“As a fan, I’m relentless, a real Nazi”: The 1970s musician Patti Smith could never enjoy
Patti Smith was the perfect person to close the venue CBGBs.
It started out as a country, bluegrass and blues venue, hence the name, but that changed as more punk and avant-garde music started to rise to the surface. You can have artists with good ideas all you want, but if they don’t have the right space in which they can go play and hash out these ideas, they’re never going to come to fruition.
Smith and a load of other musical vagabonds found a home at CBGBs, which was where they were able to work out their sound and perfect a new kind of music. It may not have been the nicest room in the world, but it was a place that people could call home, and where creativity, no matter how cutting-edge it might have been, could flourish.
“The sound was crappy, there was always things breaking down and glasses breaking and people vomiting and the rats scurrying around in the back,” she said, “It was our shithole, and that was the greatest thing. I’ve played a lot of places, and it was the only place I’ve ever played that felt like our place.”
Given she had such a unique connection to the space, when it closed its doors in 2006, there was nobody better to take to the stage for the final time. It will have no doubt been an emotional show, but one that saw Patti Smith celebrate her legacy as one of the greatest punk poets out there, and also pay tribute to the people who helped her become as much.
While that venue closed its doors, the ideas that it instilled continued. There is something that Smith looks for in every single artist that she listens to, and that’s a bit of edge. The best artists out there are those who have an unspoken element about them that listeners struggle to put their finger on.
As such, there are a lot of artists out there who are incredibly popular, but who she doesn’t connect with because they are missing that edge, and one of those is Elvis Costello. He had a great voice and a way with songwriting that appealed to people around the world, so, before long, he was a global phenomenon, and Smith had a lot of respect for him. However, she didn’t listen to his music because it was missing the punk undertones and abstract aspect that she had learned about in CBGB.
“I don’t like Elvis Costello,” she said matter-of-factly, “I don’t hate him, but…I mean, as a politician, I’m into solidarity, but as a fan, I’m relentless, a real Nazi. You ask the fan in me, and you’re gonna get a pretty narrow view.”
She continued, explaining why she wouldn’t ever be in a band with Costello: “Basically, if there isn’t somebody I want to bleep in a band, I couldn’t care less. Unless it’s such great abstract music, it carries me away. Otherwise, if it’s a rock-and-roll band, there better be somebody bleepable or forget it.”
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