The greatest female vocalist of all time, according to Patti Smith
When you worship someone to a heroic extent, it’s easy to get swept up in a whirl of idolising romance. Patti Smith certainly knows a few things about that.
For a woman who has always seemed so level-headed and well-adjusted when it comes to her craft and career, in one fleeting moment, all Smith’s pretences of composure flew out the window when she was faced with the prospect of talking about one of her greatest and most cherished heroes: Grace Slick. The two women seem poles apart within their own places in the sonic landscape, but it was some kind of cosmic shared bond which bound them together.
Of course, it’s easy to describe your idols in angelic terms – and Smith is no different from anyone else in this respect. But when she started making heavenly allusions towards Slick, it hinted towards a worship of perhaps a much less holy disposition. Claiming that the singer was the leader of a pack who “ushered us through [the] psychedelic gates” of the Summer of Love, it’s clear that Smith’s idolisation of Slick took on a far more swirling hypnotism.
It hardly takes a rocket scientist to figure out that this was the exact reason why the singer held the Jefferson Aeroplane vocalist in the highest regard, not only as a musical icon but also as a true beacon of a time in history where it seemed every artist was at their most prolific, and equally, every fan was just as beguiled. The 1960s were not, of course, the era in which Smith herself began to tread the boards – all of that came later – but it was certainly enough to set off the chain reaction of inspiration.
Beyond the gateway of kaleidoscopic psychedelia, Slick also eventually transformed into a pop powerhouse within Jefferson Aeroplane’s spin-off group, Jefferson Starship, and then eventually just Starship. When you consider tracks like ‘We Built This City’ and ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’, they seem worlds apart from the psychedelic gates through which Smith first entered in her formative years as both a person and an artist – but Slick’s power just goes to show that one person can change outfits and outlets while still captivating the same command.
Yet perhaps it was also more than the voice alone that enamoured Smith to Slick – their artist’s gaze has ultimately always been geared in the same direction. Both combining their music careers with a penchant for visual art, with the latter in particular giving up her career in sonics to focus on her true passions, it’s possible that Smith simply found someone who inspired her in the first stages of her life, before going on to follow a similar trajectory. It was only right that she would follow suit.
Of course, many artists these days would consider Smith herself to be one of the greatest female vocalists of her own generation. But you only have to look back so far down the sonic lineage to discover a myriad of inspirations. They range from rock stars to the inhabitants of the Chelsea Hotel and everyone in between, but Slick has remained the brightest North Star through them all.
