FEATURE:
A Buyer’s Guide
IN THIS PHOTO: Patti Smith in 1976/PHOTO CREDIT: Lynn Goldsmith
Part Twelve: Patti Smith
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IN this edition of…
PHOTO CREDIT: Steven Sebring
A Buyer’s Guide, I am recommending the essential albums of one of music’s greatest songwriters, Patti Smith. Nearly forty-five years since the release of her debut album, Horses, she has produced some of the greatest work the world has ever seen and, as her eleventh studio album, Banga, was released in 2012, I wonder whether we will see another album from the iconic Smith. I really love her albums, and there are some that are definitely underrated and warrant fonder appreciation. We are very lucky to have an artist like Patti Smith and, if you are a little new to her work, I hope the recommendations below help out. Have a look and I am sure you will become closer acquainted with…
A staggering artist.
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The Four Essential Album
Horses
Release Date: 10th November, 1975
Label: Aritsa
Producer: John Cale
Standout Tracks: Redondo Beach/Free Money/Land (Part I: Horses; Part II: Land of a Thousand Dances; Part III: La Mer(de)
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Patti-Smith-Horses/master/40109
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4AEKf48nR2rvEt4I5HBuUP
Review:
“It isn't hard to make the case for Patti Smith as a punk rock progenitor based on her debut album, which anticipated the new wave by a year or so: the simple, crudely played rock & roll, featuring Lenny Kaye's rudimentary guitar work, the anarchic spirit of Smith's vocals, and the emotional and imaginative nature of her lyrics -- all prefigure the coming movement as it evolved on both sides of the Atlantic. Smith is a rock critic's dream, a poet as steeped in '60s garage rock as she is in French Symbolism; "Land" carries on from the Doors' "The End," marking her as a successor to Jim Morrison, while the borrowed choruses of "Gloria" and "Land of a Thousand Dances" are more in tune with the era of sampling than they were in the '70s. Producer John Cale respected Smith's primitivism in a way that later producers did not, and the loose, improvisatory song structures worked with her free verse to create something like a new spoken word/musical art form: Horses was a hybrid, the sound of a post-Beat poet, as she put it, "dancing around to the simple rock & roll song” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Gloria
Easter
Release Date: 3rd March, 1978
Label: Arista
Producer: Jimmy Iovine
Standout Tracks: Till Victory/Privilege (Set Me Free)/High on Rebellion
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Patti-Smith-Group-Easter/master/40121
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1p6cWoueuunhpgy6131zAd
Review:
“But Smith’s version of “Because the Night” was an absolute monster of a hit. What she forged lyrically out of Springsteen’s unfinished, unwanted demo was an anthem of frank and unapologetic desire. In 1978, a woman wasn’t allowed to be an overtly sexual being in public unless she met the standards of the male gaze; if she did, there were always repercussions, and there would be constant attempts to diminish her power and/or her legitimacy. The fact that it went to No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was on every FM radio station, especially the ones who never played her before, was righteousness incarnate, as would be Easter’s eventual ascension to #20 on the Billboard 200.
The other love songs may not be as legendary as “Because the Night,” but their complexity is vital to the story being told on the album. The first line of “We Three”—“Every Sunday I would go down to the bar where he played guitar”—speaks absolute volumes. It is Smith’s history, it is rock’n’roll history, it is a quiet sentence whispered with a veneer of the innocence of early love, then immediately contrasted with a torch ballad, decisive and resolute, the expression of unresolved ardor, the saga of her relationships with Tom Verlaine and Allen Lanier. It’s not tragic so much tinged with the sadness of resignation, but it’s not the type of love song women had been writing” – Pitchfork
Choice Cut: Because the Night
Gone Again
Release Date: 18th June, 1996
Label: Arista
Producers: Malcolm Burn/Lenny Kaye
Standout Tracks: About a Boy/Summer Cannibals/Wicked Messenger
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Patti-Smith-Gone-Again/master/115513
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/70BHwvG9ikXsffsWfHrWzi
Review:
“The Smith who returns on Gone Again after another prolonged absence is a changed woman once more. In the past seven years, a devastating number of her family and friends have died, including husband Fred ”Sonic” Smith, a brother, a former band mate, and her most celebrated intimate, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Gone Again is, not surprisingly, an album that dwells on loss. ”I don’t know why/But when it rains/It rains on me,” she sings in ”Farewell Reel,” one of several songs about her husband. She even mourns Kurt Cobain (yes, another Cobain tribute song) in the elliptical ”About a Boy,” which builds to a feedback-grating mantra, rekindling memories of Smith’s boho-outta-control work on bristling records like Easter. In each case, death is treated less as a horror than as an escape to a better, more serene place.
As insensitive as it might be to say, the succession of tragedies has lent a much-needed focus (and terseness) to Smith’s work. Death becomes her — and not merely in her lyrics. Reunited with guitarist and longtime coproducer Lenny Kaye (whose absence was felt on Dream of Life), Smith has set most of the songs to plaintive arrangements that resemble nothing so much as contemporary variations on Appalachian death ballads. Songs are structured with the roundelay melodies of folk songs, and Smith’s voice has the throaty cragginess of a woman coal miner. She sounds and looks like an extra in a John Sayles movie. The album’s second half — heavy on stark, strummed ballads like ”Wing” and ”Ravens,” which both employ images of flying above the sorrow — is particularly powerful. ”Dead to the World” even finds her having a little fun with the Grim Reaper by adopting a hillbilly twang” – Entertainment Weekly
Choice Cut: Gone Again
Trampin’
Release Date: 27th April, 2004
Label: Columbia
Producer: Patti Smith
Standout Tracks: Stride of the Mind/My Blakean Year/Radio Baghdad
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Patti-Smith-Trampin/master/181779
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6Ks8jCJfXjZETFYBzHS2eb?nAi=
Review:
“A lot of this is due to Smith's current band. Now also approaching their third decade as her sidemen, old hands like Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty along with second guitarist Oliver Ray (Smith's partner) provide a bedrock that's equal parts garage and tight professionalism. Not only is the playing accomplished, but Smith's vocals haven't lost the ability to glide between ballad and rant with ease. This adds a humanity that stops a song like the opener, ''Jubilee'' ('We will never fade away. Doves shall multiply. Yet I see hawks circling the sky, Scattering our glad day') becoming too anthemic. Yet she's still able to do the extended stream of invective stuff on ''Gandhi'' (a rather simplistic take on the man of peace) and ''Radio Baghdad''. The latter is a chilling, 12 minute condemnation of US foreign policy that focuses on the cultural heritage being tramped (ho ho) all over by Bush and his ilk. It also contains the sounds of Iraqi children at play.
But, for someone who's made her reputation as a somewhat scary, hard-hitting advocate of individual freedom and a woman's place in the phallocentric world of rock, this album drips with a sensitivity that makes all the worthiness infinitely more palatable. ''Mother Rose'' and ''Peaceable Kingdom'' (an optimistic song of solace for a country still traumatised by the loss of the twin towers) both beguile as much as move, and the title track's touching combination of Smith and her daughter on piano reminds us of her unquenchable belief in the human spirit over tyranny. In an age of apathy and irony Smith still wants to give power to the people -and that in itself is a reason to love this album...” – BBC
Choice Cut: Jubilee
The Underrated Gem
Dream of Life
Release Date: June 1988
Label: Arista
Producers: Fred Smith/Jimmy Iovine
Standout Tracks: Up There Down There/Dream of Life/Looking for You (I Was)
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Patti-Smith-Dream-Of-Life/master/40263
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/3TxNFi3uBnjDBFlfnbmIPe
Review:
“The big difference between Patti Smith's four 1970s albums and this return to action after nine years lies in the choice of collaborator. Where Smith's main associate earlier had been Lenny Kaye, a deliberately simple guitarist, here her co-writer and co-producer (with Jimmy Iovine) was her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith, formerly of the MC5, who played guitar with a conventional rock competence and who lent his talents to each of the tracks, giving them a mainstream flavor. In a sense, however, these polished love songs, lullabies, and political statements are not to be compared to the poetic ramblings of Smith's first decade of music-making -- she's so much...calmer this time out. But you can't help it. Where the Patti Smith of Horses inspired a generation of female rockers, the Patti Smith of Dream of Life sounds like she's been listening to later Pretenders albums and taking tips from Chrissie Hynde, one of her spiritual daughters. Dream of Life is the record of someone who is simply showing the flag, trying to keep her hand in, rather than announcing her comeback. Not surprisingly, having made it, Smith retreated from the public eye again until the '90s” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: People Have the Power
The Latest/Final Album
Banga
Release Date: 1st June, 2012
Label: Columbia
Producers: Patti Smith/Tony Shanahan/Jay Dee Daugherty/Lenny Kaye
Standout Tracks: Amerigo/Banga/After the Gold Rush
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Patti-Smith-Banga/master/443906
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/00w8oLfAbJhENcGgkEhCOt
Review:
“Patti Smith has returned to the poetic-punk format of 1975's Horses, which the Polar prize committee recently described as "Rimbaud with amps". Four of Horses' personnel – Smith, guitarist Lenny Kaye, drummer Jay Dee Daugherty and Television' Tom Verlaine – are present here. It's a mixture of pop songs and poetic explorations, aided by the instantly resumed chemistry between Kaye's shimmering hooks and Smith's sensual vocals. While she has never sung better, the pop songs hit home first: the dreamy Amerigo, the reflective Maria and sublime April Fool, a headrushing tale of outlaw lovers who "race through alleyways in our tattered coats". The more esoteric monologues demand – and reward – perseverance, especially the 10-minute Constantine's Dream, a passionate defence of her other great love, art, complete with fantasy sequences set in the Garden of Eden. The collision of sound and language is exhilarating; if it is also occasionally impenetrable, that's down to her death-or-glory manifesto to "let me die on the back of adventure, with a brush” – The Guardian
Choice Cut: April Fool
The Patti Smith Book
Year of the Monkey
Author: Patti Smith
Publication Date: 1st September, 2020
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Synopsis:
“A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids 'Magical' GUARDIAN 'A gripping tale of the search for meaning in times of turbulence - expressed with Smith's signature poetic flair' VOGUE 'Extraordinary ... A tense, teasing mix of reality and dream' Sunday Times 'A melancholy mood and poetic language distinguish Smith's third memoir' BBC 'Her willingness to look closely at life's closing chapters makes for a magical book' WASHINGTON POST, 'The 10 books to read in September' Following a run of New Year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, with no design yet heeding signs, including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger's words, "Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the monkey." For Patti Smith - inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life's gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Smith melds the Western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from Southern California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places - this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment. But as Patti Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope of a better world. Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith's signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times” – Waterstones
Pre-order: https://www.waterstones.com/book/year-of-the-monkey/patti-smith/9781526614766