The track Patti Smith preferred above any other: “If I had to pick one song in the world”
Music has never been about just plugging in a guitar and playing as loud as possible. All good art is based around the emotion behind it, and whether it’s a rock and roll song or a finely crafted novel, people are always looking to find something that resonates with them on a deeper level rather than just something they can throw on in the background. Patti Smith had already helped open our collective eyes to the power of rock and roll, but one of her major awakening moments came when listening to Jimi Hendrix sing ‘1983 – A Merman I Should Turn To Be’.
When Smith first soaked up the art-rock underground in late 1960s New York City, though, she got a much different version of the ‘Summer of Love’ than most others had. It was about making something that was going to last long after the decade had come and gone, and even if it wasn’t the most pleasant thing to listen to, people weren’t going to forget it for a long time after the artists had gone.
The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol were the spearheads of that particular scene, but Smith was still drawn to what Hendrix could do with his guitar. From the way he conducted himself onstage to the wizardry he did in the studio, the guitar maestro made every one of his contemporaries look like an amateur schoolboy next to him, especially when he started to solo and practically became one with his instrument.
While Hendrix could deliver his songs live and make them sound ten times better, he was still feeling limited by the time he made Electric Ladyland. Considering how much drama surrounds most debut albums, hearing Hendrix lean on his jamming on tracks like ‘House Burning Down’ and ‘Voodoo Chile’ doesn’t just feel like him noodling. He was trying to channel some sort of higher power with his guitar, but that didn’t mean he gave up on raw beauty.
On ‘1983’, Hendrix lets everything calm down a little bit more when he plays, usually playing simple scales to set the mood. Of all his atmospheric songs, nothing has depicted going underwater quite like this, almost like you’re following the guitar as it sinks deeper and deeper towards the ocean floor.
Hendrix may have just been painting with sounds, but its lustre still wasn’t lost on Smith years later, telling The Shortlist, “It’s my favourite song I think, if I had to only pick one song in the world, it would be that. It also has the line which I took and borrowed for Horses, in my ‘Elegie’ to Jimi Hendrix, ‘it’s much too bad that our friends can’t be with us today’, that’s from that song.”
Throughout all of Smith’s later work, though, she had the same approach to lyricism that Hendrix did. Some of them may have been a bit more abstract than others, but whether she was writing a song or a piece of prose, there was no doubt that she always made sure that her audience was there on the journey with her.
Across Horses, some of Smith’s greatest moments come from talking about the pain in the world and being able to overcome it rather than letting it fester, which normally meant unleashing it through song. Even when she was singing tracks, she didn’t write herself; tunes like ‘Because the Night’ hold up because of how much you believe every word she is saying.
Smith had said she started her journey as a musician to carry on what Hendrix did, but her prose took Hendrix’s work in ‘1983’ one step further. Anyone can start writing fanciful tales by using flowery language, but whenever Smith started singing, she practically brought out a piece of her heart for the world to see.
