The Bob Dylan song Patti Smith has listened to “a million times”
As Patti Smith entered her 20s, she also entered New York, the city she chose to call home for the foreseeable future. It was 1967, and her desire to mingle with the musicians, poets and artists that inspired her led Smith to relocate from New Jersey to Manhattan.
Within two years, she had moved into the Chelsea Hotel, home to the city’s most creative souls, inhabiting a room with her then-lover Robert Mapplethorpe. Here, he was given his first camera, leading him to become one of the most profound photographers of the latter half of the 20th century.
Meanwhile, Smith was focusing on her poetry, which eventually morphed into music when she began performing her work with the accompaniment of guitars. The Patti Smith Group was formed in 1973, although she had been reciting her poems for years before, becoming a recognisable face in New York’s underground scene.
One of Smith’s biggest inspirations (of which she had many) was always Bob Dylan. The folk icon, who moved to New York in 1961 with the same desires as Smith, showed her how poetry could lay the foundations for musical performances. She loves his everchanging nature, once explaining, “He’s a charismatic performer. I mean, I saw Bob in 1963 with Joan Baez. I’ve seen him in many incarnations. I saw him in ’65, I’ve seen him many times, and he’s always interesting. He changes his set each night, and he often changes the key or the rhythm of a song.”
Over the years, Smith has picked out many of her favourite Dylan pieces, which she holds close to her heart. From ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ to ‘One Too Many Mornings’, Smith’s collection of her most beloved songs by the poetic folk singer appears never-ending.
However, there is one that she has admitted to listening to perhaps more than any other – ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’. In an interview with DJ Arman Naféei, she revealed, “I love Blonde on Blonde, and I remember listening to ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ a million times, just all Bob Dylan.”
Acting as one of Dylan’s longest songs (coming in at 11 minutes and 23 seconds), the track actually received mixed reviews from critics, although those opinions are firmly irrelevant to Smith. ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ is presumed to be about Dylan’s then-wife Sara, although the content of the lyrics has often been debated wildly by fans.
Discussing the creation of the song, drummer Kenny Buttrey shed insight into the recording, which took place in the early hours of the morning. “If you notice that record, that thing after like the second chorus starts building and building like crazy, and everybody’s just peaking it up ’cause we thought, ‘Man, this is it… After about ten minutes of this thing, we’re cracking up at each other, at what we were doing. I mean, we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?”
Listen to the song below.
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