Patti Smith’s favourite British singer: “The voice of disenfranchised youth”
Certain artists transcend the need for monochromatic descriptions of bad and good. They’re not defended by the pitiful resistance of “art is subjective”. Instead, they are just undeniably great whether you get on board with their sound or not. Patti Smith can undoubtedly be admitted to that alumni of artists.
“As a writer, I’ll get as dark as I have to be,” Smith once said in reference to her songwriting legacy. “You can be a pacifist or a murderer in your work. But as a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, I try to stay upbeat and practical and responsible. I try to live by my parents’ work ethic, and I plug away and do what I have to do to make things as good as they can be.”
Adopted as one of the punk figureheads, it wasn’t a very punk thing to say, but that’s ultimately where her genius sits. A somewhat gruff and hard-edged musician but bursting with profound emotional wisdom, she is a singular artist who wasn’t beholden to any genre. And at the forefront of that was her distinctive voice.
It had the power to carry a full band and the delicacy to stand arm in arm with an acoustic guitar, giving her the versatility to become a leading voice in the 1970s New York punk scene. Compared to the rest of America in that decade, determined to soak up every sun-kissed utterance of bands like the Eagles, Smith’s more angular style had references to some of the greats of Britain.
One such artist who shared stylistic and principle similarities with Smith was The Animals’ Eric Burdon. Back in 2008, Smith participated in a Rolling Stone survey that attempted to uncover the greatest singer of all time, and she dubbed Burdon third, ahead of legends like Tina Turner, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, and Marvin Gaye.
Fronting The Animals, Burdon blended punk sensibilities with popular 1960s rhythm and blues, with a voice bursting with character. On the band’s standout, ‘House of the Rising Sun’, he showcases his ability to be a compelling storyteller and showstopping vocal talent.
Such was his versatility that he even saw an alternative future for The Animals: “I’ve always viewed myself as a punk,” he once said. “The Animals could have evolved that way. We had the energy and the anger, but we didn’t stick together. When the punk scene became commercial, I was all for the politics of the movement, but the music didn’t really stand up, and ultimately, it was self-destructive.”
In a 2018 Instagram post, Smith described Burdon as “the voice of disenfranchised youth, transition and the desire for a better world. As he sang, I closed my eyes, transported to another time when we were of the tribe of the misunderstood searching for universal love.”
It seems that while he believes The Animals trod too carefully around the punk framework, not fulfilling their potential as counterculture rockers, to artists like Smith, they subtly planted the seed that spawned a generation of influential punk legends.
