The band that gave Patti Smith everything she wanted: “I thought they were great”
Everything that Patti Smith was in the service of making rock and roll into an art piece.
The idea of her being one of the leading voices of protopunk might be a great way for people to start, but if you think about it, that’s really a reductive way of thinking about what she was able to do. Her heart was always in making music and poetry crash in on each other whenever she made a new song, and she felt that the most interesting bands were the ones that were bringing something different to rock and roll.
The Velvet Underground had already opened her mind to what rock and roll could be about aside from a catchy tune, and even when looking through some of her favourite records, she wanted to hear something with some real meaning behind it. Nothing mattered more than hearing someone’s take on whatever they were singing, but by the mid-1970s, a lot of that passion seemed to be slipping away more and more.
No one could have ever imagined being as big as the Led Zeppelins of the world, but the idea of stadium rock had practically turned the genre into a joke. The order of the day was people like Peter Frampton and Boston turning in some of the most faceless rock and roll songs ever created, but as long as they sounded like every other AOR band on the charts, it was easy for them to gain a foothold compared to the art pieces Smith was creating with her band.
Punk was definitely a breath of fresh air, but after spending years hashing things out at CBGBs, Smith really came alive when she heard what people like Tom Verlaine were doing. Television had been looking to dismantle what everyone thought of as typical rock and roll, and while Marquee Moon isn’t the first record you’d play to someone looking to get into the genre, Smith felt that they were one of the few bands that were doing everything right.
Other punk bands had been more ramshackle, and some had even made poetry one of their main objectives, but Smith felt that the marriage between the music and the lyrics made Television the greatest band that she could have asked for, saying, “We saw Television, and I thought they were great. I really felt that was it, what I was hoping for: to see people approach things in a different way with a street ethic but also their full mental faculties. Of course, Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell – he was in the group at the time – were both poets.”
But even if Television became the darlings of post-punk when they first started, they didn’t seem to have any clear agenda from the beginning. They never thought that any of their songs were going to be hits in the traditional sense, but when listening to them play, it didn’t matter. The marriage between those soaring guitars is what made everything sound great, and even on tunes like ‘Marquee Moon’, they’re practically trying to communicate using their instruments half the time.
Smith opted for the vocal approach, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t pull from what Television had been doing. Verlaine was the one constantly pushing the envelope for the guitar in a rock and roll context, and when he eventually found his way onto one of Smith’s records, it wasn’t like he had changed all that much. It was still the same beautiful chaos that everyone came to expect, and even if it was a little harsh, that was only a good thing for Smith’s records.
Because as much as Smith was looking to be the best artist she could be, she had a lot more respect for people that were singular in their talent. Anyone can hope to copy everyone from The Beatles to Led Zeppelin to Michael Jackson to try and become one of the biggest names in music, but the real mark of a great artist is someone that no one’s going to mistake for anyone else whenever they pick up their instrument.
