Patti's guitar/gun imagery

["J" <jlregister>]

The idea of guitars as rock's weapons, or guitars as bayonets, is an old
theme for Patti.

Back in June 1975 (nearly 6 months before Horses was released), the magazine
Crawdaddy published a "Growin' Up!" issue with contributions by a range of
writers, musicians, artists and other celebrities.  Patti's contibution was
a long poem/essay called "Flying Saucers Rock 'n Roll."  The first part
dealt with her childhood bout of scarlet fever and some of the dreams and
hallucinations it produced, then segued into a second part that has a vision
of rock's future.  Here are a couple of excerpts:

"Destiny plagued me.  I never slept.  I laid, and watched the night unravel
like the future.  Music crystallized like snowflakes, gradually the entire
storm.  Guitar necks sticking out of the ground like bayonets.  The war
between sounds.  Alexander coming to conquer with a fender and a saucer.  I
knew it was coming and I wanted to be in on it.  I know that its coming and
I want to be in on it.  I know it came and went and I wasn't in on it."

"...It was 1996, '67, '68.  Every place I was it was somebody else.  I
could-not-live-today.  Too plugged into sanguine rhythms past and the silver
video we call future.  Here I come future, coming to get ya.  I see it all
moving on an immense yellow highway.  They come on like trumpets and violins
-- cars, armies of cars that move off the ground, glowing cigar shapes, and
the radio just pumps like a fist.  Brick roads, turnpikes, they drive me
insane cause I can see what's coming.  ELP, ELO, nothing real 'cept UFO.
Got to be royal rock warfare cause it's sitting in limbo.  Not what was and
not what will be.  Rock got to move out of its stagnant moment.  Pray for
something bubbling under the sky's canopy to rip open and rush like gas."


On February 15, 1976, Patti performed at the Boarding House in San
Francisco. During that show, she read excerpts from this essay/poem that
morphed into a chilling and detailed description of the death of 50's teen
idol Sal Mineo (co-star of Rebel Without a Cause, among other things), who
had been murdered in a Hollywood alleyway just a couple of nights earlier.
You could have heard a pin drop the audience was so rapt.   Patti concluded
her reading by coming back around to the 1975 essay and finished with these
words:   

Get
your guitar
moving
fast
for it
is
our
bayonet
and it
is
war.





J


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-babel-list
[mailto:owner-babel-list] On Behalf Of L French
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 2:42 AM
To: Babel- List
Subject: Patti Smith joins the anti-war protests with a song from The
Yardbirds 


This weekend, tens of thousands of anti-war protesters held rallies across
the United States in major American cities, calling for an immediate end to
the war in Iraq and for Congress to cut off all funding for the war. In New
York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and Seattle, huge turnouts
of protesters demanded that the corrupt Bush regime and it's Republican
supporters in congress end their cruel and inhumane war, and bring it an
immediate end. 
   
  Patti Smith, performing this weekend in Spain and Portugal, was unable to
attend the protests in person, but was certainly with the protesters in
spirit. 
   
  Here is Patti's memorable "Electric Guitar Statement," she phopetically
made some 30 years ago, in Koln, Germany, evoking the horrors of World War
II to her mostly German audience, on the occassion of Arthur Rimbaud's
birthday: 
   
   
  PATTI SMITH - ELECTRIC GUITAR STATEMENT  KOLN, GERMANY 
   
  OCTOBER 20, 1977 
   
  ________________ 
   
  
  AUDIENCE MEMBER: How are you Patti? 
   
  PATTI: Im fine, I feel great now. Im real happy. Where is my guitar?
Cant find it? Wheres the guitar at? 
   
  OFF STAGE VOICE: Somebody carried it off about an hour ago. 
   
  PATTI: Somebody carried it off the guitar? Well, all right, why we solve
the guitar mystery, Ill read you a little "Prayer." Okay? 
   
  OFF STAGE VOICE: Its coming. 
   
  PATTI: Youll plug it in for me, right? I dont know how to do any of that
stuff. Technology, you know us girls. Okay, its almost all over. Pretty
soon it will just be like the sweetest nightmare of your life. I dont know,
with my guitar, anything can happen.  
   
  (Patti read her poem PRAYER) 
   
  To be safe from all bodily harm 
  To be a Saint in any form 
  Any form at all  
   
  (Patti plays the opening guitar chords of Radio Ethiopia) 
   
  PATTI: All right guitar, talk to me 
  (To stagehand) Is this your guitar? 
  How can I get the most reverb from it? 
  I only know one note, you know  
  Theres more reverb?   
   
  PATTI: Now there are a lot of fathers, or potential fathers and mothers
here who shouldnt be afraid of this instrument (holds up her guitar). It
might sound real horrible, especially when I play it, and it might look a
little threatening, but this is what we have traded for your bayonets. 
   
  This is our instrument of war. 
   
  And for my generation, this is our instrument of battle. This is the only
instrument of battle that we want left. 
   
  We want to get rid of all the machine guns, and all the bombs and all that
shit and we just to fight each other out with sound. 
   
  I know its real horrible and sounds real bad, and I know its going to
drive you crazy, but you just put yourself back there in World War II,
wherever you want. 
   
  All you people, or most of you people, or a lot of you that I can see, Im
sure have experienced a lot of horror. 
   
  Well, this is the heaviest horror that I hope my children ever face. 
   
  (Patti plays an electric guitar solo) 
   
  Thank you everybody. I know it was a little hard. Its hard to come into a
foreign country where you dont know the language and you really desperately
want to communicate with the people. Sometimes I make mistakes but I really
love my work and I really care about what I do and I really care about your
children, and for me rock and roll is the thing that is going to bind our
children together. Its going to be the thing we are going to fight with,
its going to be our expression of freedom and Im real happy to be alive in
1977. Thank you. 
   
  ___________ 
   
  Now, nearly 30 years later, Patti continues her theme of the electric
guitar as the only weapon needed by here generation, as exemplified by her
stunning cover version of The Yardbirds classic, Happenings Ten Years Time
Ago.  
   
  Patti, naturally changes many of the original lyrics, including her own
free-form rap against the war in Iraq: 
   
   
  HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO    THE YARDBIRDS 
   
  (Chris Dreja/Jim McCarty/Jeff Beck/Keith Relf/Paul Samwell-Smith) 
   
   
  Meeting people along my way 
  Seemingly alone one day 
  But the reality of things 
  What my dreaming always brings 
   
  Happenings ten years time ago 
  Situations we really know 
  But the knowing is in the mind 
  Sinking deep into the world of time 
  Sinking deep into the world of time 
   
  Looking in a room I see 
  Things that mean a lot to me 
  Why they do I never know 
  Memories don't strike me so 
  Memories don't strike me so 
   
  It seems to me I've been here before 
  The sounds I heard, and the sights I saw 
  Was it real, or was it in my dreams? 
  I need to know what it all means 
   
   
  (Patti's improvised rap:  
   
     
  She crawled though the ruble with her babe 
  She crawled through the ruble we had made 
  She laid her child before the stone carcass 
  Entitled the art of war 
  The horses leapt 
  And jewels the size of fists dripped from their eyes 
  She swallowed them 
  Ribbons silk blood 
  Ran in streams 
  A stranger called through the ruble 
  She crawled thru the ruble with her babe 
  She crawled thru the ruble with her maid 
  And she left her child 
  In front of the carcass entitled the art of war 
  Ah, the natives gently danced in the great fields 
  In the fields littered littered 
   
  Littered with guitar nets, instead of bayonets  
  Littered with guitar nets, instead of bayonets  
  Littered with guitar nets, instead of bayonets  
   
  We created a revolution in music 
  The art of war in rock and roll 
  We dont need No fucking bayonets 
  We dont need assault rifles 
  We have bows and arrows 
  We have electric guitars 
   
  WHY? 
  WHY? 
   
  STOP THE WAR! 
  STOP THE WAR! 
   
  The people, they laughed at them too, 
  In the sixties they were straggly-assed too 
  Trying to stop the war in Viet Nam 
  How people laughed 
  We have to start again 
  Dont be afraid  Dont be afraid of ridicule 
  We have to stop the war! 
NO MORE WAR!!)  
   
  Happenings ten years time ago 
  Its something we must know 
  Is it real or all a dream? 
  I dont know, I dont remember 
  But I will embrace the New Year clean! 
  Clean, and fucking aware 
   
  Going down into the world of dreams 
  Arising from the world of dreams 
  Arising from the world of dreams 
  Action! Action! 
   
   
   
   
   
  To view The Yardbirds original version, live from 40 years ago during the
Viet Nam War, go to:  
   
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlKLKSX-qWE  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
     
   
   
   
   
   


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