"Mother on a Mission" - Interview with Patti Smith

["Peter Knerr" <peter.knerr>]

I found this fairly recent interview with Patti Smith on Launch.com.  I
thought it was a very interesting one and I don't think I've come across it
before.

Patti Smith
Mother On A Mission
By Mac Randall

If you were feeling less than charitable toward Patti Smith, you might be
tempted to call her a horrible name-dropper. In the course of a half-hour
conversation at the Radisson Hotel in Austin--where she's preparing for an
outdoor concert, her first live appearance in the Texas capital in two
decades--she manages to toss in passing references to, among others, Bob
Dylan, Michael Stipe, Beat authors Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs,
photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, guitarist/ critic/ Nuggets compiler Lenny
Kaye, and Fred "Sonic" Smith of Detroit's legendary MC5. There are two
reasons why this is not annoying. First, Smith actually knows all these
people very well. Dylan and Stipe are close friends; so were Ginsberg and
Burroughs. Mapplethorpe took the photograph that adorns the front cover of
her classic 1975 debut album, Horses. Kaye played with her in the '70s and
is also in the current lineup of her band. Fred Smith was her husband and
the father of her two children. Patti Smith doesn't talk about these folks
to win debate points. This is, simply, her life.

Second, it's pretty hard to feel less than charitable toward Patti Smith.
Well-weathered but still youthful in spirit at 53, she doesn't just talk a
lot about positive energy, she exudes it--this in spite of the untimely
deaths of so many of the people mentioned in the preceding paragraph,
including her husband. And that survivor's energy leaps rudely out of the
grooves of her latest album, the aptly named Gung Ho, a compelling slab of
art-garage-folk-punk that marks another peak in an illustrious career now
approaching its third decade. "As a human being, I've been through a lot of
things," she says. "Been through some rough times, but I feel really strong,
really healthy. I feel there's a lot of things to address, and I can
contribute. And the [new] record comes from a position of strength. In that
way, it's a continuation of my life stream and my ideas, but it's also a
milestone for me because it's a time in my life where my skills, my band,
all the people I'm collaborating with, and my own abilities and feelings are
positive and strong. I think it reflects the best of all, really."

Making records and playing in a rock band isn't what Smith thought she'd be
doing at this stage of her life. After releasing four albums of varying
quality between 1975 and 1979, she left the music business at the dawn of
the 1980s, got married, and focused on building a family. In her own words:
"I felt I'd accomplished my mission." It was her husband that eventually
coaxed her back into active duty, on 1988's Dream Of Life. "That was more of
his mission," she recalls, "because he wrote all of the music and really
wanted people to hear me sing. It was his gift to me to produce that record.
After he passed away, I put out [1996's] Gone Again in remembrance of him. I
really didn't think I was going to do any more records [after that]." But
friends and acquaintances encouraged her to continue, and so she brought
several of the Gone Again players--Kaye, guitarist Oliver Ray, bassist/
keyboardist Tony Shanahan, and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty--back together to
cut 1997's Peace And Noise; all four appear again on Gung Ho.

Smith describes the last five years as a process of "getting back on my
feet. Being I hadn't really performed much in 16 years between the '70s and
the '90s, I had to learn how to perform again, get reacquainted in the
studio. The struggles were street struggles. But now we've worked on three
albums together, toured the world together, and this album reflects our
gelling as a band." Rip-roaring tracks like "Persuasion" and "Glitter In
Their Eyes" testify to that nicely. The choice of producer Gil Norton
(Pixies, Catherine Wheel, Belly, Counting Crows) proves to have been an
inspired one.

"I don't usually like producers who meddle," Smith says, "but I wanted
someone to oversee the technical aspects of the production. Lenny
recommended [Norton] and Oliver was knowledgeable about his work with the
Pixies. I decided to go with him and it was a really happy, joyous thing. He
understood us as a band, was totally respectful toward me and the
improvisational aspect of our band, and was poetry-friendly. Gil and his
engineer became essentially band members, and I feel we all did this record
together. Which is perfect, because 'gung ho' is an old Chinese character
that represents working together. I always thought 'gung ho' meant to attack
something with high spirits and good heart. And actually, that's sort of the
American translation, slang. During World War II, there was this elite
branch of the Marine Corps called the Raiders and they took the expression
as their own. It spread like wildfire amongst American soldiers, and they
were all working together for a righteous cause, so when they brought the
phrase back to America, that spirit came with it."

The cover photo of Gung Ho makes pointed reference to this period of
history, but it also has a greater personal significance for Smith; the
young G.I. pictured there is her father, who passed away in the summer of
1999. "I went home [after his death]," she remembers, "and my mom had found
a photo of him from World War II. He was stationed in Australia, on the way
to New Guinea. He was always kind of stylish. He'd had his uniform
custom-made and had this black go-to-hell custom beret on. My mom said,
'Look at your father, he was so gung-ho!' And I was like, yeah, that's the
picture. I'm really proud to have it on the cover of the record. He was so
supportive of the work that I do...and he was very gung-ho."

In much the same way as Smith was encouraged by her father, so Smith herself
has encouraged, and sometimes audibly influenced, many of the most important
and successful rock bands of the last 20 years. (R.E.M., anyone? How about
U2?) "I always take it as a compliment when people get inspired by anything
we do and then do their own work," Smith observes. "That was my essential
mission in the '70s: to inspire people to do work. I didn't perceive myself
to have any special gifts. I'm not a singer or a musician, didn't know how
to perform or record. I did it to, hopefully, incite others. Though I've
never been really commercially successful--'Because The Night' [1978] did
pretty good, but I've never had a gold record--when one talks about
succeeding or failing, what is one talking about? If one's talking
commercially, I'm at the bottom of that barrel, but I feel successful
because I've done the work I wanted to do, people treat me well, and I feel
good about myself and my work."

And though that work has evolved over the years, make no mistake: Patti
Smith is still on a mission. "When I did Horses," she says, "I was focusing
on people like myself: people that were outside society, the maverick people
who were the misfits, or the miscast, but also productive. This time in my
life, I still feel like one of these people, but my mission is to address
all people about global concerns or national concerns. I know that I'm a
fringe player. Artists are always fringe players. But the things that
concern me now, they don't just concern the fringe, but all people: the
destruction of our environment, the morale of our children, the rampant
misuse of firearms. I've always cherished rock 'n' roll as a way to express
the things that are important to the people. Unfortunately, in these times
the idea of a concerned citizen is almost like...instead of the concerned
citizen being the grass root or the mainstream, the concerned citizen is the
fringe player. People don't seem to care about our world; as long as the
economic situation is good and they have the material things they want, it's
all good. And it's not. People will find that if one measures their worth by
material things, they will have a very lonely existence along the road. As
one evolves as a human being, these things become less and less satisfying.
And I think it's important for us to develop some kind of spiritual,
political, and revolutionary sense of ourselves, and then we'll be happier
human beings."

by Mac Randall

Date: 4/06/2000

Here's the URL for the original :
http://www.launch.com/music/content/1,5850,157815,00.html?vo=

--Peace,
--Peter