Re: Patti's guitar/gun imagery

[Oligodendroglia]

my favorite from babel field:
 
"... my guitar ... it weights less than a machine gun and never runs out of  
ammunition."
 
-------------------------------------------------

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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