The punk Patti Smith thought was “just crazy”
Patti Smith has met her fair share of musicians, for better and for worse.
Her career has taken the singer, songwriter, poet and author down many long and winding roads, some of which have led to happy memories and others which are more troublesome. The majority of people who work within the creative industry have had similar experiences to this, as a lot of the minds that make up the artistic world are somewhat scattered.
Smith isn’t lacking in wholesome tales of her meeting great musicians who wound up being kind – for instance, she spoke incredibly highly of Jimi Hendrix, not just as a musician, but as a person in general, and while she loved his guitar playing and his way with words, but the real highlight of the meeting was simply how much of a gentleman he was.
Smith recalled meeting him outside of a party that she was nervous about entering, saying, “When I told him I was too chicken to go in, he laughed softly and said that contrary to what people might think, he was shy and parties made him nervous… He was everything you would want in your rock and roll star.”
Of course, with the good, you also had the bad, as there were some artists Smith met who proved to be a bit too much. This is what happened after she bumped into punk icon Sid Vicious and the Sex Pistol started a fight with her brother. Despite her brother being what she described as a “peacemaker”, the two ended up in an altercation, and it led to Smith making a pretty scathing assessment of the punk rocker.
“That was actually quite frightening. My brother is a tough kid, but he’s very pacifistic. He was a real peacemaker type of guy,” she said. “I think Sid Vicious was just crazy. He just went crazy in this bar, and my brother almost lost his eye. He didn’t provoke him or anything.”
Despite the incident being somewhat terrifying, Smith didn’t hold it against Vicious too much. Their meeting took place shortly after his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, had passed away, a tragedy which a lot of people were starting to blame Vicious for (we don’t know whether he actually played a role or not). She said that with hindsight, you could tell he was spinning out of control, and that would have likely been what led to the attack.
“But Sid Vicious was fairly out of control then, because he died soon after that,” said Smith, “He was another kid who was really talented, but he didn’t keep his balance. That whole story is tragic. Both of them (Sid and Nancy) lost control, and it’s sad.”
John Lydon, the Sex Pistols’ lead singer, said that Vicious was never himself after joining the band, as he admitted he regretted bringing him in, because he felt as though the bassist lost his sense of humour the minute he started performing, saying, “I’m sorry, God, for the day I brought Sid into the band… He felt so isolated, poor old Sid, because he wasn’t the sharpest knife on the block. The best aspect of his character, which was his humour, just vanished the day he joined the Pistols.”
