Revisiting: Patti Smith

0:15 Hey y'all, today we have the one and only Patti Smith on the show. Patti's the prototypical downtown New York City artist. Her 1975 debut album Horses is credited as one of the masterpieces of its time. It also cemented her as one of rock and roll's great lyricists. But her writing extends far beyond music. Her 2010 memoir, Just Kids, won the National Book Award for its brilliant portrayal of the late 60s bohemian art scene in New York and Patti's experience living in the Chelsea Hotel with famed photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. During those years, Patti hung out with Andy Warhol at the factory and was mentored by great writers like William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Today, Patti publishes

1:06 near daily offerings of poems, songs, and serialized fiction on her sub stack. It's a journal of sorts that she started during the solitary days of the pandemic. On today's episode, Malcolm Gladwell talks to Patti Smith about her writing in the studio Jimi Hendrix built, Electric Lady. It was there, she tells Malcolm, that she met Hendrix in 1970, just weeks before he passed. She also talks about hanging out with and writing lyrics for Janis Joplin. And she recalls the fun that she had during a failed attempt to cover Adele in concert. This is Broken Record, liner notes for the digital age. I'm Justin Richmond. Here's Malcolm Gladwell and Patti Smith.

1:52 Patti, thank you for joining us on Broken Record.

1:55 Thank you.

1:56 We are here in Electric Lady Studios, a place that you have a special relationship to. And little bits of you are all around this place, I noticed as I came in. When did you first come here? What is your history with Electric Lady?

2:13 Well, my very first time I came was Jimmy's opening party, which I think is August 26, 1970.

2:23 Jimi Hendrix.

2:24 Jimi Hendrix had a party to open it, and I was writing record reviews and things at the time, and I was invited. So I was very excited because he was one of my favorite artists. And I came, but I wasn't used to going to high-profile parties. And so I wound up sitting on the steps and just watching people go back and forth because I just didn't have the nerve to go in. And Jimmy had to leave the party early. I think he had a flight. He was going to the Isle of Wight. And he had that big festival. He was going to London in any event.

3:06 And he saw me sitting on the steps. I mean, this was 1970. I was, you know, I had a certain look, you know, I was probably appealing in a certain way. And he laughed and he said, you're not going, he had that really, that soft voice, not going to the party, you know, I can't do it. And I said, well, I'm a little shy. And he said, and he told me he was shy too. He said, actually, people didn't understand that about him, but he was shy. And he said it was interesting how you could be such an aggressive performer yet still be shy around people. And he told me that he was going to go and do these shows, a handful of shows. And then he was going to come back, go to Woodstock and gather musicians from all over the world and then have them sit

4:03 in a circle and and play, just like Ornette Coleman is, you know, a dicophonist or whatever, out of tune, different keys, instruments that didn't normally go together, meld together, play and play and play till they connected and found a common language. And to him, that would be the language of peace.

4:27 And then he left. And of course, we never saw him again. He died in London. only maybe a couple weeks later, a few weeks later, I think, which was heartbreaking. So that was my introduction to Electric Ladies Studios. I didn't even have the nerve to come inside and never dreamed that I would one day be recording because I was working in a bookstore and writing reviews. But subsequently, I recorded my first independent single, Piss Factory, Horses here, and just a plethora of other albums. Over half my albums I've recorded here, including my last album. So it's become quite a home for me. And in terms of you mentioning bits and pieces of me here, you can't imagine what an honor it is still, after all these years,

5:25 to walk in here and see Horses on the Wall, other pictures on the wall, It means a great deal to me.

5:34 When you came in, you were pointing at a collage on the wall. That's not yours, is it?

5:38 No, the collage is just part of the art that was here. If you go in the bathroom, have you gone to the bathroom here yet?

5:45 It's decoupage.

5:46 And it's the same. All the art is the same. All these murals were here when the studio opened. Jimmy commissioned all of these murals. And the bathrooms, the lady and men's room, are all decoupage, which was very It was a very late 60s thing. And, you know, varnished, lots of collage material varnished over. And that is probably a piece of artwork that was in one of the offices.

6:14 But you have to go in the bathroom before you leave.

6:16 I will be sure to. But who else was at the party?

6:19 Do you remember?

6:21 No, because I was, I mean, probably Eddie Kramer. And, you know, I didn't know any of these people.

6:26 As I said, I.

6:28 I was working in a bookstore and I knew a handful of people. I knew some writers from Max's Kansas City or had met Lou Reed and a few people. But, you know, these were like probably, you know, maybe there were a lot of celebrities or models or producers, but it wasn't part of my world. So I only cared about Jimi Hendrix. So I don't know who else was at the party.

6:55 At that point, you'd been in New York for how long?

6:58 I came to New York in 1967, July of 1967, so like a couple of years. But I went to Brooklyn. I moved to Brooklyn with Robert Mapplethorpe, and then we moved to the Chelsea Hotel in August of 69. So this was a year later. So I was still quite the fledgling.

7:19 Yeah. I want to come back to that period, but I want to do this little exercise first, which is, you know, as I— look back on your career, it's unusual in many respects, but one of the things that's most unusual about it is it's like, it's really kind of, you can give me the exact number, it's really four or five different lives.

7:40 It's a few, yeah.

7:41 I want you to go through your, tell me all the Patti Smith lives.

7:46 Well, funny enough, I'm writing a book about that. So, but I can, I mean, in terms of my public life, my public life started quite slowly and 1971, I did, you know, I came to New York, really, I wanted to be an artist, a visual artist. And really, I felt like language for some reason, I was also writing a lot of poetry and poetry really sort of eclipsed the visual arts. So I really dedicated myself to poetry in the late 60s and early 70s.

8:22 And I was working in a bookstore.

8:24 So I would say, That period of my life from 67 to 75 was really devoted to writing poetry, starting to perform publicly, and of course being greatly influenced and shepherded by Robert Mapplethorpe and then Sam Shepard. These formative years that I had, I was very lucky to have so many good teachers and You know, in breaking my life up, I would say that period from 67 to 75 was my university.

8:56 Yeah.

8:57 I was friends with William Burroughs.

8:59 Yes.

9:00 You've skipped?

9:01 Childhood.

9:02 Yeah.

9:03 Life number one is— I'm not going through that with you.

9:06 No, no, we don't have to go through it. I'm just saying part one is pre-New York.

9:11 Yeah, part one is pre-New York, but in terms of the work that I do— Yeah. it would really start when I came to New York. Because when I came to New York, I was 20. I was excited about everything. I was well-read. I had a good work ethic in terms of writing and doing jobs. You know, I've been working since I was about 14, whether in factories or picking blueberries or working in bookstores. So in 1967, when I came to New York and met Robert, That was when I really, along with him, made a vow to, you know, pretty much to art. Art being all the fields of art. But I was, I became much more devoted to poetry. And that period was really my learning period.

10:04 I met a lot of people who helped me along, encouraged me, bought Newworth encouraged me to write lyrics. Jim Carroll to write poetry. I was so lucky to know William Burroughs and Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg. And not just as friends, but teachers. They looked at my work. They encouraged me. They invited me to read with them.

10:29 and to be somewhat part of their world.

10:32 Were you meeting these people?

10:33 In the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, mostly. I mean, back then, Robert and I moved there in 69, and there was the El Quixote bar next door to it, and they all went there. I mean, I didn't really drink, but they all went there. So you could go and sit in the bar and sit next to Carl Solomon or Terry Southern and William, and I had a big crush on William, so... you know, we became friends. But back then, everybody was around. You know, there wasn't the same cult of celebrity. It was just like in the Chelsea, I was living there. And so was Janis Joplin living there for a while. Only we all dressed the same.

11:14 We all listened to the same music. They were a couple years older than me, some of these people. But we were of the same mindset. And yeah, some of them are real well-known, but we all commingled. And, uh, cause every, all of us were like, as I would say, outside society, Janice Joplin was big, but also she couldn't go into fancy hotels because of the way she dressed. And, um, we all talked and hung out together, but I had very good mentors very early on. For instance, Bobby Newworth, who I recognize from being in Don't Look Back. Uh, Bobby was also a painter and a songwriter is, I mean, And Bobby introduced me. He was tour managing Janice Joplin at the time, and she was writing material. And Bobby

12:07 liked my poems, and he encouraged me to write some lyrics for her. You know, I had a lot of encouragement from people.

12:17 I was sort of an unusual... I was.

12:19 Like Holden Caulfield at the Chelsea, a little mix of Holden Caulfield or Eloise at the Plaza.

12:25 I don't know. I was not.

12:27 even though I was sort of a South Jersey hick, but I was really well read. And I was also probably one of the few people who wasn't stoned or speeding half the time because I didn't take drugs. And I had a steady job, which meant I could be hit for a couple of dollars.

12:44 Here and there. I don't know.

12:46 I can't say why these really great people, you know, took me in under their wing, but they did.

12:54 I'm struck in that you're a, That world that you're inhabiting in this sort of first stage, 67 to 75, how many people are like you, outsiders who come to New York? I'm fascinated by the notion of people who arrive, the difference between arriving to New York from, as you did, you know, as you call yourself, a hick from South Jersey, difference between encountering all of what was going on culturally.

13:22 Well, I'll tell you one thing. I came to New York for a job. That's why, I mean, in South Jersey, there wasn't a lot of work. And then they had the New York shipyard closed down in 1967 or 66, and 30,000 people went out of work.

13:39 And there wasn't any work.

13:41 I mean, you had the Columbia Record pressing plant near where I lived or the Campbell Soup plant, but all the factory jobs, any kind of, in Philadelphia, any kind of bookstore job, anything was taken. And I had no real skills. So I actually went to New York looking for work. That was my first preoccupation. I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to meet people like me who were more outsider types or more devoted to art.

14:12 But the first thing I wanted to find was a job.

14:16 New York at the time was great for people like me because you could get an apartment, even if you only made like $ 60 a week. you could get an apartment for $ 80 a month. I mean, it might be filled with cockroaches and stuff, but when you're young, I mean, I didn't care. It was a really good time for people like me, and they came from all over. There was also the fact that a lot of kids that were gay kids, which we didn't even have that term then, but a lot of kids that were from all over America who were thrown out by their families, disowned, or were abused in their neighborhoods or down south or wherever they were from, they all migrated to New York City.

15:02 Because New York City was, you know, you can say anything about, you know, the problems with the police or stuff. But at that time, considering where a lot of this came from and what the kind of abuse you would get if you were different, just dress indifferent, was so strong that to come to a place like New York City where nobody cared, you could dress the way you wanted, you know, you could reinvent yourself, you could be, you know, really, you know, any sexual persuasion, at least to a point, at least among a like-minded society.

15:43 Yeah. How did you meet Robert Mapplethorpe?

15:46 I met him, you know, first I met him in Brooklyn in I had nowhere to, I came to New York with about $ 5 and no job and nowhere to stay. I knew a couple of people who went to Pratt university, but I'd forgotten that it was summertime and there was nobody there. And when I went to their apartments, some of them had moved out. And, uh, one of the people I was looking for had moved out and Robert was staying there. And, uh, I was just directed to Robert.

16:19 Ask Robert. Ask him.

16:21 They didn't even tell me his name. Ask my roommate if they know where your friend lives.

16:26 And he did.

16:27 So he led me to where my friend lived.

16:30 My friend was away.

16:32 And I wound up sleeping in the hallway or on the stoop on the 3rd of July. Because I remember I woke up at the 4th of July, you know, sitting asleep on the stoop. with firecrackers going off. And it was all these kids setting off firecrackers because I had forgotten that it was Independence Day. And indeed, I was independent. And then I just serendipitously met him a couple of times. And one afternoon or one evening, he sort of rescued me from a difficult situation. And we started talking. And we walked around the village all night for hours talking. And Robert was on acid, but I had never even seen acid in person. I had only read about it like in Anais Nin or Henry Miller books.

17:20 I'd never seen anybody on acid. And we just talked all night. And then in the end, he said, do you have a place to stay? And I said, no. And neither did he. Because of different circumstances, neither one of us had an apartment. But he had the key to somebody else's apartment who was away. And then we went there and sat up talking. Till dawn, and then we never parted.

17:46 Until we did.

17:48 Yeah.

17:48 Well, I'd found somebody like me. Somebody who had been disenfranchised. Someone who had been sort of disowned by his father. Someone who, you know, wanted to devote himself to art. You know, the perfect boy to meet at 20 years old.

18:04 I mean, Just Kids, it's this beautiful thing about your career that you've produced these transcendent things in more than one genre. I mean... It's such a rare thing to have. I mean, I remember I didn't really know much about you until I read Just Kids. I thought it was one of the most beautiful love stories I've ever read.

18:21 Oh, thank you.

18:22 But then I realized, oh, this is written by someone who has also produced a kind of series of iconic albums as well. I mean, that kind of double threat is very impressive.

18:32 Well, it's just the way I am. I mean, believe me, when I was young, all I wanted to be was an abstract expressionist painter. I would have been happy just being like Joan Mitchell or de Kooning or somebody. And I do produce, I have produced a lot of visual work, but it's just part of me. What made it even more complicated wasn't just that I wrote poetry and then, you know, obviously I've written books and recorded. Then to throw performing into the mix, which that was just another one.

19:08 I thought, oh my gosh, just Robert always used to worry about me. He'd say, can't you just pick one? He would worry that I would spread myself too thin, but it's just part of my jumping bean personality, I suppose. But I do what calls me for different reasons.

19:27 Does it feel different to create music than to create other kinds of art?

19:33 Well, I'm not really a musician. I don't create a whole lot of music. I mean, I write little melodies. And they're often similar. It's like, left to my own devices, I would be sort of a polar music player.

19:47 Or porch song writer.

19:48 Because when I write things on my own, they're like little porch songs. And I don't really play anything except feedback and about four or five chords.

20:00 And I don't think like a musician.

20:02 I have a natural feel for melody and might sing to myself walking down the street, but I'm not. I was married to a great musician. I know I've seen how a musician's mind works, you know, and I'm more prone to language.

20:18 Yeah.

20:19 Wait, talk about this a little bit more. What exactly do you mean by the way a musician's mind works?

20:25 Well, I mean, I can't... I'm just saying that the way that I'm obsessed with writing and the way that I really have to write every day. I've written almost every day since I was a kid. And whether anyone sees it or not, I would say 70% of my writing has never been published. I am compelled to write. And... musician, at least my husband was compelled to translate his, you know, dreams, his thoughts, his vision into music.

20:59 And I don't really think like that.

21:01 Yeah.

21:02 I'm more a performer.

21:04 And people say, oh, you're too modest. You don't want to be called a musician. Well, I don't want to be called a musician because I haven't earned that. But I am a performer and I'm a strong performer and I have earned that.

21:16 And that's good enough for me.

21:19 We're going to take a quick break and then come back with more from Malcolm Gladwell and Patti Smith. We're back with more from Malcolm Gladwell's interview with Patti Smith.

21:31 Let's go back to the many lives of Patti Smith. So life number one is, as you say, that period ending in 75. Number two is what?

21:41 I would say the next stage is really, you know, going out into the world, performing. having a public life, which part of me is, you know, I'm very reclusive, not very social, and I could spend 14 hours just working on, you know, the end of chapter seven. You know, I don't crave public life, but it has called to me, you know, in the 70s, of course, until I left in 79, I became the leader of a band.

22:15 And I like that.

22:16 I like that position of being sort of having my people. My brother was the head of my crew. I had a small loyal group and seeing the world and having some effect on people, a positive effect on people, or having an effect on new artists or having an effect on the disenfranchised all over the world.

22:39 And that was meaningful.

22:41 So I would say that period, it was very demanding and very demanding on me physically. But I would say that entering public life. That took up a lot of my time until the end of the 70s, which in some ways, it had its great greatness and it had its excitement. But in terms of being a writer, it definitely interrupted my evolution and interrupted my evolution as a human being. Because the stress and the demands of a life like that, sometimes one develops a demanding habits or you know a less caring or you might be compassionate in terms of the world but in terms of interaction you know i was i had a lot of hubris and i had to as a girl uh moving through this period of time you know i had to be tough and i could be tough i could be mean

23:39 as a snake actually.

23:41 What was your first important performance as a musician.

23:45 Well, there's a lot of them, but I would say one of the most important, just in terms of comprehending where we were at, was performing in London at the Roundhouse in 76, when you go to Europe and I think, well, whoever heard of us? We didn't have social media and stuff like that. You might have your picture in some rock magazines or something. And we didn't have any hits or anything like that. It was a lot of word of mouth. And so we went to play the roundhouse.

24:18 It was so packed. And there were actually young guys coming through a hole in the roof, jumping down into the crowd to get in. And later, when I met Paul Simonon from The Clash, he told me that he was one of those kids.

24:35 Oh, really?

24:36 Yes.

24:36 Because he didn't have the money to get in. So that's how he got in.

24:40 Was that your first international tour?

24:43 Yeah, it was.

24:44 Maybe our first job was in Brussels, which was even crazier. It was just that first tour. It was just suddenly seeing that people liked our work in places we'd never been.

24:58 Brussels, Finland, you know, it was awesome.

25:02 You know, Sweden, we went to, and, you know, being from, you know, a lower middle class background, and never having any money to travel, getting to see all these places was awesome. We didn't make all that much money or anything, but we didn't care. We were getting to see the world and getting to meet new people and see, you know, what they were doing. And because I started out a little older, because I was in my, I don't know how old I was, but, you know, we had a lot of younger kids, 18, 20, who wanted to do things.

25:37 And, uh, a lot of girls checking out the situation.

25:41 And what I always told him is I had no particular gifts.

25:47 If I could do it, you could do it.

25:49 If you have a vision and if you have will and you have a benevolent vision that you want to share with people, you know, in some guts, you can do it.

25:59 I'm curious about that era in rock and roll. Is the relationship of the artist to the audience in that era, mid-70s, different than it is today?

26:11 I don't know.

26:12 Mine isn't. I can't say because I don't really go to concerts. When I was younger, I learned a lot about how to interact with the audience from Johnny Winter because I had a job sort of helping with Johnny. Johnny was completely colorblind. And when I was living at the Chelsea's, so was Johnny. And Steve Paul, his manager, actually gave me a job because I was very trustworthy. Just, you know, walking with Johnny when he had to cross a lot of streets and things because he couldn't tell the red from the green traffic lights, things like that.

26:46 I went to London once with them just to make sure Johnny was maneuvering the streets well. And so I went to a lot of his concerts. And Johnny was one of the most, in all my life, one of the most electric performers I ever saw. Just such a great singer, such a great guitar player and fearless. He was the first person I saw jump into the crowd with an electric guitar. Just so much energy and so much interaction with the people, looking them straight in the eye.

27:17 I mean, because I was like into like Bob Dylan or when I was younger, Lou Reed or the Velvet Underground. They all were really cool. You know, they didn't interact. I'm not saying that critically. I loved that, you know, but Johnny Winter was a totally different animal. And where I would have imagined I would have been more like Bob Dylan because I really modeled myself after Bob Dylan, I was really more like Johnny. I just, I don't know where it comes from, but I can be sort of like stand there like Edith Piaf and do a little song. But especially when I was young, I was an animal.

27:55 Tell me what that means.

27:56 Well, I just mean I was fearless.

27:59 I would jump off a piano. I went on my knees.

28:02 I would play like I had the loudest amplifier when we played improvisation or feedback and put my foot through an amp if I was pissed off.

28:13 I just could rip.

28:14 I had the heaviest strings on my electric guitar. I could just slide my hand and rip them out in one. I ripped a pickup out of my Duosonic once. I just had so much concentrated energy. And I'm not saying I don't have energy now, but at 75, I pace myself different. Every once in a while, though, that comes through.

28:38 She's still there. She just paces herself.

28:42 What is it? You call it energy. Is it frustration? Is it anger? Is it enthusiasm?

28:47 No, it's just pure energy.

28:49 Yeah.

28:50 Pure energy.

28:51 And that's what you saw in Johnny Winter?

28:53 Yeah.

28:54 Because it wasn't even political. I didn't really have... I mean, of course, I've always been a humanist or something, but I wasn't... What I did was only political. It was personally political. What I wanted to do was create space for new people because I perceived that.

29:15 I loved rock and roll. I loved it.

29:18 I was brought up with it, danced to it, listened to it, daydreamed to it, and... I didn't want to see it become like stadium acts, glamorous acts, all about just indulgence.

29:33 I don't know.

29:34 I didn't really like the direction it was going into. I wanted to preserve some of the... I mean, it might seem like a lot of hubris for a young girl, that, you know, but I had a lot of hubris. I mean, I could have like played Coriolanus or something. I had so much hubris, but I mean, think of like who we lost, my generation.

29:56 We lost, when I.

29:56 Was a teenager, President Kennedy got shot and then Martin Luther King, you know, then Bobby Kennedy. And then, you know, we have our musicians that we love. And then Brian Jones died and Jimi Hendrix died and Jim Morrison died and Janis Joplin died. I mean, these were like such important voices. And, you know, they were just how I imagined.

30:19 I imagined that, you know, music of the future was going to be Jimi Hendrix, Coltrane, you know, all the people that I loved. And we just lost them.

30:31 Really quickly.

30:32 Lost Coltrane early. That poetic voice that was so strong in the late 60s. And I didn't want to see it go. I didn't want to see it diffused into some other place. But, you know, also I was highly opinionated. So I was just trying to kick open doors. I only expected to do one record. You know, Clive Davis asked me to do a record. I was amazed at that. fine, I did a record and then I was just going to go back to, you know, back to the bookstore, back to writing poetry. But I did have an aim with that record was to create space for new people, for people who became Michael Stipe, you know, for whoever.

31:16 That was my goal.

31:18 So when you're on that initial tour of Europe and though, you know, the kids are climbing through the hole in the roof to get into the crowd, is that what they're, that's what they're responding to?

31:28 I didn't take it personally. Like, they were responding to me. They were responding to something new that they could do themselves or maybe eclipse.

31:38 And that's what I wanted.

31:40 I didn't want to be the king or queen or princess of anything. I just wanted to, you know, shake things up.

31:48 What were you playing in those concerts? Other than your own work, what were you playing?

31:52 Well, I mean, my own work also incorporated, you know, our version of Land of a Thousand Dances and Gloria. And just our songs, reggae songs. If I liked a certain R & B song, we'd try it. But mostly our own stuff.

32:07 Is there a difference in the way you approach covering a song versus one of your own?

32:12 It depends on the song.

32:13 Like sometimes Land of a Thousand Dances, really a catalyst for an apocalypse, you know. It was sometimes a song, because I was just starting out. We started out with piano, like Lenny K, my pianist, and I. And it was basically, we started out musically, mostly for three chord songs that I could rap over. I wasn't particularly a great singer.

32:39 I didn't know much about singing. I mean, I sang in like the school choir and stuff, but it was more a vehicle for me to improvise poetry. You know, horses grew from a lot of improvisation, like being at CBGBs and doing a 22-minute version of Land of a Thousand Dances that was a lot of poetry. And that's why I think like William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg and Gregory, they like me. They like the fusion of this energy and youth, but with a semi-sophisticated aspect, poetic aspect.

33:19 But then, you know, also.

33:21 There are certain songs that I'll just do as the song. I do it much better now because I'm a better singer than I was when I was younger. I mostly sang out of my nose when I was younger.

33:31 You know, for instance, what song?

33:33 These days we did Blame It on the Sun by Stevie Wonder. Just do a really nice, respectful version. I covered Stay, the one that Rihanna and Mickey Echo did. I love covering songs. Every once in a while, I have a disaster where I try to cover a song where I don't really have the range or the technique to do that song, but I'll get so enamored with.

34:01 A song, I'll try.

34:02 What's an example of a disaster?

34:03 Oh, the worst.

34:04 It was Rolling in the Deep. I tried doing that, and it was so bad that I just was laughing. And the people knew it was bad, and they were just saying, do it anyway. But I just loved that.

34:17 Chorus, you know. And I used to try to do.

34:21 four top songs, but I couldn't quite get like Bernadette or I'll Be There.

34:27 I'd love these great choruses.

34:30 But I've gotten better. I do a lot of Neil Young covers because I love his lyrics, but also we sing pretty much in the same key. I can keep the songs in Neil's key.

34:41 And do them.

34:42 You've never collaborated with him, have you?

34:44 No.

34:45 I mean, I've improvised on stage with them, but no, I haven't really collaborated with really anybody.

34:51 Yeah.

34:52 You mentioned Michael Stipe. You talked about that idea of creating opportunities for others. Does he fit into that?

34:58 Well, Michael Stipe, when I heard his music or saw, you know, sometimes Fred would watch MTV to see what was happening musically. And I was very taken with REM. And Fred used to tease me when, you know, because I'd be like washing dishes or something.

35:16 He'd say, Tricia, your boy's on.

35:18 And I'd come out and it would be like Michael singing Losing My Religion or something. And because I really liked his music. And when Fred died, my first Valentine's Day without Fred, the phone rang that night and this voice came over the. I don't think Michael would mind me. I think I've told this before, but it was Michael. Michael Stipe calling me from Barcelona. He was on the road and he was a bit... I think he had had a couple of drinks. And it had occurred to him, I guess he really liked me. He really liked our music. He was inspired by horses when he was younger. And it occurred to him because this is the beauty of Michael.

36:05 He's so human and has such a compassionate, empathetic sense. It occurred to him that I was recently widowed and I was going to have my first Valentine's Day without my husband, who obviously I greatly loved. So he called to wish me happy Valentine's Day. And slowly, I mean, eventually I got to meet him, saw his concerts. And when I came to New York, it was a huge challenge for me to really came financially empty-handed with my kids.

36:44 And Michael, who I was just getting to know without going into a lot of details, made it possible for me to start a new life in New York City. And we've been so close ever since. I mean, he just did that. And, of course, it inspired me to work as hard as I could to earn his trust in me and also his belief in me that I could get back on my feet and take care of myself and my family if I just had a helping hand.

37:18 Mm-hmm.

37:19 And I'm not ashamed to say that I needed one. And now we're just loving friends. It was interesting though, just by chance, I got nominated to be in the Hall of Fame like seven or eight times. And finally I did get in, I think it was 2007, the same year as Michael. And I always imagined that if I ever did, I would ask Michael to speak for me.

37:43 And Michael secretly imagined that I might speak for them But neither one of us could speak for each other because we both, we made it at the same time.

37:55 Did you play together that evening?

37:57 I'm sure we did. It's like such a blur. I mean, everybody sort of played together, but I don't remember, truthfully. What I do remember was sitting in Michael's suite. He had a beautiful suite in the hotel. I think it was the Waldorf Astoria where they used to have the ceremony.

38:15 Yeah.

38:16 He had a beautiful white suit on and I was all in black. And we went to the elevator hand in hand together. And that picture of him all in white and me all in black heading to our ceremony is still in my head.

38:32 We'll be right back with more from Patti Smith after this break. Here's the rest of Malcolm Gladwell's conversation with Patti Smith.

38:42 Let's talk about your next life. Detroit and marriage. And it seems, to an outsider, like a very dramatic change in the kind of life you were living.

38:55 Well, I mean, it was in the fact that I went from playing for 80,000 people in a stadium in Florence, which was my last job. It was just our job.

39:07 We had no open and act.

39:09 And that was my last job to living a quiet life in Detroit.

39:14 But What I've always.

39:16 Wanted more than anything else was simply to do good work, work of quality. And I could see my future. I was in Europe. I was getting quite big. I know that sounds conceited, but it's the truth. 80,000 is a lot. We were huge We were as big as the Rolling Stones in Italy, really. I mean, in terms of performing, not recording-wise. But where was that all going for me as an artist? I wasn't growing. I wasn't evolving as a human being or as an artist. I didn't really have fame and fortune goals ever. I always had a goal to do something great, which is actually takes his a little more conceited than thinking I want to be rich and famous. I just wanted to be great, do something great, to do something, you know, worthy, to do

40:11 something that will endure, to do something to add to the pantheon of all the great work that's been done. So it gave me an opportunity to really think about, you know, for 16 years, what direction do I want to go to, to develop a writer discipline, which I did, and to reacquaint myself with being a citizen and being, you know, a human being, you know, who doesn't place themselves in the center.

40:40 How old are you when you get married?

40:42 I was 33.

40:43 And where did you meet Fred?

40:46 I met him in Detroit at a job.

40:48 Yeah.

40:49 You know, we played the Ford Theater in 1976. But really, you know, I'm not comfortable with talking a lot about that period of my life. It's really private. But the thing is, I love my kids. I love Fred. We didn't have the perfect life. It wasn't like always a paradise. We had our problems. I don't mean just with each other.

41:14 I mean, we had, you know, things our own, you know, all the things that people go through. You know, sometimes it was hard. Sometimes it was financially hard because we really left everything, all of our options.

41:27 We were sort of cut off.

41:30 But I have to say they're probably the most precious years of my life. I loved Fred. I've never met anyone else like him. I love my kids. He gave me these, you know, a son and a daughter that, you know, magnify my life. And for for myself personally, I think I evolved quite a bit in that time period.

41:54 And I became a writer, not just writing poetry late at night, stoned on pot or something.

42:01 I mean, a writer. I wrote every day.

42:03 I developed, you know, a really strong work ethic, which I still have today. And because of those years, I was able to write Just Kids. That Just Kids didn't come out of anywhere. It came out of all those years of writing and rewriting and learning about writing.

42:21 What's fascinating is you go from being part of this alive, diverse, creative community in New York, the Chelsea Hotel, all those names. And then in Detroit, is there a community in Detroit like that? There isn't.

42:36 I mean, I, I didn't experience it, but Fred was like a one man community. I mean, he had, first of all, such a history. He was intelligent and beautiful and athletic and, uh, interested in so many things, political, such a good father, but he was, you know, a very private man. You know, I've always been, in my life, in my young life, I always had some person in my life that was meaningful and that I had a meaningful and fruitful relationship with. You know, it was Robert and then Sam Shepard. You know, I had other relationships that were important, but you know, it was important for me, something I always wanted as well, not just to be an artist, but to have a person in my life.

43:29 And he was the person. So, and as I said before, I have a loner aspect.

43:37 I missed, if I.

43:38 Missed anything from the two things I missed the most, I missed the camaraderie of my band. And my brother was the head of our crew. And I missed that lively relationship we had. I missed seeing him on the side of the stage watching every move. I missed him handing me my guitar. I missed the camaraderie. And I also missed having a cafe on every street. I missed New York in that way. But I came from rural South Jersey. I was the oldest of four children. Came from a very lively, chaotic household. So this was not an unfamiliar life. No, I mean, it was a life that I could adapt to. Also, I was with a fellow artist and a fellow thinker.

44:28 Well, would you say you learned how to write in those years? They turned you into a writer. Can you talk about what that meant? I mean, you were writing every.

44:37 It's just like anything else.

44:38 You know, there's that, I don't know if it's a joke or like a cliche where it says writing is 1% inspiration and 90% or whatever perspiration. Well, I learned about that 90%. I learned about the manual labor of writing. And I learned, well, it's just, it became my discipline. I got up early in the morning when everyone was sleeping.

45:02 When I had the kids, they'd be sleeping. I'd get up at five in the morning and write from five to eight every morning. And then they'd get up if, as they got older, get them ready for school. and do whatever tasks I had to do. But I always took at least three hours whenever it was to just concentrate.

45:22 And I didn't.

45:24 Have the prolific skills, you know, of other writers. I don't know how to explain it. It's just like anything else.

45:33 It's a discipline.

45:34 It's like if you start out with your muscles weak and then you start exercising or doing certain things and by, you know, after several months you crave exercise, you know, and then it becomes not so painful. It's just part of your regimen. It's just part of the work that I do. I can't really break it down. I'm just simply saying by the fact that I did it every day.

45:57 And if you want to learn to play the oboe and you're not a prodigy, you might have to work harder practicing several hours a day till you get just the hang of the read.

46:09 Would you share that writing with people? What were you doing with it?

46:13 I just did it and moved on.

46:15 I mean, I really, it's still, I have notebooks full of stuff, but it's like, I just keep going. So, you know, I imagine that one day I'd look back or I'd sit and work on it and maybe publish it. But what really happens is we really write in a certain way. It's almost organic. We write the same thing over and over in a different way. I'm also so immersed with the present and also being at my age, I finally grasped being happy with present tense that I am more immersed in the writing that I'm doing now.

46:59 I look at all these notebooks and I know that in there, there's probably some jewels, but there's probably a lot of stuff that's just really the genesis of what I'm writing now.

47:10 When do you start working on Just Kids?

47:13 Well, Robert asked me to write it the day, well, only hours before he died, which I never expected. And that was in 89.

47:24 You never expected him to ask you to write it? No. Why didn't you expect that?

47:27 Well, I don't write nonfiction. I mean, I wrote poetry and fairy tales and little stories. I mean, I'm not a nonfiction writer. I wrote a lot of pieces about Robert, about Robert's work for his catalogs and things. But what he asked me to write was our story. And our story was very specific because he used to have me tell it to him just some nights. He'd say, tell me our story. And we'd be at the Chelsea and maybe we wouldn't have enough to eat and couldn't sleep.

48:00 And he'd say, tell me our story. And so I would start, well, there was a girl. She wanted to be an artist and she came to New York City. And then I'd tell how we met and keep updating it. So I knew what he meant by our story. It was sort of a game that we played. So yeah, he said, will you write our story? And I said, do you want me to? And he said, you have to, no one else can write it. And I perceived what he wanted wasn't just for him, you know, our story or the romance of our friendship, but also the genesis of Robert as an artist. Because I knew more than anybody, I lived with them. I watched him work for 12, 13 hours sometimes on one drawing. We went through so many different, shed so many skins together that I knew

48:50 that I had the information.

48:52 I knew that I had lived it. We had lived it.

48:55 So I promised him I'd do it, really not knowing how I'd do it. I didn't have a book contract. I didn't have any connection with writing a nonfiction book. But then a series of things happened. My pianist, who I really loved, who was only 37, died suddenly of a pulmonary defect, which was terrible. When Robert died, I had just had my second child. And then my husband started being ill. And, you know, by the end of 94, my husband died. My brother died also of the same pulmonary defect as just by chance of Richard's soul. For the next years, my preoccupation was how to take care of my children. You know, I couldn't live the same way that Fred and I had lived because I don't drive.

49:54 I didn't have a support system, a big support system in Michigan. So I decided to take our children back to New York and find work. So the book was set aside. And then finally, I met an editor, Betsy Lerner, who became my, not only my best friend, but my savior at the time because she got me a really, really great contract to write the Robert book, which gave me some income. But I had so much trouble writing it.

50:31 I was still processing all the loss around me. My life had changed again. I was now performing again, but without my brother, without my pianist, and having two kids. So I was negotiating a very hard C. But eventually Betsy helped. She was my editor through that process and it took a while. So he asked me to write it in 89 and it came out 2010, which can give you some idea of what a struggle it was to write it. Also, I wanted it to be, I wanted him to be something he would have been proud of.

51:12 I wanted it to be as accurate as possible and to give people a sense not just of Robert and I, Robert's work, but the atmosphere of our time.

51:25 So there were a lot of challenges.

51:28 And emotionally difficult.

51:29 It was emotionally difficult because it's sort of like bringing Robert to life for the people was also sad. It was painful, you know, and also reverberated other losses. But I was so happy. I can't tell you how happy I was because I vowed to him I would do it. So I completed my vow. I did as I promised.

51:52 And once again, it's just, you know, when we did Horses, I just thought, well, we'll do a record and some, I was hoping like, you know, a small disenfranchised group of people would like it, you know, would dig it, you know, and that would be it. And with this book also, I thought, well, a certain group of people will like it, but that's okay.

52:12 I've done it.

52:13 I've done my best, but somehow I don't really to this day understand, but I mean, it won a National Book Award and it's sold over well over a million copies globally. It's in 43 languages. And to this date, the most successful thing I ever did. I mean, I've never even had a gold record. Even horses didn't go gold.

52:36 I don't have one gold record. And I'm not complaining about that. I'm just simply, in comparison, Just Kids eclipsed in terms of I don't know how other way to say it, but success in that kind of success, it eclipsed everything.

52:52 Else I did.

52:54 It's a masterpiece.

52:55 Oh, thanks.

52:58 You know what?

52:58 Johnny Depp was my first reader. And I actually was staying. I was struggling with the end of it so much. And I just needed to get away. And he has a compound in the south of France. So.

53:14 He let me come to.

53:15 The compound and they have, he and Vanessa had renovated a little chapel into a guest house. And he, you know, I stayed there until I finished it. And every day he would just even, he'd bring me like, because they had a cook there, bring me a little tray of food and leave it outside. And finally I finished it and I came out.

53:39 How long were you there?

53:41 I don't know, a month. I don't know. I actually, I don't remember. Yeah.

53:45 But when I finished it and then I called in all of my changes or any, you know, I went through the whole thing.

53:55 It was done.

53:56 It was absolutely done. And I had my manuscript, you know, with all these, all the little changes and stuff. And he came to the door and I gave it to him and I said, it's done. And he was the first, other than Betsy or the publisher, the first person to read it. And then he disappeared for like 30 hours or something. And then he came back, he knocked on the door and I opened it and he said, it's a fucking masterpiece.

54:26 And I was like, oh my God.

54:29 And I only mentioned that because you said that, you know, I'm not bragging or anything, but he said that. And he like meant it with all his heart. And I thought, well, I don't know who's going to like this book, but Johnny likes it. And he's well-read, you know, so.

54:44 You know, it's funny because a book like yourself has many different lives. You know, it's simultaneously a love story, but it's also this picture of New York. It's the best picture of 70s New York that I've ever read. If you had no interest in the love story part or no interest in you or Robert Mapplethorpe, You could still read it and think it's a masterpiece.

55:10 Oh, that's so nice.

55:11 But it goes back to a question I asked at the very beginning is that always in New York, the weird thing about New York is the people who see it most clearly and beautifully and live it most are the outsiders, the ones who didn't come to New York.

55:26 That's interesting that you should say that. And I think perhaps it's because for myself, but I think I could see that like, even in the people that really struggled back then, you know, I would see like Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis and all these different artists that came from all different places. For myself, it was gratitude because I was, you know, where I came from in South Jersey, there was no real culture there, not even a good library.

55:56 No cafe, no bookstore.

55:58 There was, you know, you went to Philadelphia, you could get on a bus and go to Philadelphia for culture. But day to day, and also because I was a different kind of, I was sort of a bohemian kid.

56:12 And, you know, I was, looked different.

56:14 You know, I grew up when, you know, people tease their hair into beehives and, you know, wore a lot of makeup. And there was a certain look to the late 50s, early 60s, mid 60s. But I was, mentally, I was not from my own culture. I loved the people that I grew up with. They were awesome, and there were great things about where I came from, and I think about it very nostalgically. But culturally, there was nothing, and there was no work and no real culture and not a lot of people of a like.

56:50 Mind, no real community.

56:53 And going to New York and sitting in the East Village for a couple of nights with no work, just literally roaming around looking for work, falling asleep on stoops, waking up, watching all these people, all the, these people that were so, you know, they all look like they were, um, they could have been in, uh, Sergeant Pepper on the cover of Sergeant Pepper, you know, wearing tie dye or bell bottoms and people were smoking pot and books everywhere and reading Allen Ginsberg and playing Ornette Coleman, you know, it's just, uh, you know, and here in like, uh, Jefferson airplane, like in boom boxes or it was just, uh, it was such a swirl for a person like me to enter. And so many great things happened to me

57:39 in New York. You know, nothing really bad happened to me in New York. Bad things happened to people I knew. But for me, it was just, I met so many great people. I met great teachers, great artists, and poets. I mean, not that I got friends with them, but I mean, I got to shake hands with Auden.

58:00 You know, it's just like you never knew New York City. All these people were just there.

58:04 There wasn't people, paparazzis and people asking for cell phone pictures. I remember one day I went to the, I was given out flyers or something on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And then I was walking down Fifth Avenue. Coming up this way was Lee Razuel, Jacqueline Onassis, and Nourieff. Walking together, just talking. And I was like, oh, my God. And you just pass them by and think, wow, that was cool, you know. When I worked at Scribner's, I used to wait on Katharine Hepburn. I waited on Elizabeth Taylor and.

58:42 Richard Burton, you know.

58:44 It's just these, all these people, and it was, but there was nobody running around and grabbing at them and taking their picture. It was just, New York was a pretty cool place, you know. And nobody asked for it. It was just considered uncool. Just considered uncool. You just didn't do that. You see Paul McCartney sitting in a barstool.

59:06 You just didn't bug him. You just didn't do that. You know, it's a whole different world now. But the fact that, you know, you could get apartments so cheap, you could get a job, you could meet like... like-minded people. I have a lot of gratitude for that period. I have a lot of gratitude for the city in general, for the climate in general, for the community in general.

59:32 There was a lot of rough spots, believe me.

59:34 But the overall... opportunity I'm very grateful for. And I think when you have gratitude, you're going to look at things different.

59:45 We have a little time left. Talk a little bit about what you're up to now. There's like, there's Patti Smith in my inbox. You're in my life now. Tell me a little about this. It's very exciting.

59:57 Well, during the pandemic, March 9th, we played the Fillmore West. We did two nights at the Fillmore. Then we headed to Seattle to do another show. And then we were about to embark on a world tour. I wanted to do a world tour because I, at that point I was like 72 or whatever three. And I felt it was important to, while I still had good voice and a lot of energy to do at least one more fairly big tour. And it was really a world tour. Well, we flew to Seattle and then I woke up in the morning and, and, uh, I put on the news, and it was the mayor of Seattle or the governor, and he was telling how they were going to go into lockdown. He said, the sold-out show at State Theater, Patti Smith and her band, is canceled.

1:00:51 And I was like, what?

1:00:53 I mean, I didn't know what was really going on. I knew something. I knew the aura of things. And so then we left and we went home. And I thought, okay, we have to be in quarantine for 14 days. We have jobs coming up at the end of March and then we were going to Australia, but I thought it would be okay. Never dreaming that I wouldn't be leaving my house for almost two years, hardly.

1:01:17 And that's what happened.

1:01:19 So because I was, you know, I was 73 and I have a bronchial condition, I was deemed a high risk. So I'd obviously be really careful. New York City, really, I mean, the amount of illness and death was like a real thing. And of course, I understand the nature of pandemics. I had studied the Spanish flu epidemic. I was quarantined as a child with a bird flu and tuberculosis.

1:01:50 And so I knew a lot about quarantines, what it all meant, but I still never imagined it was going to go on for so long. And I'm a restless person. I like movement. I had my little suitcase packed to go away for a year, practically. And it was a little hard for me to settle down.

1:02:13 So I just started writing, as usual. I just wrote every day.

1:02:18 And I was approached by someone through Betsy from Substack, which is a subscription-based service. And I thought this was interesting because I had been writing this diary, sort of a pandemic diary, but I envisioned it to go to some other places, to move into some parallel worlds, and I was interested to see where it would go. And the idea of doing something episodic I thought was really cool, you know, because like Arthur Conan Doyle and, of course, Dickens and then Louisa May Alcott, even Jo March, her character– They did things episodically, and that's how they were paid, by the word back then.

1:03:08 And I thought it.

1:03:09 Would be real interesting, and, well, it would be a challenge to be able to deliver things weekly because I had been used to being on the road and getting more sporadic as a writer. So I accepted that challenge, and I found it took me a little while to figure out what to give the people and what they liked.

1:03:32 But I've been there almost a year and I actually love it. And it is growing in terms of what I can offer the people because I can do little videos live in time, just talk to the people or read them a poem. I can do any kind of audio I want, send them stories, send them pictures, read their comments.

1:03:56 And that's what I do.

1:03:56 I mean, I'm I'm developing it as we go along, and I'm letting the people at this point help me.

1:04:04 Sort of guide me as to where I should go.

1:04:08 So the melting is my favorite part, although it's not necessarily the most popular part, but it's my favorite because it's such an interesting challenge. And I love to read the people's comments. Because even if you have only 50 comments or maybe 90 or maybe 30, when you write a book or you put out a book, you might get reviewed a couple of times or maybe somebody on the street tells you they like it or you can look at the sales. But you're not really hearing any kind of real intellectual feedback. And I love the comments that people write. Sometimes the comments are more poetic than the post I've done. And sometimes they're really interesting or they really display a real understanding of what I'm doing

1:05:00 because sometimes I'm attempting something a bit abstract and they're very accepting because it's really like at this point of my melting, it's regressional right now and I'm writing it in time and I don't really know what I'm going to write each week. And so it's sort of like, not like a drug, but it's, it can move into a hallucinatory places and the people there, even if it's a small amount, they're into it. And that's really inspiring, you know, and it just like yesterday I was supposed to do the melting, but it was my wedding anniversary. Truthfully, I was, sometimes I get a little sad. I really miss Fred. So I did a little post for Fred yesterday. And, uh, so the mountains a day late, but it was really, uh,

1:05:50 A lifesaver for me. I mean, it was a nice thing to have a job, you know, because I lost all of our work, which having a job helps me help others. But it wasn't just that, like to have any financial reward. It was being in lockdown, not seeing anybody, not going anywhere, and having some kind of feedback, creating for people and hearing from them. That was really good.

1:06:19 I love my sub stack. I'm still developing it. And I think that I've gleaned that people really like knowing about music. So when the melting's over, what would I do? Maybe take song after song, you know, post a song, sing it to the people, tell them the story of how the song was written. There's so many different things that I can do if that's what the people like.

1:06:43 And I also have my Instagram, which I also like. And they're my two social things.

1:06:50 The latest iteration in the many lives of.

1:06:53 Yeah, well, you know, I never, you know, I don't really, it took me long enough just to get a cell phone and then I wasn't engaging in any social media, but my daughter really suggested that I should have an Instagram and set it up for me.

1:07:08 And it's so easy to do.

1:07:10 And I really like it because I can suggest books or there's a lot of different things I can do in that small You know, it's just this little thing. You know, you put a picture and say a few words, but you can bring people a movie they never saw or remembering a certain person on their birthday.

1:07:30 And I like that.

1:07:31 Yeah.

1:07:32 Patty, I think I've occupied you for long enough. Thank you.

1:07:36 I haven't done a whole lot of interviews in the past couple years. And then I found the few that I've done. I tend to, like, I'm just talking away.

1:07:45 No, this is fantastic. It was fantastic. And such an honor, by the way, since I'm such a fan of yours.

1:07:50 That was so nice what you said about the book.

1:07:53 I was the equivalent when I read that book of the guys falling from the ceiling.

1:07:57 Oh.

1:07:58 Thank you, Patti. This has been great. I really appreciate it.

1:08:01 Good. Thanks to Patti Smith for sharing her inspiration and story with Malcolm. You can hear her new album and all of our favorite Patti Smith songs on a playlist at BrokenRecordPodcast.com. And be sure to check out her sub stack at pattysmith.substack.com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash broken record podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken record. Broken record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Ben Talladay, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Mia Lobel. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and others

1:08:46 from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad-free listening for $ 4. 99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast Subscriptions. And if you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app.

1:09:05 For Theme Music by Kenny Beats, I'm Justin Richman.