The lyrics Patti Smith wants on her tombstone
Patti Smith has been indebted to the written word throughout her career. Even though she has been identified erroneously as one of the era’s most significant punk rockers, Smith was more about expanding the language of rock and roll through poetry, taking the usual foundations of the genre and channelling it into the sounds of the written word on albums like Horses and Easter. Smith may have been known as one of the foundational lyricists of her time, but she knew one song needed to be immortalised forever.
Before Smith had even begun her writing career, she was already looking to go beyond the traditional confines of rock music. When listening to the first major bands of the movement, Smith loved the idea of artists that went against the mainstream, thinking that John Lennon was one of the greatest lyricists of his time alongside Bob Dylan.
As the scene in New York grew in the late 1960s, Smith found herself drawn to the sounds of The Velvet Underground. Featuring a ramshackle approach to production, much of The Velvets’ appeal lay in Lou Reed, taking a seedy interpretation of street life and turning them into pure works of art on songs like ‘Sunday Morning’ and ‘Heroin’.
Outside of the massive innovations going on in the local scene, Smith was entranced by what Jimi Hendrix had to offer. Making his first significant splash across the pond in England, Hendrix reinvented how most casual rock players thought about their instruments and lyrics.
Compared to the mellow sounds of the hippie movement going on across the world, Hendrix was looking to make spectral odes to the voices in his head. Across the album Electric Ladyland, Hendrix would later make eye-opening looks into his inner mind, all while teaching a clinic on how to dominate the guitar.
When listening back to the album, Smith had a particular affinity for the song, ‘1983 (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)’, saying: “If I had to take a lyric and put it on my tombstone, I would take Jimi Hendrix, ‘Hooray I awake from yesterday’. Every day I think of that line. It gives me hope; it also reinforces how wonderful it is to be alive, no matter how rough things are.”
Even though the lyrics may seem a bit cut and dry when looked at on their own, Smith would use that sense of optimism to inform where her music would go. Across the album Horses, Smith is brooding with sadness about all the friends that she has lost along the way while also being thankful that she has been able to spend another day on Earth, making whatever kind of art that she can muster.
Smith also had a particular affinity for recording her debut in Electric Lady Studios. When working out the basic tracks for her debut, Smith initially said that she wanted to go into the studio and fulfil the dreams that Hendrix couldn’t do following his death in 1970. As evidenced by her further appreciation for life in her written work like Just Kids, Smith has become one of the ultimate examples of using music as celebration rather than destruction.
