‘Memento Mori’: the song Patti Smith made up on the spot
There’s a lot of time and thought that goes into someone making a rock and roll classic. No one can say that writing a hit is easy, and even if they have what they think is the makings of an iconic rock and roll song, it only takes a few wrong turns to become a glorified B-side or a filler track used to fill out an album. Patti Smith was never concerned with the mainstream potential of her songs, so whenever she made music, she preferred everything to be a work of art rather than bubblegum pop.
Given the first thing she says to the world on her debut album, it’s not like she was trying to hide her feelings about the world. Talking about things like religion was still considered somewhat taboo in rock circles, so hearing Smith talk about Jesus not dying for her sins was her way of planting the flag in the ground for her artistic identity. She would not be the traditional rock and roll star, and she would spend the rest of her days pushing the boundaries of the written word.
Much like Jim Morrison and Leonard Cohen before her, Smith always saw herself as a poet first and an artist second. While Horses and Radio Ethiopia are known for their musical rough edges, the guitars and drums may as well be musical tone painting to her words, whether that’s her writing a classic pop song on ‘Because the Night’ or ruminating over the fact that some of her friends aren’t able to see her fulfill her artistic potential on ‘Elegie’.
All of her tunes are finely crafted, but that didn’t mean all of them needed a proper structure. Nothing on the back half of Radio Ethiopia was thought about beforehand, and even if there was a rough sketch of where to go, there was no telling whether a song was going to take off in a wildly different direction or have a gradual buildup depending on how it struck the band that particular day.
However, as Smith started making tunes in the 1990s, she started to veer away from song structure and go into the realm of pure improvisation. She still had her bandmates beside her like Lenny Kaye, but as soon as she started riffing on ‘Memento Mori’, there was no telling where the song was going to end or even a clear story that she was going to take the listener on throughout the tune.
When talking about the track, Smith said that most of the song’s lyrics weren’t written down or even fully fleshed out in her head as the tape rolled, saying, “I had no idea what the storyline was going to be. We had some basic chords and a structure, and I just took off. But I did draw from everything, the years of experience and things I knew about, but I didn’t have it mapped out in my mind what I was going to.”
That’s normally a trial-by-fire moment for many rock stars, but Smith was always pulling from the greats that came before her. Some of the most classic lines in rock history are made off-the-cuff, and considering someone like Tom Petty created ‘Even the Losers’ by saying whatever came into his mind at the time, there’s a certain power that comes with not knowing where a song might be going by the time it reaches its end.
Because, really, that kind of anarchy is what rock and roll was built on. There are many people who like to have their songs nice and neat when they are fully mastered, but that element of danger whenever the red light comes on is what the greatest artists thrive on whenever they make their own tunes.
