The song Patti Smith wrote in tribute to CBGBs: “It was an honour”
The fact is, Patti Smith has lived an incredible life.
As the godmother of punk, she married rock and poetry into something new and history-shaking, inspiring writers everywhere to take to the stage if they felt moved to.
But it’s also true that Smith has lived a life repeatedly marked by tragedy. In quick succession, she lost her creative soulmate, Robert Mapplethorpe, her romantic partner and the father of her children, Fred Smith, and her beloved brother, Tod Smith. Throughout her life, she has faced a steady stream of loss, from the deaths of bright stars in her youth to the passing of more of her heroes over time.
In Just Kids, in a scene where she recounts a night spent in a bar, she pauses to look around. “Many would not make it,” she writes, “Candy Darling died of cancer. Tinkerbelle and Andrea Whips took their own lives. Others sacrificed themselves to drugs and misadventures. Taken down, the stardom they so desired just out of reach, tarnished stars falling from the sky.” Considering how many people who coloured her younger years wouldn’t make it out, Smith has taken up the role of their archivist, vowing to tell their stories, speak often about their lives and keep their world alive through art.
Across both her writing and her songs, she does exactly that. ‘This Is The Girl’ was written in memory of Amy Winehouse, ‘Break It Up’ immortalises Jim Morrison, as the final recording of his voice, ‘Beneath The Southern Cross’ has become a memorial to Jeff Buckley, alongside the many other loved ones Smith has lost. However, it’s not just people, it’s places too, as she saw the New York she made a home in disappear as places changed and venues closed. Her old home of The Chelsea Hotel still stands, but vastly different; bars that were once her clubhouses are long gone, and even one of the city’s most iconic and historic venues, CBGB, is now a shop.
The alumni of the CBGB tried to save it. As the venue that birthed countless history-moulding acts like the Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, Television and many more, including Smith’s group, its closing is a true tragedy for culture. But as Smith does best, she made sure to immortalise it, even as it was still kicking: “Every Sunday / I will go down to the bar / And leave him the guitar,” Smith sings on ‘We Three’ from the 1978 album, Easter. Written alongside her then-partner Tom Verlaine, it’s a love song to their relationship but also to the venue that kick-started it.
“You’re Smith,” Tom Verlaine first said to Patti Smith on a street corner, recognising her from the scene. It was a moment that changed everything as he invited her to watch Television play at CBGB. “As I watched Tom play, I thought, had I been a boy, I would’ve been him,” she wrote in a personal essay following his death as the two fell into a romance, and then a lifelong friendship and collaborative partnership.
Yet the rocking energy of ‘We Three’ isn’t just for Verlaine; it captures the energy of the venue they made their home throughout the mid-1970s, both playing some of their earliest and most formative shows there. “‘We Three’ was actually written about CBGB. The intro is ‘Every Sunday I would go/Down to the bar/Where he played guitar’. That’s about seeing Tom [and Television],” Smith said, with the song bottling the atmosphere of its bustling bar and constant cast of friends and lovers enacting dramas.
In the various tragedies of Smith’s life, the CBGB was one of them, and so, as the bar was closing down, she said an obvious yes to the invite to be the final ever performer on its stage. “It was an honour to be the last group, and I really thought about what that meant, what kind of responsibility that was,” she said, playing ‘We Three’ on the specific setlist curated to remember its various ghosts and icons.
