Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Patti Smith

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Patti Smith · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Hey y'all, today we have the one and only Patti
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Smith on the show. Patti's the prototypical downtown New York
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: City artist. Her 1975 debut album Horses is credited as
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: one of the masterpieces of its time. It also cemented
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: her as one of rock and roll's great lyricists. But
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: her writing extends far beyond music. Her 2010 memoir, Just Kids,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: won the National Book Award for its brilliant portrayal of
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: the late 60s bohemian art scene in New York and
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Patti's experience living in the Chelsea Hotel with famed photographer
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Robert Mapplethorpe. During those years, Patti hung out with Andy
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Warhol at the factory and was mentored by great writers
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: like William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Today, Patti publishes
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: near daily offerings of poems, songs, and serialized fiction on
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: her sub stack. It's a journal of sorts that she
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: started during the solitary days of the pandemic. On today's episode,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell talks to Patti Smith about her writing in
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: the studio Jimi Hendrix built, Electric Lady. It was there,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: she tells Malcolm, that she met Hendrix in 1970, just
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: weeks before he passed. She also talks about hanging out
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: with and writing lyrics for Janis Joplin. And she recalls
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: the fun that she had during a failed attempt to
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: cover Adele in concert. This is Broken Record, liner notes
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: for the digital age. I'm Justin Richmond. Here's Malcolm Gladwell
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: and Patti Smith.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Patti, thank you for joining us on Broken Record.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: We are here in Electric Lady Studios, a place that
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: you have a special relationship to. And little bits of
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: you are all around this place, I noticed as I
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: came in. When did you first come here? What is
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: your history with Electric Lady?
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Well, my very first time I came was Jimmy's opening party,
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: which I think is August 26, 1970.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Jimi Hendrix.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: Jimi Hendrix had a party to open it, and I
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: was writing record reviews and things at the time, and
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: I was invited. So I was very excited because he
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: was one of my favorite artists. And I came, but
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: I wasn't used to going to high-profile parties. And so
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: I wound up sitting on the steps and just watching
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: people go back and forth because I just didn't have
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: the nerve to go in. And Jimmy had to leave
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: the party early. I think he had a flight. He
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: was going to the Isle of Wight. And he had
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: that big festival. He was going to London in any event.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: And he saw me sitting on the steps. I mean,
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: this was 1970. I was, you know, I had a
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: certain look, you know, I was probably appealing in a
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: certain way. And he laughed and he said, you're not going,
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: he had that really, that soft voice, not going to
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: the party, you know, I can't do it. But, and
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: I said, well, I'm a little shy. And, and he said,
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: and he told me he was shy too. He said, actually,
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: people didn't understand that about him, but he was shy.
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: And he said it was interesting how you could be
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: such an aggressive performer yet still be shy around people.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: And he told me that he was going to go
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: and do these shows, a handful of shows. And then
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: he was going to come back, go to Woodstock and
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: gather musicians from all over the world and then have
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: them sit in a circle and and play, just like
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: Ornette Coleman is, you know, a dicophonist or whatever, out
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: of tune, different keys, instruments that didn't normally go together,
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: meld together, play and play and play till they connected
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: and found a common language. And to him, that would
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: be the language of peace. And then he left. And
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: of course, we never saw him again. He died in London.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: only maybe a couple weeks later, a few weeks later,
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: I think, which was heartbreaking. So that was my introduction
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: to Electric Ladies Studios. I didn't even have the nerve
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: to come into inside and never dreamed that I would
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: one day be recording because I was working in a bookstore,
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: you know, and writing reviews. But subsequently... I recorded my
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: independent single, Piss Factory, Horses, here, and just a plethora
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: of other albums. Over half my albums I've recorded here,
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: including my last album. So it's become quite a home
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: for me. And in terms of you mentioning bits and
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: pieces of me here, you can't imagine what an honor
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: it is still, after all these years, to walk in
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: here and see Horses on the Wall and other pictures
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: on the wall. It means a great deal to me.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: When you came in, you were pointing at a collage
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: on the wall. That's not yours, is it?
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: No, the collage is just part of the art that
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: was here. If you go in the bathroom, have you
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: gone to the bathroom here yet? It's decoupage, and it's
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: the same. All the art is the same. All these
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: murals were here when the studio opened. Jimmy commissioned all
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: of these murals. And the bathrooms, the lady and men's room,
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: are all decoupage, which was very, it was a very 60,
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: late 60s thing. And, you know, varnished, lots of collage
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: material varnished over. And that is probably a piece of
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: artwork that was in one of the offices. But you
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: have to go in the bathroom before you leave.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: I will be sure to. But who, wait, who else
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: was at the party? Do you remember?
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: No, because I was, I mean, probably Eddie Kramer. And,
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: you know, I didn't know any of these people. As
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: I said, I I was working in a bookstore and
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: I knew a handful of people. I knew some writers
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: from Max's Kansas City or had met Lou Reed and
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: a few people. But, you know, these were like probably,
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe there were a lot of celebrities or
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: models or producers, but it wasn't part of my world.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: So I only cared about Jimi Hendrix. So I don't
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: know who else was at the party.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: At that point, you'd been in New York for how long?
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: I came to New York in 1967, July of 1967,
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: so like a couple of years. But I went to Brooklyn.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: I moved to Brooklyn with Robert Mapplethorpe, and then we
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: moved to the Chelsea Hotel in August of 69. So
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: this was a year later. So I was still quite
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: the fledgling.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I want to come back to that period, but
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: I want to do this little exercise first, which is,
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: you know, as I— look back on your career, it's
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: unusual in many respects, but one of the things that's
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: most unusual about it is it's like, it's really kind of,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: you can give me the exact number, it's really four
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: or five different lives.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: It's a few, yeah.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: I want you to go through your, tell me all
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: the Patti Smith lives.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: Well, funny enough, I'm writing a book about that. So,
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: but I can, I mean, in terms of my public life,
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: my public life started quite slowly and 1971, I did,
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: you know, I came to New York, really, I wanted
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: to be an artist, a visual artist. And really, I
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: felt like language for some reason, I was also writing
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: a lot of poetry and poetry really sort of eclipsed
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: the visual arts. So I really dedicated myself to poetry
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: in the late 60s and early 70s. And I was
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: working in a bookstore. So I would say, that period
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: of my life from 67 to 75 was really devoted
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: to writing poetry, starting to perform publicly, and of course,
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: being greatly influenced and shepherded by Robert Mapplethorpe and then
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: Sam Shepard. These formative years that I had, I was
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: very lucky to have so many good teachers. You know,
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: in breaking my life up, I I would say that
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: period from 67 to 75 was my university. I was
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: friends with William Burroughs.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Yes?
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: You've skipped?
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: Childhood?
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: Life number one is... I'm not going through that with you.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: No, no, we don't have to go through it. I'm
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: just saying part one is pre-New York.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, part one is pre-New York. But in terms of
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: the work that I do, it would really start when
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: I came to New York.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: Because... When I came to New York, I was 20.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: I was excited about everything. I was well-read. I had
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: a good work ethic in terms of writing and doing jobs.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: I've been working since I was about 14, whether in
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: factories or picking blueberries or working in bookstores. So in 1967,
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: when I came to New York and met Robert, that
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: was when I really, along with him, made a vow
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: You know, pretty much to art, art being all the
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: fields of art. But I was I became much more
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: devoted to poetry. And that that period was really my
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: learning period. I met a lot of people who helped
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: me along, encouraged me. Bobby Newworth encouraged me to write lyrics.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: Jim Carroll to write poetry. I was so lucky to
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: know William Burroughs and Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg. And
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: not just as friends, but teachers. They looked at my work.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: They encouraged me. They invited me to read with them.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: and to be somewhat part of their world.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Where are you meeting these people?
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: In the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, mostly. I mean,
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: back then, Robert and I moved there in 69, and
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: there was the El Quixote bar next door to it,
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: and they all went there. I mean, I didn't really drink,
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: but they all went there. So you could go and
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: sit in the bar and sit next to Carl Solomon
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: or Terry Southern and William, and I had a big
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: crush on William, so... you know, we became friends. But
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: back then, everybody was around. You know, there wasn't the
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: same cult of celebrity. It was just like in the Chelsea,
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: I was living there. And so was Janis Joplin living
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: there for a while. Only we all dressed the same.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: We all listened to the same music. They were a
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: couple years older than me, some of these people. But
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: we were of the same mindset. And yeah, some of
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: them are real well-known, but we all commingled and uh
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: because every all of us were like as i would
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: say outside society janice joplin was big but also she
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: couldn't go into fancy hotels because of the way she
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: dressed and um we all talked and hung out together
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: but i had very good mentors very early on for
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: instance bobby newworth who i recognize from being in don't
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: look back bobby was also a painter and a songwriter
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: is i mean And Bobby introduced me. He was tour
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: managing Janice Joplin at the time, and she was writing material.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: And Bobby liked my poems, and he encouraged me to
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: write some lyrics for her. You know, I had a
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: lot of encouragement from people. I was sort of an unusual,
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: I was like Holden Caulfield at the Chelsea, a little
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: mix of Holden Caulfield or Eloise at the Plaza. I
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: don't know. I was not, even though I was sort
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: of a South Jersey hick, but I was really well read.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: And I was also probably one of the few people
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: who wasn't stoned or speeding half the time because I
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: didn't take drugs. And I had a steady job, which
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: meant I could be hit for a couple of dollars
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: here and there. I don't know. I can't say why
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: these really great people, you know, took me in under
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: their wing, but they did.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: I'm struck in that era, that world that you're inhabiting
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: in this sort of first stage, 67 to 75. How
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: many people are like you, outsiders who come to New York?
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: I'm fascinated by the notion of people who arrive, the
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: difference between arriving to New York from, as you did,
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: you know, as you call yourself, a hick from South Jersey.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Difference between encountering all of what was going on culturally.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: Well, I'll tell you one thing. I came to New
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: York for a job. That's why, I mean, in South Jersey,
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: there wasn't a lot of work. And then they had
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: the New York shipyard closed down in 1967 or 66,
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: and 30,000 people went out of work. And there wasn't
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: any work. I mean, you had the Columbia Record Pressing
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: Plant near where I lived or the Campbell Soup plant,
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: but all the factory jobs, any kind of, in Philadelphia,
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: any kind of bookstore job, anything was taken, and I
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: had no real skills. So I actually went to New
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: York looking for work. That was my first preoccupation. I
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: wanted to be an artist. I wanted to meet people
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: like me who were more outsider types or more devoted
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: to art. but the first thing I wanted to find
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: was a job. New York at the time was great
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: for people like me because you could get an apartment.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: Even if you only made like $ 60 a week, you
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: could get an apartment for $ 80 a month. I mean,
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: it might be filled with cockroaches and stuff, but when
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: you're young, I mean, I didn't care. It was a
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: really good time for people like me, and they came
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: from all over. There was also the fact that a
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: lot of kids that were gay kids, which we didn't
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: even have that term then, but a lot of kids
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: that were from all over America who were thrown out
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: by their families, disowned, or were abused in their neighborhoods
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: or down south or wherever they were from, they all
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: migrated to New York City. Because New York City was,
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: you know, you can say anything about the problems with
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: the police or stuff, but And at that time, considering
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: where a lot of this came from and what the
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: kind of abuse you would get if you were different,
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: just dress indifferent, was so strong that to come to
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: a place like New York City where nobody cared, you
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: could dress the way you wanted, you could reinvent yourself,
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: you could be really any sexual persuasion, at least to
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: a point, at least among people a like-minded society.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: How did you meet Robert Mapplethorpe?
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: I met him, you know, first I met him in Brooklyn.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: I had nowhere to, I came to New York with
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: about $ 5 and no job and nowhere to stay. I
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: knew a couple of people who went to Pratt University,
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: but I'd forgotten that it was summertime and there was
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: nobody there. And when I went to their apartments, some
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: of them had moved out And one of the people
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: I was looking for had moved out and Robert was
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: staying there. And I was just directed to Robert, ask Robert,
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: ask him. They didn't even tell me his name. Ask
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: my roommate if they know where your friend lives. And
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: he did. So he led me to where my friend lived.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: My friend was away and I wound up sleeping in
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: the hallway or on the stoop on the 3rd of July.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: Because I remember I woke up at I woke up
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: on the 4th of July, you know, sitting asleep on
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: the stoop with firecrackers going off. And it was all
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: these kids setting off firecrackers because I had forgotten that
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: it was Independence Day. And indeed, I was independent. And
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: then I just serendipitously met him a couple of times.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: And one afternoon or one evening, he sort of rescued
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: me from a difficult situation. And we started talking. And
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: we walked around the village all night for hours talking.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: And Robert was on acid, but I had never even
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: seen acid in person. I had only read about it
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: like in Anais Nin or Henry Miller books. I'd never
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: seen anybody on acid. And we just talked all night.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: And then in the end, he said, do you have
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: a place to stay? And I said, no. And neither
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: did he. Because of different circumstances, neither one of us
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: had an apartment. But he had the key to somebody
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: else's apartment who was away, and then we went there
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: and sat up talking till dawn, and then we never
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: parted until we did.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: Well, I'd found somebody like me, somebody who had been disenfranchised,
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: someone who had been sort of disowned by his father,
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: someone who, you know, wanted to devote himself to art,
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: you know, the perfect boy to meet at 20 years old. Mm-hmm.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, Just Kids, it's this beautiful thing about your
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: career that you've produced these transcendent things in more than
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: one genre. I mean, it's such a rare thing to have...
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, I remember... I didn't really know much about
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: you until I read Just Kids. I thought it was
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: one of the most beautiful love stories I've ever read.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: Oh, thank you.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: But then I realized, oh, this is written by someone
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: who has also produced a kind of series of iconic
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: albums as well. I mean, that kind of double threat
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: is very impressive.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: Well, it's... It's just the way I am. I mean,
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: believe me, when I was young, all I wanted to
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: be was an abstract expressionist painter. I would have been
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: happy just being like Joan Mitchell or de Kooning or somebody.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: And I do produce, I have produced a lot of
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: visual work, but it's just part of me. What made
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: it even more complicated wasn't just that I wrote poetry
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: and then, you know, obviously have written books and are recorded.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: Then to throw performing into the mix, which that was
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: just another one. I thought, oh my gosh, Robert always
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: used to worry about me. He'd say, can't you just
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: pick one? He would worry that I would spread myself
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: too thin, but it's just part of my jumping bean personality,
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: I suppose. But I do what calls me for different reasons.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Does it feel different to create music than to create
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: other kinds of art?
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm not really a musician. I don't create a
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: whole lot of music. I mean, I write little melodies,
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: and they're often similar. It's like, left to my own devices,
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: I would be sort of a you know, a polar
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: music player or porch song writer, because when I write
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: things on my own, they're like little porch songs. And
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: I don't really play anything except feedback and about four
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: or five chords. And I don't think like a musician.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: I have a natural feel for melody and might sing
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: to myself walking down the street, but I'm not. I
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: was married to a great musician. I know I've seen
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: how a musician's mind works, you know, and I'm more
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: prone to language.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Wait, talk about this a little bit more. What
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: exactly do you mean by the way a musician's mind works?
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I can't... I'm just saying that the
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: way that I'm obsessed with writing and the way that
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: I really have to write every day. I've written almost
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: every day since I was a kid. And whether anyone
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: sees it or not, I would say 70% of my
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: writing has never been published. I am compelled to write. And... musician,
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: at least my husband was compelled to translate his, you know, dreams,
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: his thoughts, his vision into music. And I don't really
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: think like that.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: I'm more a performer. And people say, oh, you're too modest.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: You don't want to be called a musician. Well, I
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: don't want to be called a musician because I haven't
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: earned that. But I am a performer and I'm a
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: strong performer and I have earned that. And that's good
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: enough for me.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and then come
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: back with more from Malcolm Gladwell and Patti Smith. We're
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: back with more from Malcolm Gladwell's interview with Patti Smith.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Let's go back to the many lives of Patti Smith.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: So life number one is, as you say, that period
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: ending in 75. Number two is what?
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: I would say the next stage is really going out
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: into the world. Performing. having a public life, which part
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: of me is, you know, I'm very reclusive, not very social,
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: and I could spend 14 hours just working on, you know,
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: the end of chapter seven. You know, I don't crave
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: public life, but it has called to me, you know,
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: in the 70s, of course, until I left in 79,
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: I became the leader of a band. And I like that.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: I like that position of being sort of having my people.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: My brother was the head of my crew. I had
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: a small loyal group and seeing the world and having
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: some effect on people, a positive effect on people or
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: having an effect on new artists or having an effect
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: on the disenfranchised all over the world. And that was meaningful.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: So I would say that period, it was very demanding
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: and very demanding on me physically. But I would say
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: that entering public life. That took up a lot of
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: my time until the end of the 70s, which in
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: some ways, it had its great greatness and it had
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: its excitement. But in terms of being a writer, it
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: definitely interrupted my evolution and interrupted my evolution as a
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: human being. Because the stress and the demands of a
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: life like that, sometimes one develops a demanding habits or
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: you know a less caring or you might be compassionate
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: in terms of the world but in terms of interaction
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: you know i was i had a lot of hubris
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: and i had to as a girl uh moving through
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: this period of time you know i had to be
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: tough and i could be tough i could be mean
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: as a snake actually.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: What was your first important performance as a musician.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: Well, there's a lot of them, but I would say
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: one of the most important, just in terms of comprehending
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: where we were at, was performing in London at the
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: Roundhouse in 76 when, you know, you go to Europe
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: and I think, well, who ever heard of us? You know,
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: we didn't have social media and stuff like that. You
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: might have your picture in some rock magazines or something.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: And we didn't have any hits or anything like that.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: It was a lot of word of mouth. And so
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: we went to play the roundhouse. It was so packed.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: And there were actually young guys coming through a hole
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: in the roof, jumping down into the crowd to get in.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: And later, when I met Paul Simonon from The Clash,
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: he told me that he was one of those kids.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, really? Yes.
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: Because he didn't have the money to get in. So
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: that's how he got in.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Was that your first international tour?
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. Maybe our first job was in Brussels,
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: which was even crazier. It was just that first tour.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: It was just suddenly seeing that people liked our work
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: in places we'd never been. Brussels, Finland, you know, it
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: was awesome. You know, Sweden, we went to, and, you know,
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: being from, you know, a lower middle class background, and
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: never having any money to travel, getting to see all
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: these places was awesome. We didn't make all that much
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: money or anything, but we didn't care. We were getting
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: to see the world and getting to meet new people
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: and see, you know, what they were doing. And because
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: I started out a little older, because I was in my,
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: I don't know how old I was, but, you know,
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: we had a lot of younger kids, 18, 20, who
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: wanted to do things. And, uh, A lot of girls
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: checking out the situation. And what I always told them
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: is I had no particular gifts. If I could do it,
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: you could do it. If you have a vision and
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: if you have will and you have a benevolent vision
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: that you want to share with people, you know, in
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: some guts, you can do it.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: I'm curious about that era in rock and roll. Is
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: the relationship of the artist to the audience in that era, mid-70s,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: different than it is today?
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: I don't know. Mine isn't. I can't say because I
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: don't really go to concerts. When I was younger, I
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: learned a lot about how to interact with the audience
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: from Johnny Winter because I had a job sort of
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: helping with Johnny. Johnny was completely colorblind. And when I
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: was living at the Chelsea's, so was Johnny. And Steve Paul,
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: his manager, actually gave me a job because I was
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: very trustworthy. Just, you know, walking with Johnny when he
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: had to cross a lot of streets and things because
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: he couldn't tell the red from the green traffic lights,
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: things like that. I went to London once with them
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: just to make sure Johnny was maneuvering the streets well.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: And so I went to a lot of his concerts.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: And Johnny was one of the most, in all my life,
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: one of the most electric performers I ever saw. Just
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: such a great singer, such a great guitar player and fearless.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: He was the first person I saw jump into the
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: crowd with an electric guitar. Just so much energy and
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: so much interaction with the people, looking them straight in
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: the eye. I mean, because I was like into like
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: Bob Dylan or when I was younger, Lou Reed or
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: the Velvet Underground. They all were really cool. You know,
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: they didn't interact. I'm not saying that critically. I love that,
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: you know, but Johnny Winter was a totally different animal.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: And where I would have imagined I would have been
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: more like Bob Dylan, because I really modeled myself after
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: Bob Dylan, I was really more like Johnny. I just,
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: I don't know where it comes from, but I can
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: be sort of like stand there like Edith Piaf and
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: do a little song. But especially when I was young,
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: I was an animal.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Tell me what that means.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: Well, I just mean I was fearless. I would jump
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: off a piano. I went on my knees. I would
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: play like I had the loudest amplifier when we played
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: improvisation or feedback and put my foot through an amp
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: if I was pissed off. I just could rip. I
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: had the heaviest strings on my electric guitar. I could
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: just slide my hand and rip them out in one.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: I ripped a pickup out of my Duosonic once. I
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: just had so much concentrated energy. And I'm not saying
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: I don't have energy now, but at 75, I pace
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: myself different. Every once in a while, though, that comes through.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: She's still there. She just paces herself.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: What is it? You call it energy. Is it frustration?
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Is it anger?
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Is it enthusiasm?
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: No, it's just pure energy.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: Pure energy.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: And that's what you saw in Johnny Winter?
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Because it wasn't even political. I didn't really have...
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, of course, I've always been a humanist or something,
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: but I wasn't... What I did was only political. It
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: was personally political. What I wanted to do was create
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: space for new people. Because I perceived that... I loved
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: rock and roll. I loved it. I was brought up
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: with it, danced to it, listened to it, daydreamed to it.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: And.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: I didn't want to see it become like stadium acts,
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: glamorous acts, all about just indulgence. And I don't know,
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: I didn't really like the direction it was going into.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: I wanted to preserve some of the, I mean, it
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: might seem like a lot of hubris for a young
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: girl that, you know, but I had a lot of hubris.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, I could, have like played Coriolanus or something.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: I had so much hubris, but I mean, think of
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: like who we lost. My generation, we lost, when I
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: was a teenager, President Kennedy got shot and then Martin
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: Luther King, you know, then Bobby Kennedy. And then, you know,
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: we have our musicians that we love. And then Brian
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: Jones died and Jimi Hendrix died and Jim Morrison died
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: and Janis Joplin died. I mean, these were like such
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: important voices. And, you know, they were just how I imagined.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: I imagined that, you know, music of the future was
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: going to be Jimi Hendrix, Coltrane, you know, all the
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: people that I loved. And we just lost them really quickly.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: lost Coltrane early, that poetic voice that was so strong
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: in the late 60s. And I didn't want to see
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: it go. I didn't want to see it diffused into
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: some other place. But, you know, also I was highly opinionated.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: So I was just trying to kick open doors. I
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: only expected to do one record. You know, Clive Davis
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: asked me to do a record. I was amazed at that. fine,
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: I did a record and then I was just going
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: to go back to, you know, back to the bookstore,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: back to writing poetry. But I did have an aim
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: with that record was to create space for new people,
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: for people who became Michael Stipe, you know, for whoever.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: That was my goal.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: So when you're on that initial tour of Europe and though,
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: you know, the kids are climbing through the hole in
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: the roof to get into the crowd, is that what they're,
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: that's what they're responding to?
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: I didn't take it personally. Like, they were responding to me.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: They were responding to something new that they could do
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: themselves or maybe eclipse. And that's what I wanted. I
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: didn't want to be the king or queen or princess
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: of anything. I just wanted to, you know, shake things up.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: What were you playing in those concerts? Other than your
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: own work, what were you playing?
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, my own work also incorporated, you know,
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: our version of Land of a Thousand Dances and Gloria.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: And just our songs, reggae songs. If I liked a
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: certain R & B song, we'd try it. But mostly
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: our own stuff.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: Is there a difference in the way you approach covering
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: a song versus one of your own?
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: It depends on the song. Like sometimes Land of a
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: Thousand Dances, really a catalyst for an apocalypse, you know.
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: It was sometimes a song, because I was just starting out.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: We started out with piano, like Lenny K, my pianist,
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: and I. And it was basically, we started out musically,
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: mostly for three chord songs that I could rap over.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: I wasn't particularly a great singer. I didn't know much
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: about singing. I mean, I sang in like the school
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: choir and stuff, but it was more a vehicle for
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: me to improvise poetry. You know, horses grew from a
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: lot of improvisation, like being at CBGBs and doing a
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: 22 minute version of land of a thousand dances. That
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: was a lot of poetry. And that's why I think
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: like William Burroughs and, and Allen Ginsberg and Gregory, they,
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: they liked me. They liked the fusion of this energy
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: and youth, but with a semi sophisticated aspect, poetic aspect.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: But then, you know, also, There are certain songs that
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: I'll just do as the song. I do it much
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: better now because I'm a better singer than I was
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: when I was younger. I mostly sang out of my
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: nose when I was younger. You know, for instance, what song?
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: These days we did Blame It on the Sun by
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: Stevie Wonder. Just do a really nice, respectful version. I
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: covered Stay, the one that Rihanna and Mickey Echo did.
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: I love covering songs. Every once in a while I
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: have a disaster where I try to cover a song
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: where I don't really have the range or the technique
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: to do that song, but I'll get so enamored with
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: a song I'll try.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: What's an example of a disaster?
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: Oh, the worst. It was Rolling in the Deep. I
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: tried doing that, and it was so bad that I
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: just was laughing. And the people knew it was bad,
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: and they were just saying, do it anyway. But I
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: just loved that chorus, you know. And I used to
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: try to do... four top songs, but I couldn't quite
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: get like Bernadette or I'll Be There. I'd love these
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: great choruses. But, you know, I've gotten better. I do
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: a lot of Neil Young covers because I love his lyrics,
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: but also we sing pretty much in the same key.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: I can keep the songs in Neil's key and do them.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: You've never collaborated with him, have you?
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: No. I mean, I've improvised on stage with them, but no,
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: I haven't really collaborated with really anybody.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: You mentioned Michael Stipe. You talked about that idea of
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: creating opportunities for others. Does he fit into that?
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: Well, Michael Stipe, when I heard his music or saw,
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: you know, sometimes Fred would watch MTV to see what
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: was happening musically. And I was very taken with REM.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: And Fred used to tease me when, you know, because
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: I'd be like washing dishes or something. He'd say, Tricia,
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: your boy's on. And I come out and it would
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: be like Michael singing Losing My Religion or something. And
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: because I really liked his music. And when Fred died,
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: my first Valentine's Day without Fred, the phone rang that
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: night and this voice came over the.
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: I don't think Michael would mind me. I think I've
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: told this before, but it was Michael. Michael Stipe calling
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: me from Barcelona. He was on the road and he
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: was a bit... I think he had had a couple
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: of drinks. And it had occurred to him, I guess
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: he really liked me. He really liked our music. He
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: was inspired by horses when he was younger. And it
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: occurred to him because this is the beauty of Michael.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: He's so human and has such a compassionate, empathetic sense.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: It occurred to him that I was recently widowed and
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: I was going to have my first Valentine's Day without
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: my husband, who obviously I greatly loved. So he called
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: to wish me happy Valentine's Day. And slowly, I mean,
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: eventually I got to meet him, saw his concerts. And
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: when I came to New York, it was a huge
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: challenge for me to really came financially empty-handed with my kids.
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: And Michael, who I was just getting to know without
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: going into a lot of details, made it possible for
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: me to start a new life in New York City.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: And we've been so close ever since. I mean, he
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: just did that. And, of course, it inspired me to
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: work as hard as I could to earn his trust
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: in me and also his belief in me that I
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: could get back on my feet and take care of
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: myself and my family if I just had a helping hand. Mm-hmm.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: And I'm not ashamed to say that I needed one.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: And now we're just loving friends. It was interesting, though,
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: just by chance, I got nominated to be in the
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: Hall of Fame like seven or eight times. And finally,
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: I did get in. I think it was 2007, the
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: same year as Michael. And I always imagined that if
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: I ever did, I would ask Michael to speak for me.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: And Michael secretly imagined that I might speak for them
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: But neither one of us could speak for each other
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: because we both, we made it at the same time.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: Did you play together that evening?
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: I'm sure we did. It's like such a blur. I mean,
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: everybody sort of played together, but I don't remember, truthfully.
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: What I do remember was sitting in Michael's suite. He
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: had a beautiful suite in the hotel. I think it
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: was the Waldorf Astoria where they used to have the ceremony. Yeah.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: He had a beautiful white suit on and I was
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: all in black. And we went to the elevator hand
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: in hand together. And that picture of him all in
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: white and me all in black heading to our ceremony
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: is still in my head.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from Patti Smith after
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: this break. Here's the rest of Malcolm Gladwell's conversation with
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Patti Smith.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about your next life. Detroit and marriage. And
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: it seems, to an outsider, like a very dramatic change
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: in the kind of life you were living.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it was in the fact that I
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: went from playing for 80,000 people in a stadium in Florence,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: which was my last job. It was just our job.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: We had no open and act. And that was my
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: last job to living a quiet life in Detroit. But
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: What I've always wanted more than anything else was simply
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: to do good work, work of quality. And I could
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: see my future. I was in Europe. I was getting
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: quite big. I know that sounds conceited, but it's the truth.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: 80,000 is a lot.
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: We were huge and we were as big as the
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: Rolling Stones in Italy, really. i mean in terms of
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: performing not recording wise but where was that all going
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: for me as an artist i wasn't growing you know
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: i wasn't evolving as a human being or as an
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: artist you know i didn't really have fame and fortune
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: goals ever I always had a goal to do something great,
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: which is actually takes his a little more conceited than
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: thinking I want to be rich and famous. I just
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: wanted to be great, do something great, to do something,
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: you know, worthy, to do something that will endure, to
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: do something to add to the pantheon of all the
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: great work that's been done. So it gave me an
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: opportunity to really think about, you know, for 16 years,
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: what direction do I want to go to, to develop
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: a writer discipline, which I did, and to reacquaint myself
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: with being a citizen and being, you know, a human being,
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: you know, who doesn't place themselves in the center.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: How old are you when you get married?
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: I was 33.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: And where did you meet Fred?
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: I met him in Detroit at a job.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: You know, we played the Ford Theater in 1976. But really,
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm not comfortable with talking a lot about
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: that period of my life. It's really private. But the
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: thing is, I love my kids. I love Fred. It wasn't,
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: we didn't have the perfect life. It wasn't like always
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: a paradise. We had our problems. I don't mean just
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: with each other. I mean, we had, you know, things,
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: our own you know, all the things that people go through.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: You know, sometimes it was hard. Sometimes it was financially
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: hard because we really left everything, all of our options.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: We were sort of cut off. But I have to
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: say they're probably the most precious years of my life.
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: I loved Fred. I've never met anyone else like him.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: I love my kids. He gave me these, you know,
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: a son and a daughter that, uh, you know, magnify
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: my life. And for myself personally, I think I evolved
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: quite a bit in that time period. And I became
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: a writer, not just writing poetry late at night, stoned
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: on pot or something. I mean, a writer. I wrote
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: every day. I developed, you know, a really strong work ethic,
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: which I still have today. And because of those years,
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: I was able to write Just Kids. That Just Kids
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: didn't come out of anywhere. It came out of all
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: those years of writing and rewriting and learning about writing.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating is you go from being part of this alive, diverse,
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: creative community in New York, the Chelsea Hotel, all those names,
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: and then in Detroit. Is there a community in Detroit
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: like that?
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: There isn't.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, I didn't experience it, but Fred was like
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: a one-man community. I mean, he had, first of all,
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: such a history. He was... intelligent and beautiful and athletic
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: and interested in so many things, political, such a good father,
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: but he was, you know, a very private man. You know,
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: I've always been, in my life, in my young life,
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: I always had some person in my life that was
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: meaningful and that I had a meaningful and fruitful relationship with.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: You know, it was Robert And then Sam Shepard, you know,
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: I had other relationships that were important. But, you know,
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: it was important for me, something I always wanted as well,
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: not just to be an artist, but to have a
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: person in my life. And he was the person. So,
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: and as I said before, I have a loner aspect.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: I missed, if I missed anything from the two things
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: I miss the most, I miss the camaraderie of my
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: band and my brother. was the head of our crew
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: and I missed that lively relationship we had. You know,
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: I missed, you know, seeing him on the side of
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: the stage, watching every move, you know, uh, I missed
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: him handing me my guitar. I miss the camaraderie. And
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: I also missed, uh, having a cafe on every street.
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: I miss New York in that way. I missed, you know,
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: but I came from rural South Jersey. I was the
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: oldest of four children. came from a very lively, chaotic household.
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: So this was not an unfamiliar life. No, I mean,
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: it was a life that I could adapt to. Also,
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: I was with a fellow artist and a fellow thinker.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: Well, would you say you learned how to write in
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: those years? They turned you into a writer. Can you
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: talk about what that meant? I mean, you were writing every.
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: It's just like anything else. You know, there's that I
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: don't know if it's a joke or like a cliche
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: where it says writing is 1% inspiration and 90% or
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: whatever perspiration. Well, I learned about that 90%. I learned
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: about the manual labor of writing. And I learned, well,
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: it's just it became my discipline. I got up early
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: in the morning when everyone was sleeping. When I had
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: the kids, they'd be sleeping. I'd get up at 5
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: in the morning and write from 5 to 8 every morning.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: And then they'd get up as they got older, get
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: them ready for school and do whatever tasks I had
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: to do. But I always took at least three hours
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: whenever it was to just concentrate. And I didn't have
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: the prolific skills, you know, of other writers. I don't
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: know how to explain it. It's just like anything else.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: It's a discipline. It's like if you start out with
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: your muscles weak and then you start exercising or doing
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: certain things. And by, you know, after several months you
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: crave exercise, you know, and then it becomes not so painful.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: It's just part of your regiment. It's just part of
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: the work that I do. I can't really break it down.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: I'm just simply saying by the fact that I did
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: it every day. And if you want to learn to
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: play the oboe and you're not a prodigy, you might
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: have to work harder practicing several hours a day till
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: you get just the hang of the read.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Would you share that writing with people? What were you
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: doing with it?
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: I just did it and moved on. I mean, I really,
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: it's still, I have notebooks full of stuff, but it's like,
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: I just keep going. So, you know, I imagine that
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: one day I'd look back or I'd sit and work
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: on it and maybe publish it. But what really happens is,
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: We really write in a certain way. It's almost organic.
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: We write the same thing over and over in a
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: different way. I'm also so immersed with the present and
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: also being at my age, I finally grasped being happy
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: with present tense that I am more immersed in the
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: writing that I'm doing now. I look at all these notebooks.
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: And I know that in there, there's probably some jewels,
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: but there's probably a lot of stuff that's just really
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: the genesis of what I'm writing now.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: When do you start working on Just Kids?
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: Well, Robert asked me to write it the day, well,
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: only hours before he died, which I never expected. And
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: that was in 89.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: You never expected him to ask you to write?
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: No.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: Why didn't you expect?
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: Well, I don't write non, I mean, I was, wrote
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: poetry and fairy tales and little stories. I mean, I'm
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: not a nonfiction writer. I wrote a lot of pieces
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: about Robert, about Robert's work for his catalogs and things.
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: But what he asked me to write was our story.
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: And our story was very specific because he used to
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: have me tell it to him just some nights. He'd say,
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: tell me our story. And we'd be at the Chelsea
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: and maybe we wouldn't have enough to eat. And couldn't sleep.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: And he'd say, tell me our story. And so I
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: would start, well, there was a girl, she wanted to
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: be an artist and she came to New York City.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: And then I'd tell how we met and keep updating it.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: So I knew what he meant by our story. It
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: was sort of a game that we played. So yeah,
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: he said, will you write our story? And I said,
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: do you want me to? And he said, you have to,
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: no one else can write it. And I perceived what
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: he wanted wasn't just for him, you know, the our
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: story or the romance of our friendship, but also the
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: genesis of Robert as an artist, because I knew more
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: than anybody. I lived with him. I watched him work
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: for 12, 13 hours sometimes on one drawing. We went
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: through so many different, shed so many skins together that
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: I knew that I had the information. I knew that
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: I had lived it. We had lived it. So I
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: promised him I'd do it, not really not knowing how
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: I'd do it. I didn't have a book contract. I
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: didn't have any connection with, you know, writing a nonfiction book.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: But then a series of things happened. My pianist, who
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: I really loved, who was only 37, died suddenly of
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: a pulmonary defect, which was terrible. When Robert died, I
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: had just had my second child, and then my husband
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: started being ill. And, you know, by the end of 94,
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: my husband died. My brother died also of the same
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: pulmonary defect as just by chance of Richard's soul. For
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: the next years, my preoccupation was how to take care
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: of my children. You know, I couldn't live the same
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: way that Fred and I had lived because I don't drive.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: I didn't have a support system, a big support system
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: in Michigan. So I decided to take our children back
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: to New York and find work. So the book was
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: set aside. And then finally, I met an editor, Betsy Lerner,
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: who became my, not only my best friend, but my
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: savior at the time because she got me a really,
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: really great contract to write the Robert book, which gave
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: me some income. But I had so much trouble writing it.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: I was still processing all the loss around me. My
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: life had changed again. I was now performing again, but
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: without my brother, without my pianist, and having two kids.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: So I was negotiating a very hard C. But eventually
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: Betsy helped. She was my editor through that process and
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: it took a while. So he asked me to write
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: it in 89 and it came out 2010, which can
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: give you some idea of what a struggle it was
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: to write it. Also, I wanted it to be, I
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: wanted him to be something he would have been proud of.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: I wanted it to be as accurate as possible and
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: to give people a sense not just of Robert and I,
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: Robert's work, but the atmosphere of our time. So there
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: were a lot of challenges.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: And emotionally difficult.
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: It was emotionally difficult because it's sort of like bringing
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: Robert to life for the people was also sad. It
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: was painful, you know, and also reverberated other losses. But
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: I was so happy. I can't tell you how happy
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: I was because I vowed to him I would do it.
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: So I completed my vow. I did as I promised.
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: And once again, it's just, you know, when we did Horses,
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: I just thought, well, we'll do a record and some,
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: I was hoping like, you know, a small disenfranchised group
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: of people would like it, you know, would dig it,
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: you know, and that would be it. And with this
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: book also, I thought, well, a certain group of people
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: will like it, but that's okay. I've done it. I've
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: done my best. But somehow I don't really to this
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: day understand, but I mean, it won a National Book
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: Award and it's sold over well over a million copies globally.
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: It's in 43 languages. And to this date, the most
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: successful thing I ever did. I mean, I've never even
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: had a gold record. Even horses didn't go gold. I
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: don't have one gold record. And I'm not complaining about that.
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: I'm just simply, in comparison, Just Kids eclipsed in terms
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: of I don't know how other way to say it,
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: but success in that kind of success, it eclipsed everything
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: else I did.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: It's a masterpiece.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, thanks.
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: You know what? Johnny Depp was my first reader. And
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: I actually was staying. I was struggling with the end
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: of it so much. And I just needed to get away.
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: And he has a compound in the south of France. So...
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: He let me come to the compound and they have,
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: he and Vanessa had renovated a little chapel into a
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: guest house. And he, you know, I stayed there until
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: I finished it. And every day he would just even,
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: he'd bring me like, because they had a cook there,
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: bring me a little tray of food and leave it outside.
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: And finally I finished it and I came out.
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: How long were you there?
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: I don't know, a month. I don't know. I actually,
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: I don't remember. Yeah. But when I finished it and
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: then I called in all of my changes or any,
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: you know, I went through the whole thing. It was done.
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: It was absolutely done. And I had my manuscript, you know,
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: with all these, all the little changes and stuff. And
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: he came to the door and I gave it to
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: him and I said, it's done. And he was the first,
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: other than Betsy or the publisher, the first person to
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: read it. And then he disappeared for like 30 hours
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: or something. And then he came back, he knocked on
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: the door and I opened it and he said, it's
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: a fucking masterpiece. And I was like, oh my God.
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: And I only mentioned that because you said that, you know,
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: I'm not bragging or anything, but he said that. And
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: he like meant it with all his heart. And I thought, well,
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: I don't know who's going to like this book, but
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: Johnny likes it. And he's well-read, you know, so.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: You know, it's funny because a book like yourself has
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: many different lives. You know, it's simultaneously a love story,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: but it's also this picture of New York. It's the
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: best picture of 70s New York that I've ever read.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: If you had no interest in the love story part
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: or no interest in you or Robert Mapplethorpe, You could
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: still read it and think it's a masterpiece.
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's so nice.
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: But it goes back to a question I asked at
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: the very beginning, is that always in New York, the
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: weird thing about New York is the people who see
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: it most clearly and beautifully and live it most are
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: the outsiders, the ones who didn't come to New York.
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: That's interesting that you should say that. And I think
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: perhaps it's because for myself, but I think I could
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: see that like, Even in the people that really struggled
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: back then, you know, I would see like Candy Darling
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: and Jackie Curtis and all these different artists that came
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: from all different places. For myself, it was gratitude because
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: I was, you know, where I came from in South Jersey,
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: there was no real culture there, not even a good library,
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: no cafe, no bookstore. There was, you know, you went
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: to Philadelphia, you could get on a bus and go
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: to Philadelphia for culture. But day to day and also
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: because I was a different kind of, I was sort
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: of a bohemian kid. And, you know, I was, looked different.
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: You know, I grew up when, you know, people tease
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: their hair into beehives and, you know, wore a lot
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: of makeup. And there was a certain look to the
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: late 50s, early 60s, mid 60s. But I was, mentally,
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: I was not from my own culture. I loved the
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: people that I grew up with. They were awesome, and
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: there were great things about where I came from, and
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: I think about it very nostalgically. But culturally, there was nothing,
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: and there was no work and no real culture and
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: not a lot of people of a like mind, no
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: real community. And going to New York and sitting in
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: the East Village for a couple of nights with no work,
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: just literally roaming around looking for work, falling asleep on stoops,
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: waking up, watching all these people, all the, these people
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: that were so, you know, they all look like they were, um,
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: they could have been in, uh, Sergeant Pepper on the
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: cover of Sergeant Pepper, you know, wearing tie dye or
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: bell bottoms and people were smoking pot and books everywhere
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: and reading Allen Ginsberg and playing Ornette Coleman, you know,
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: it's just, uh, you know, and here in like, uh,
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: Jefferson airplane, like in boom boxes or it was just, uh,
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: it was such a swirl for a person like me
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: to enter. And so many great things happened to me
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: in New York. You know, nothing really bad happened to
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: me in New York. Bad things happened to people I knew.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: But for me, it was just, I met so many
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: great people. I met great teachers, great artists, and poets.
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, not that I got friends with them, but
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, I got to shake hands with Auden. You know,
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: it's just like you never knew New York City. All
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: these people were just there. There wasn't people, paparazzis and
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: people asking for cell phone pictures. I remember one day
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: I went to the, I was given out flyers or
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: something on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: And then I was walking down Fifth Avenue. Coming up
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: this way was Lee Razuel, Jacqueline Onassis, and Nourievre. walking together,
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: just talking. And I was like, oh, my God. And
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: you just pass them by and think, wow, that was cool,
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: you know. When I worked at Scribner's, I used to
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: wait on Katharine Hepburn. I waited on Elizabeth Taylor and
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: Richard Burton, you know. It's just these, all these people,
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: and it was, but there was nobody running around and
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: grabbing at them and taking their picture. It was just,
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: New York was a pretty cool place, you know. And
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: nobody asked for it. It was just considered uncool. Just
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: considered uncool. You just didn't do that. You see Paul
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: McCartney sitting in a barstool. You just didn't bug him.
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: You just didn't do that. You know, it's a whole
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: different world now. But the fact that, you know, you
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: could get apartments so cheap, you could get a job,
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: you could meet like-minded people. I have a lot of
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: gratitude for that period. I have a lot of gratitude
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: for the city in general, for the climate in general,
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: for the community in general. There was a lot of
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: rough spots, believe me, but the overall opportunity I'm very
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: grateful for. And I think when you have gratitude, you're
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: going to look at things different.
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: We have a little time left. Talk a little bit
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: about what you're up to now. There's like, there's Patti
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: Smith in my inbox. You're in my life now. Tell
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: me a little about this. It's very exciting.
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: Well, during the pandemic, March 9th, we played the Fillmore West.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: We did two nights at the Fillmore. Then we headed
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: to Seattle to do another show, and then we were
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: about to embark on a world tour. I wanted to
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: do a world tour because at that point I was
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: like 72 or whatever, three, and I felt it was
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: important to, while I still had good voice and a
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: lot of energy, to do at least one more fairly
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: big tour, and it was really a world tour. Well,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: we flew to Seattle, and then I woke up in
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: the morning and– I put on the news, and it
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: was the mayor of Seattle or the governor, and he
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: was telling how they were going to go into lockdown.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: He said, the sold-out show at State Theater, Patty Smith
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: and her band, is canceled. And I was like, what?
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, I didn't know what was really going on.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: I knew something. I knew the aura of things, and
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: that's how I found out. And so then we left
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: and we went home. And I thought, okay, we have
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: to be in quarantine for 14 days. We have jobs
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: coming up at the end of March, and then we
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: were going to Australia. But I thought it would be okay.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: Never dreaming that I wouldn't be leaving my house for
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: almost two years, hardly. And that's what happened. So because
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: I was 73 and I have a bronchial condition, I
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: was deemed a high risk. So I'd obviously be really careful.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: New York City really I mean, the amount of illness
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: and death was like a real thing. And of course,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: I understand the nature of pandemics. I had studied the
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: Spanish flu epidemic. I was quarantined as a child with
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: a bird flu and tuberculosis. And so I knew a
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: lot about quarantines, what it all meant. But I still
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: never imagined it was going to go on for so long.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: And I'm a restless person. I like movement. I had
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: my little suitcase packed to go away for a year practically,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: and it was a little hard for me to settle down.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: So I just started writing as usual. I just wrote
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: every day, and I was approached by someone through Betsy
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: from Substack, which is a subscription-based service. And I thought
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: this was interesting because I had been writing this diary,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: sort of a pandemic diary, but I envisioned it to
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: go to some other places, to move into some parallel worlds.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: And I was interested to see where it would go.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: And the idea of doing something episodic, I thought was
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: really cool, you know, because like Arthur Conan Doyle and
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: of course Dickens and then Louisa May Alcott, Even Jo March,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: her character, they did things episodically, and that's how they
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: were paid, by the word back then. And I thought
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: it would be real interesting, and, well, it would be
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: a challenge to be able to deliver things weekly because
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: I had been used to being on the road and
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: getting more sporadic as a writer. So I accepted that challenge,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: and I found it took me a little while to
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: figure out what to give the people and what they liked.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: But I've been there almost a year and I actually
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: love it. And it is growing in terms of what
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: I can offer the people because I can do little
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: videos live in time, just talk to the people or
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: read them a poem. I can do any kind of
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: audio I want, send them stories, send them pictures, read
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: their comments. And that's what I do. I mean, I'm
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: I'm developing it as we go along and I'm letting
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: the people at this point help me sort of guide
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: me as to where I should go. So the melting
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: is my favorite part, although it's not necessarily the most
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: popular part, but it's my favorite because it's such an
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: interesting challenge. And I love to read the people's comments.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: Because even if you have only 50 comments or maybe
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: 90 or maybe 30, when you write a book or
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: you put out a book, you might get reviewed a
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: couple of times or maybe somebody on the street tells
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: you they like it or you can look at the sales.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: But you're not really hearing any kind of real intellectual feedback.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: And I love the comments that people write. Sometimes the
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: comments are more poetic than the post I've done. And
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: sometimes they're really interesting or they really display a real
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: understanding of what I'm doing because sometimes I'm attempting something
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: a bit abstract and they're very accepting because it's really
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: like at this point of my melting, it's regressional right
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: now and I'm writing it in time and I don't
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: really know what I'm going to write each week. And
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: so it's sort of like, not like a drug, but it's,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: it can move into a hallucinatory places and the people there,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: even if it's a small amount, they're into it. And
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: that's really inspiring, you know, and it just like yesterday
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: I was supposed to do the melting, but it was
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: my wedding anniversary. Truthfully, I was, sometimes I get a
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: little sad. I really miss Fred. So I did a
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: little post for Fred yesterday. And, uh, so the mountains
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: a day late, but it was really, uh, A lifesaver
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: for me. I mean, it was a nice thing to
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: have a job, you know, because I lost all of
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: our work, which having a job helps me help others.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: But it wasn't just that, like to have any financial reward.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: It was being in lockdown, not seeing anybody, not going anywhere,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: and having some kind of feedback, creating for people and
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: hearing from them. That was really good. I love my
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: sub stack. I'm still developing it. And I think that
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: I've gleaned that people really like knowing about music. So
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: when the melting's over, what would I do? Maybe take
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: song after song, you know, post a song, sing it
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: to the people, tell them the story of how the
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: song was written. There's so many different things that I
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: can do if that's what the people like. And I
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: also have my Instagram, which I also like. And they're
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: my two social things.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: The latest iteration in the many lives of.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, I never, you know, I don't really,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: it took me long enough just to get a cell
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: phone and then I wasn't engaging in any social media,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: but my daughter really suggested that I should have an
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: Instagram and set it up for me. And it's so
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: easy to do. And I really like it because I
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: can suggest books or there's a lot of different things
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: I can do in that small You know, it's just
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: this little thing. You know, you put a picture and
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: say a few words, but you can bring people a
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: movie they never saw or remembering a certain person on
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: their birthday. And I like that.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: Patty, I think I've occupied you for long enough. Thank you.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: I haven't done a whole lot of interviews in the
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: past couple of years. And then I found the few
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: that I've done. I tend to like I'm just talking away.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: No, this is fantastic. It was such an honor, by
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: the way, since I'm such a fan of yours.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: That was so nice what you said about the book.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: I was the equivalent when I read that book of
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: the guys falling from the ceiling.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Patti. This has been great. I really appreciate it.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: Good. Thanks to Patti Smith for sharing her inspiration and
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: story with Malcolm. You can hear her new album and
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: all of our favorite Patti Smith songs on a playlist
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: at brokenrecordpodcast.com. And be sure to check out her sub
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: stack at pattismith.substack.com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: channel at youtube.com slash broken record podcast, where you can
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: find all of our new episodes. You can follow us
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: on Twitter at broken record. Broken Record is produced with
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Ben Talladay, Eric Sandler,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: executive producer is Mia Lobel. Broken Record is a production
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and others
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad-free
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: listening for $ 4. 99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcast Subscriptions. And if you like the show, please
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: For Theme Music by Kenny Beats, I'm Justin Richmond.