The one singer Patti Smith said would live on forever: “His body of work will always endure”
Not every rock and roll star can manage to put as much emotional power into their performances like Patti Smith can.
She wasn’t claiming to be the best musician to ever pick up an instrument by any stretch but on every one of her albums, it’s impossible not to hear the raw strength, artistry and vulnerability that she brought to every single one of her songs whenever she opened her mouth. Her music was supposed to give her audience an epiphany every time they heard it, but she didn’t get to that point without doing her fair share of musical homework beforehand.
But for the longest time, it didn’t feel like Smith was really cut out to be one of the biggest stars in the world. She loved dancing to rock and roll whenever she had the chance, but her forte was always in writing poetry rather than learning guitar. Giants like The Rolling Stones almost felt untouchable, but something happened the minute she started listening to bands like The Velvet Underground.
Lou Reed was the first to admit that he didn’t necessarily know the ins and outs of music theory, but he didn’t really have to, either. The biggest songs on that first Velvet Underground record took the basis of rock and roll and flipped it on its head, and even if it wasn’t the most complex thing in the world, you could feel the ugly side of life on ‘Heroin’ or the sun hitting your face on the song ‘Sunday Morning’. So if he could make his classics with only a few chords, why couldn’t Smith?
She was more than capable of being a vocalist at the time, but her mission when she made Horses was about more than finding the right songs for her. So many of the biggest rock stars had come and gone since she first got started, so when she started to sing tunes like ‘Elegie’ and ‘Gloria’, she wasn’t simply trying to make a decent rock and roll track. She was singing for those who couldn’t anymore, and that shamanistic vibe she created felt like it was ripped straight out of Jim Morrison’s playbook.
While Morrison has been either one of the greatest frontmen of all time or a drunken buffoon posing as a poet, depending on who you talk to, it’s hard to deny his impact on rock and roll. His boozy demeanour whenever he got onstage is the stuff of legend, and while there were a few times where he made the audience uncomfortable, you could tell something miraculous was going on when he surrendered to the music on songs like ‘The End’ and ‘When the Music’s Over’.
But beyond being a great entertainer, Smith always saw the great poetry that he was singing on top of every Doors song, saying, “Jim Morrison was one of our great poets and most unique performers. His body of work will always endure. I’ve had a few times in my life where I would have never thought to perform or ever be a rock and roll singer. I had a strange sense of something [watching him] that I couldn’t quite explain.”
And for all of the great music that Morrison made, his poetry does end up getting a bit too overlooked in the grand scheme of things. He loved singers like Frank Sinatra, but some of his biggest influences were people like Allen Ginsberg, and when you hear songs like ‘Riders on the Storm’, the band is practically following his lead when talking about the darker side of life during the Summer of Love.
Then again, maybe that’s one of the greatest gifts that Morrison gave us during his lifetime. The entire world was revolving around the concept of peace, love, and understanding, and yet there they were in the middle of everything to remind everyone that true darkness never really goes away.
