How Patti Smith became the lyricist the world needed
Rock and roll has always had a bit of an issue with showing emotion.
From the minute that Chuck Berry started strumming away on guitar or Little Richard pounded out his tunes on the piano, there was a certain level of excitement, but most people could see the lyrical ceiling. A lot of energy went into every single note, but rarely did it make someone want to do anything other than hit the dance floor. But whereas other lyricists like Bob Dylan dared people to think, Patti Smith introduced one element of music that we all tend to take for granted: empathy.
It’s not like there aren’t artists who didn’t identify with their innermost feelings, though. Dylan had his introspective side when he wanted to, and even when talking about the more sensitive side of songwriting, John Lennon had Smith beat by a few years when Plastic Ono Band came out. And yet Smith was able to harness that energy without having to sacrifice any of the intensity in her music.
Then again, that also has to do with the kind of people that she surrounded herself with half the time, too. She had followed in the footsteps of the greatest artists of her generation, but when looking at her love for everyone from Lou Reed to Jimi Hendrix to Rimbaud, none of them approached their craft the same way. They all knew they had the ability to change the world, but whereas an artist like Reed made New York seem slimy, Smith had a lot more on her mind about the state of the world.
And even if he wasn’t a lyricist in the same way, Robert Mapplethorpe can’t be understated in her craft. He may have been a close friend to her throughout her career, but his undying optimism and self-belief in humanity are what helped ground a lot of her work. Both of them knew that the world could be cruel at times, but they also never forgot that it had the potential to be something more than.
Keep in mind, when she debuted: 1975. The biggest names in rock and roll are people like Aerosmith and Kiss. All decent artists in their own right, but have you looked at the lyrics lately? No one was going to catch anything too poetic from Steven Tyler or Gene Simmons that wasn’t layered in smut, so when Smith talked about her own struggles on Horses, the whole thing managed to hit like a battering ram.
This was a woman singing what was on her mind, and it turned out that what was in there was a lot more detailed than most listeners bargained for. No one likes the status quo being changed this suddenly, and yet Smith came storming in like someone prying open pieces of your heart that you thought had been closed forever.
Let’s face it: growing up can be an incredibly harsh experience for any young music fan. It’s easy to live out the sex and drugs fantasies that everyone talks about, but in reality, anyone can only hope that they are tackling their craft with one modicum of the same bravery that Smith did. A lot of the best parts of her initial records see her paying tribute to her heroes, but it’s never played for simple lip service. She saw kindred spirits in these artists and wanted to see if she could use her own voice to come anywhere close to their kind of impact.
And while Dylan may have had a more verbose way with words when getting his point across, Smith didn’t necessarily need to write an entire novel for people to understand her. She knew to choose her words carefully, and by talking about her own state of mind, she helped give a home to a lot of people who didn’t fit in.
It’s easy for the music nerds of the world to have a great respect for a track like ‘Elegie’ from Horses or even ‘Because the Night’, but the magic of those songs doesn’t come from their history; it comes from their emotional resonance. Smith was laying her soul out on those records, and while not everyone has had to go through the same emotional journey that she did, there’s a certain sense of humanity in her words that went beyond any of the specifics.
And that’s the keyword here: humanity. There are far too many times when artists start spewing out anything that comes into their heads, but even if Smith didn’t sing every one of her notes in tune, it was hard to argue with the passion behind anything she did. And looking at the biggest names that she went on to influence, there’s no shortage of people who haven’t been touched by what she’s done.
There might be more high-profile artists who shout her praises today, like Dua Lipa and even older icons like Shirley Manson, but if you remove Smith’s artistry from the equation, many layers of rock and roll cease to exist. Take one of her biggest fans: Michael Stipe. While those of you reading might not be the biggest Smith fan or even REM fan for that matter, the fact that both of them played a hand in shaping everyone from Nirvana to Radiohead is proof enough of how different the rock world could have been.
And beyond her breakout songs, what she’s done in later years shouldn’t be ignored, either. It’s bad enough to gloss over her fantastic collaborations with writers and her own career-making works like Year of the Monkey and Just Kids, but when she eventually made her return to music, it truly felt like she had something to say again. She had been the empathetic older sister of the underground in the beginning, and now she was the concerned mother of the alternative generation.
Not everyone is going to pore over every single page that Smith wrote in the same way they do for Bob Dylan, but the world is an infinitely better place because of her being in it. The planet would have kept turning had she not picked up a microphone, but by speaking her mind, she let every future generation know that it was okay to fight for your craft but also have a heart.
