taxi driver, I was listening to that jerk on the radio. I won't even say his name, because I never listen to him, so I wasn't prepared... I mean that guy is such a fucking idiot! I was getting high blood pressure just listening to him. So I said to the cab driver, "how can you listen to that crap?" He said, "it's very informative, it's the news." I said, "that guy is crazy, it's not the news!" He said, "yes, I'm in America." (Laughter). You know when I was living in Michigan with Fred (Patti's late husband), he liked to shoot off his shotgun on New Year's Eve. He was a very passive man, but as he always said, it was a very French thing to do. So we would go to the gun store to get blanks for him to shoot off, and I would look around at all the guns they had for hunters to go out and kill Thumper and Bambi's mother with. The AK-47's and all these big assault guns. If they had these kinds of guns in the Battle of Algiers, it would have been over like that! So I'm thinking, "what do they need all this shit for?" They have bows and arrows, they've got knives, and they have salt rock. So I'm in complete solidarity with your vote. I know it means that San Franciscan's have now brought upon themselves the "O'Reilly curse," but I say, "bring it on." And if I ever see him walking down the streets of New York City, I will defend your honor. TODD BAESEN: It's nice that Columbia has been so supportive of your work. The new Horses/Horses CD is actually the second live CD that Columbia has issued, after the French import of the Vieilles Charrues Festival concert that was recorded for French radio in July, 2004. PATTI SMITH: Well, we do have about 75 bootlegs albums out there. I just figure, in terms of doing a live record, it's such a crap shoot, because you can have twenty shows were you feel like you are transcendent, and then you have a show where you are having a lot of technical problems and that might be the one show that gets recorded. It's just such an inconsistent thing, so I really like it when the people just record them and pass them off to each other. I have a lot of problems listening to myself live, so that's probably part of it. I guess I figure that the people will take care of that, because we don't really monitor any of that stuff. I do know that Lenny Kaye and I have a tape of our first poetry reading on February 10th, 1971 at St. Marks Church. It will be its 35th anniversary next year and we do have a tape of that, so Lenny is going to put it out as a Mer Record. TODD BAESEN: How did Lenny come to play guitar at that first poetry reading?
PATTI SMITH: Lenny and I had met in 1970 when he was working at Bleecker Bob's. We were both doing music criticism at the time and I read something he had written on a cappella music, which I had grown up with in Philadelphia. The piece was so beautifully written; I went down to the record store and introduced myself to him. We became friends, and when I was getting ready to do my first poetry reading, I wanted to do something special. I didn't want to just do a boring poetry reading, because I knew if I did, Gregory Corso would heckle me the whole time. So I knew I had to do something more high energy. At the time I was talking to my good friend Sam Shepherd about this and he said, "well why don't you have some guitar with the poems." I remembered Lenny played the electric guitar, so I asked him and Lenny said "okay" and he came over with me to play at St. Mark's Church.
TODD BAESEN: It will be marvelous to finally have that poetry reading on CD, because even though it's 35 years later, it will still be the first official poetry CD of yours. To me, it was criminal that Arista never issued a complete live album back in the seventies. In fact, here's a copy of one of the few live things they did issue, the French import EP of Hey Joe, backed with the live version of Radio Ethiopia that was recorded at CBGB's in 1977. It's nice because you hear the birth of Rock and Roll Nigger during the middle of your performance of Radio Ethiopia. PATTI SMITH: Oh yeah, that was great. I always loved that record and the picture on the cover. But I don't even have it anymore. I don't have any of this stuff. TODD BAESEN: Another nice thing about the new Horses/Horses CD is how beautifully it's designed and packaged.
PATTI SMITH: Yes, and I'm really proud to be part of Legacy. My daughter Jesse and I were in a store looking at all the Legacy records and when nobody was looking we put ours next to all the other ones: Pearl, The Clash, and the Jeff Buckley one-all of them are really nice. But I was looking at the Pearl record and then at our record, and it was just amazing, because I can remember being at the Chelsea Hotel when Janis was staying there, and getting ready to do Pearl. I was lucky enough to hear her work on those songs. I heard Kris Kristofferson play Bobby McGee for her, and then she joined in, and she said, "I'm going to do that tune, man" and she did do it. I was just sitting there, and at the time I was moonlighting as a poet at night, and working at a bookstore during the day, and seeing all these people getting ready to do this record. It never ever crossed my mind that the time would come when we would have a record on the same label, sitting in stores next to Janis's record. So you never know what's going to happen in life. TODD BAESEN: It's too bad Sam Andrew (from Big Brother & the Holding Co.) didn't make it to your Fillmore show the night you sang Piece of My Heart. But when you come back to San Francisco and sing White Rabbit, I think Paul Kanter might join you on stage. But you introduced Piece of My Heart by telling a story about consoling Janis, which you also wrote about in Circus Magazine, after Janis died in 1970:
It gets harder to get up in the morning. Caught in a wind of drunken hard riding heroes, shooting you higher than you can get yourself, then bringing you down lower than you've ever laid. The hero myth is dissolving and soon we'll be forced to feed on ourselves, become our own best characters, our own private stars. For self-preservation it's healthy, but it's mighty lonely. But no less so than waking up this morning knowing she is gone. Bob Neuwirth, who furnished our fallen lady with spicy stories, laughter, loyal friendship and even the name of her marvelous Full Tilt Boogie Band, had sung over and over to her, "Don't let me get the blues again, don't let you get the blues again." She'd laugh and take a swig of Benedictine which is warm and sweet like she was. But we all knew she had those blues over and over. Hell, she was so neat, with them golden slippers and the funny way she talked... every other word was man; "Ya know man, all I care about man, is ballin', drinkin' and singing." And she was so fragile her feelings got hurt real easy and with all her wild riding she had sort of a Coney Island innocence. August 5th, her concert was rained out at Forest Hills. She got all nervous when the crowd booed the reports that Janis and her new band would not tilt the stage with their boogie and blues. She was worried and puffy and like a scared little girl. She asked Grossman, "Man are they mad at me, Albert, hey man are they booing me?" Albert just patted her head and said, "No honey, they're mad at the rain." And Neuwirth sang a little Hank Williams and good ole John took pictures and her drummer made Mickey Mouse faces. And Janis, who liked to be called Pearl off stage, hooted and smiled that tipsy little girl smile and everything was sunnier. Later that night she was lonely. Pearl hadn't found a man and I was kind of wishing I was one of them handsome Kristofferson types she was after. In the Chelsea, she hunched up, big Benedictine tears spilling all over her tattooed heart. I said, "Aw c'mon Janis don't get the blues again," and she said, "Man, it ain't fair, man. I'm gonna write this song, see..." and she started singing, "If you want to be a big woman, if you want to be a star woman, you gotta sleep alone." She said, "That's me man." I looked at her and said, "Boy Pearl you look so little," which is pretty funny as I'm sort of real-rail skinny and all. She said, "Aw, that's cause I don't got my feathers on." Then she was up in front of the mirror arranging those pink and purple plumes. Then she said, "How 'bout now, man?" Well, they were a little lopsided but she was covered with hearts and glitter and as flashy as Times Square. I said, "Yeah, you look great. A real pearl of a girl." And it was real hard
to get out of bed this morning. And hard to put her music on. And hard to keep
rocking.
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