The Velvet Underground track Patti Smith called a “perfect American song”
Born in Chicago but raised in New Jersey, Patti Smith soon found a home in the form of New York, where she moved in her early 20. A lover of literature, Smith was enamoured by the city’s creative opportunities, soon immersing herself in a world of art, poetry and music.
After meeting Robert Mapplethorpe, who became “the artist of her life”, moving into the rundown yet artistically fulfilling Chelsea Hotel together, the pair began to meet other like-minded individuals. One of Mapplethorpe’s idols was the multi-disciplinary artist and producer Andy Warhol, whom he was desperate to hang out with.
According to Smith, who was writing her memoir Just Kids, Mapplethorpe “respected artists like Cocteau and Pasolini, who merged life and art, but for Robert, the most interesting of them was Andy Warhol, documenting the human mise-en-scene in his silver-lined Factory.”
Before Smith moved to New York, the city had already fostered the talents of The Velvet Underground, whose iconic banana-decorated debut album was produced by Warhol. In an interview with PBS, Smith explained that she first discovered the band during the mid-1960s when she attended a Warhol exhibition in Philadelphia. “And I found through Andy Warhol, specifically a book, I believe by Billy Name, of black and white photographs, and so my whole relationship with the Velvet Underground was entirely visual,” she revealed.
However, once Smith moved to New York, she finally saw the band perform at Max’s Kansas City during the period they played their final shows, falling in love with their music. She described their sound as “cerebrally sensual”, admiring Lou Reed’s ability to take “mounds of knowledge and paring it down to a few lines” which were “crystalline and simple”.
Discussing the band’s song ‘Heroin’, Smith referred to it as “a work of art” before adding: “To me [it] is one of our more perfect American songs because it addresses a very conflicting subject, a subject that has so many stigmas attached to it.”
She continued: “It addresses all of the deeply painful and destructive elements of it, and also whatever is precious about it, in one piece, in a nonjudgemental piece, in a non-preaching piece.”
Smith described Reed’s lyrics as “beautiful, simple and direct”. Detailing further, she added: “After all of the first two verses that are very descriptive and very strong, they seem so beautifully masculine with this very feminine rhythm, feminine being that it just, if you imagine the sensual part of it, that it quietly cascades. It’s not like a fast spurt. It quietly cascades. So I think it’s a very beautiful mergence of the masculine and feminine.”
‘Heroin’ appears on the band’s debut, The Velvet Underground and Nico, and features droning, feedback-doused electric viola which accompanies Reed’s declarations, “Heroin, be the death of me/ Heroin, it’s my wife and it’s my life.” While some people believe the song to be pro-substance abuse, Reed asserts that the track takes a neutral stance on the topic.
Revisit the song below.
