‘Amerigo’: the story behind Patti Smith’s epic odyssey
If there’s one thing about Patti Smith, it’s that she knows how to transform music into true art. In many ways, it’s simply part of her nature—as a singer, poet, author, and artist, she seamlessly extends her reach across multiple mediums, creating magic in each. Whether drawing from her own lived experiences or conjuring stories from distant worlds, she crafts narratives that resonate deeply.
That was the exact vision being channelled in ‘Amerigo’, the epic opening odyssey of her 2012 album Banga. As a whole, the body of work paints portraits of various human conditions, both personal and historical. The latter perspective is where the record gears into life, literally and metaphorically, with ‘Amerigo’ charting the discovery of the new world.
The song takes its title from Amerigo Vespucci, the intrepid explorer who discovered the new world and, in turn, America in 1497. The namesake of the States, hailing from Italy, granted European knowledge of an increasingly expanding and exciting world – and, hundreds of years later, the true romanticism of this notion was a blossoming artistic muse for New York native Smith.
Explaining her choice of inspiration, she once said: “The explorers had this hubris and excitement. They were going to find the New World and baptise the people. Then they arrived and it was so pure and beautiful that they themselves were transformed. I think of ‘Amerigo’ as an overture to the album.”
“Overture” is an apt way to describe the sonic position of the tune because it really does sound like something from a film. It has all the tones of hope and promise that befits the idea of voyaging and the aspiration of fresh beginnings it brings with it. Smith also embodies this through her lyrics, conjuring images of “Tracing lazy circles in the sky” while “Lying on a ship/ And gazing at the western skies”. This suits a number of coinciding situations – firstly, of course, of the voyagers, but also of Smith’s environment while writing the lyrics, on a voyage of her own… well, sort of.
Emulating Amerigo himself, Smith was on board the Italian Costa Concordia cruise ship in 2009 when she conceived of the idea for the song, as well as much of the album it would appear on. She was accompanied by her guitarist, Lenny Kaye, and basically, the pair had time to kill. They had initially been there to star in Jean-Luc Godard’s movie Film Socialisme, but having not been used as much as expected, they set about writing songs instead. It was probably just as well their trip to the silver screen never really worked out anyway – that very same ship sank off the coast of Tuscany not two years later. Talk about dodging a bullet with that one.
Regardless, the result of Smith’s very own intrepid exploration was ‘Amerigo’ and much of Banga, an experience for which she is no doubt grateful not only for the artistic inspiration but the worlds it exposed her to. Whether sailing to discover America or cruising across the Italian seas, muses for songwriting are everywhere; Patti Smith shows us you just need to look for it.
