“Would it be a Patti Smith album without bullshit?” asked Robert Christgau following the release of one of her many albums. And he likes her. Me, I’ve mainly disliked her for years. Her 1975 debut is undeniably brilliant, but only to the extent that you can mentally filter out her “poetry,” because exactly 62 percent of the verse in Horses is pure horseshit. Her next three albums had their share of great songs as well, but only reinforced Smith’s delusional image of herself as the second coming of the famed French poète maudit Arthur Rimbaud, as well as the Official poet-prophet of boho NYC. I say delusional because even the most cursory reading of her lyric sheets reveals she’s neither a good poet nor a visionary. At her best she’s a poetaster and a second-rate Jim Morrison.
What irks me even more about Smith is she has somehow managed to convince ostensibly intelligent people (including the French Ministry of Culture, which named her a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in July 2005) that she’s a sort of shamanistic priestess, when in fact, as John Strausbaugh notes rather cruelly but accurately in his 2001 book Rock Til You Drop, she is “one of the least talented posers in rock… Jim Carroll with breasts, Lydia Lunch with anorexia, the Madonna of punk rock: everything bad and pretentious about the union of punk and poetry in one self-conscious package.” She was only a punk poet priestess to the extent that she lacked a sense of humor (priestesses take everything, especially themselves, far too seriously to laugh), which even pseudo-acolyte Bobby Christgau conceded when he wrote she “always took herself too seriously” and “Good thing she’s a little nuts, because funny’s beyond or beneath her.”
In short, Smith put one brilliant album and three more-than-decent ones while being utterly humorless, totally pretentious, and the worst rock poet (because she takes herself more seriously) since Bernie Taupin. Except Taupin would never unleash a line as bad as “Wisdom was a teapot/Pouring from above” on a defenseless world, or for that matter the fecal mysticism of “The transformation of waste is perhaps the oldest pre-occupation of man/Man being the chosen alloy/He must be reconnected via shit, at all cost.” I don’t quite know what she’s getting at with that mini-lecture, but if it’s really true that shit must be transformed, I humbly suggest we start with her poetry.
Oh, I know: The People love her because she’s passionate, positive, and inspirational, and who am I to argue with The People? I’ll tell you who I am. I am a person with a low tolerance for highbrow theatrics of the sort that have always defined Smith. I can’t prove it, but I’m convinced she got the idea of self-exiling herself to Detroit from her hero Arthur Rimbaud, who quit poetry at the ripe old age of 21, then up and moved to Abyssinia (present day Ethiopia) to make his fortune. Unfortunately, unlike Rimbaud, Smith came back. And not only did she bring her bad poetry with her, said bad poetry now had the ring of idealistic hippie bullshit to it. Most people think of Detroit as an urban Hell on Earth, but Smith left the Motor City more positive than when she arrived. I’m no psychiatrist, but that seems to me to be the symptom of someone who is dangerously out of touch with reality.
And so she demonstrated with 1988’s Dream of Life, her first LP since 1979’s Wave. It included such inanely idealistic bromides as “People Have the Power,” which sounds like a Bruce Springsteen song and stands out as a piece of delusional thinking right up there with those nuts who think mankind is actually capable of improvement. That said it also included “Up There, Down There,” which despite its jibber-jabber about it being “the time for communion” actually includes the only known humorous lines ever penned by Smith, to wit, “Cats like us are obsolete/Hey man don’t breathe on my feet.”
Seeing as how I find Smith’s poetic babble a fatal impediment to my full enjoyment of her music, I took hope when in 2007 she released Twelve, an album of covers by other artists. At long last, I thought; a Patti Smith unencumbered by her own lousy poesy! No more Seeress of New Jersey! Say bye bye to the High Priestess of the silver swan and the sea of possibilities! No more dancing barefoot on the grave of Arthur Rimbaud!
Alas, I knew I was in trouble when I saw the album’s songs. Twelve consists almost entirely of old, shop-worn relics long in the tooth, and led me to wonder whether she’d listened to anything since the eighties, with the exception of Nirvana. “White Rabbit”? Really? “Helpless”? Are you kidding? “Gimme Shelter”? Aw, c’mon. Couldn’t she have unearthed a song that doesn’t require a walker? Was Smith trapped in a time warp like that kid stuck in a bubble that Paul Simon sings about in “The Boy in the Bubble,” which song Smith also covers? Then again it’s Smith’s album, and she was under no obligation to cover interesting obscurities, or well-known songs that haven’t been played to death on the radio, or (best yet!) terrible songs that she could bring to life with her formidable shamanistic capacities.
If you’re going to do a cover, you have two options: stay true to the original, or weird it all up until it’s practically unrecognizable. Smith, with the help of her band (Lenny Kaye on guitar and pedal steel; Jay Dee Daugherty on drums, organ, and harmonica; Oliver Ray on guitar; and Tony Shanahan on bass and piano) does both.
Take “Gimme Shelter.” It’s more or less a straight up cover and I love the music—Kaye plays great guitar—but not so much Smith’s voice, although she kinda reminds me a little of Jim Dandy Mangrum (no I’m not kidding) when she gets worked up. Pity the song is so elderly it qualifies for Medicare. “Midnight Rider” is also played straight up, although it’s a poor choice of cover in my opinion. Remarkably, the band manages to pull off that Southern blues feel, right down to Kaye’s cool pedal steel solo. The problem is Smith’s vocals, which are wooden and stilted. The years haven’t been kind to Smith’s voice, as is also demonstrated in the band’s faithful cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise,” where she sounds rough. And the band’s music on Wonder’s tune doesn’t do much for me either. Hell, come to think of it I don’t even like the original, although it’s obvious Smith picked it because it’s a not-very-interesting and meaningless in terms of actually bringing about change protest song of the sort she likes to write.
“Helpless” opens with an acoustic guitar and is pretty and slow, and Smith’s vocals are quiet and right on target, and this is the way a faithful cover should work: it sticks to the original, but throws something into the mix that wasn’t there before. I could whine that she’d have been better off picking one of Neil Young’s lesser-known works, say “Revolution Blues” which would have been right up her alley, but like I said it’s her LP. I also like Smith’s take on “Soul Kitchen,” which is slow and funky and features some cool organ and drumming by Daugherty. It’s only downside is that Kaye’s guitar solo is, er, kinda lame. What really makes it is Smith, who proves she can still sound sultry when she wants.
Smith’s take on “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” features a big commercial beat and Smith doing her best Madonna imitation like she wants a Top 40 hit, not that there’s anything wrong with that. There’s a nice instrumental interlude that leads to a brief but cool guitar solo by Kaye, and to sum up Smith couldn’t play it any straighter, and it works. “White Rabbit” opens with a monologue by Smith backed by weird instrumentation, before those trademark drums come in and Smith commences singing. The backing is great, with Kaye playing heavily distorted guitar and all kinds of sound effects contributing to the feeling that you’re tripping balls, man. The ending—with Smith repeating those famous words “Feed Your Head” while Kay goes wild—is especially effective. Smith’s take on Dylan’s “Changing of the Guard” also works. It moves along at the perfect pace; Smith’s vocals are excellent; and thanks to its fetching melody this is the catchiest song on the LP by far, and probably the only one I’ll ever be tempted to listen to again.
Smith’s cover of Paul Simon’s “The Boy in the Bubble” combines some very cool guitar work and very big drum thump, and while I don’t think it measures up to the original, Kaye’s guitar work alone makes it worth listening to, while Smith does an adequate job on the vocals, and even better than that when she speaks some lines near the song’s midsection. My biggest sticking point is the chorus, which isn’t nearly as melodic and catchy as on Simon’s version. “Within You Without You” opens with some most excellent guitar work and drum shuffle, and Smith does a great job on vocals. The original’s Middle Eastern flavor isn’t introduced until about halfway through the song, but I was glad to hear it because it makes me feel stoned even when I’m not. As for Smith, her vocals are shockingly restrained; this tune gave her the perfect opportunity to go seer on our asses, but she opted not to go there, and I’m forever grateful.
Smith’s take on R.E.M. pal Michael Stipe’s “Everybody Hurts” starts quietly, with an understated organ riff and some basic (but excellent) drums, then builds to a crescendo featuring some wonderful Kaye freak-out guitar only to return to quietude. It then works its way back to a big and long denouement, with Kaye really going to town. Smith’s vocals on this one sound more like the early Smith than any of the other songs on the LP; time may have blunted the sharper edges of her vocals, but she can still sound impassioned when she wants. When it comes to radically reinventing an original, it’s hard to top Smith’s take on Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced?” It starts very slowly, with Smith more or less talking the lyrics, then Kaye comes in with some psychedelic guitar. I’m not thrilled by Smith’s extemporaneous “Well let me prove it to ya,” but her doubling and tripling of her vocals is cool, and her “Well, I have” is great.
Which leaves us with “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which I both like and dislike. Slowing it down and doing it with banjo (thanks to one John Cohen) and cello (by Giovanna Sollima) and other acoustic instruments gives it a unique feel, although it also underscores the relative inanity of Kurt Cobain’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics. But Smith is in great voice, and the song builds and builds to a great climax. The only problem I have with it is Smith’s trance-like monologue in the middle, which has (so far as I can tell) shit-all to do with Cobain or Cobain’s song and everything to do with Smith the prophetess and poet needing to inject some of her visionary skills into a song where they simply don’t fit. The song is personal and her rant political, and never the twain shall meet. As for the rant it’s Smith at her poetic worst, with lines like “The empty hand of innocence/Transfusing street of the sorrows/And children of the wood/Hounded, shredding all veils/And winding all sheets of the dead world droning.” I defy anyone to tell me what that means, and the first person to tell me it’s “symbolist” poetry and hence needn’t mean anything is asking for a good ass-whupping, because I’ve read Rimbaud and his verse, while difficult, is anything but what Smith produces, namely lots of portentous-sounding but meaningless hoo-hah.
What can I say in conclusion? Just this: I think Smith comes out of Twelve looking pretty good, even if her choice of tunes is uninspired, as are a few of the performances. Smith is an institution, like the CIA, necessary perhaps but not to this critic. Call me a cynic, but I find her trances and seer-like moments and symbolist poetic blather a shtick, in so far as I personally know a handful of poets who could write her under the table but simply lack the ambition Smith had to climb the career ladder. Besides, I distrust prophets and think if you turn a shaman upside down and shake hard enough large sums of money will fall out of his or her pockets.
What Smith is, no more or less, is a rock star, and an overrated one in my opinion. She is certainly no Dylan replacement, although I suspect she thinks of herself as such. She’s simply a word-slinger who hit the scene at precisely the right moment, and gave people who don’t read or even like poetry their very own private poet. Which is okay; people need poetry in their lives. Still, I can’t help but wish that her “retirement” had been permanent, a la Rimbaud. She’d have left the world as a mystery, as did Rimbaud, rather than as the most profligate flinger of poetic bullshit of her generation, or anybody’s generation for that matter.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B-
