INTERVIEW BY DAVID FRICKE
THE ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW  | JULY 11, 1996

DAVID FRICKE: As far as your fans and the music business were concerned, you literally disappeared during the 1980s. How did you and Fred spend those missing years?
PATTI SMITH: That was a great period for me. Until [her son] Jackson had to go to school, Fred and I spent a lot of time traveling through America, living in cheap motels by the sea. We’d get a little motel with a kitchenette, get a monthly rate. Fred would find a little airport and get pilot lessons. He studied aviation; I’d write and take care of Jackson. I had a typewriter and a couple of books. It was a simple, nomadic, sparse life.

FRICKE: How did you meet [your husband] Fred?
SMITH: It was March 9th, 1976. The band was in Detroit for the first time. Arista Records had a little party for us at one of those hot-dog places. I’m not one much for parties, so I wanted to get out of there. I was going out the back door—there was a white radiator, I remember. I was standing there with Lenny [Kaye, Patti Smith Group guitarist]; I happened to look up, and this guy is standing there as I was leaving. Lenny introduced me to him: “This is Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, the legendary guitar player for the MC5,” and that was it. Changed my life.

FRICKE: Was there a period of adjustment for you, going from rock & roll stardom to almost complete anonymity?
SMITH: Only in terms of missing the camaraderie of my band. And I certainly missed New York City. I missed the bookstores; I missed the warmth of the city. I’ve always found New York City extremely warm and loving.

But I was actually living a beautiful life. I often spent my days with my notebooks, watching Jackson gather shells or make a sand castle. Then we’d come back to the motel. Jackson would be asleep, and Fred and I would talk about how things went with his piloting and what I was working on.

Because people don’t see you or see what you’re doing doesn’t mean you don’t exist. When [photographer] Robert [Mapplethorpe] and I spent the end of the Sixties in Brooklyn working on our art and poetry, no one knew who we were. Nobody knew our names. But we worked like demons. And no one really cared about Fred and I during the Eighties. But our self-concept had to come from the work we were doing, from our communication, not from outside sources.

FRICKE: What did you live on financially?
SMITH: We had some money, some royalties. We experienced difficult times. Sometimes we’d have windfalls—Bruce Springsteen recorded “Because the Night” [on Live, 1975-1985]. I might complain about that song because I get sick of it [laughs], but I’ve been really grateful for it. That song has bailed us out a few times. [The MC5’s] “Kick Out the Jams” bailed us out, too.

But we’e learned to live really frugally. And when we could no longer live like that, we did Dream of Life. That’s why we were getting ready to record the summer before Fred died—it was time to finance out next few years.

FRICKE: You also pay tribute to Kurt Cobain in “About a Boy.” What was it about his life and music that touched you?
SMITH: When Nirvana came out, I was really excited. Not so much for myself—my time had passed for putting so much passion into music and pinning my faith on a band. I’d had the Rolling Stones. I was happy for the kids to have [Nirvana]. I didn’t know anything about his torments or personal life. I saw the work and the energy, and I was excited by that. So it was a tremendous shock—quite a blow to me—when he died. I remember being upstairs taking care of the kids. I came down, and Fred told me to sit down at the table. When he did it a certain way, I knew it was serious. He sat me down and said, “Your boy is dead.” And when he told me how . . .That day, we went to a record store for something, some Beethoven thing Fred wanted. And I remember kids were outside crying. They didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves. I felt a little like Captain Picard: I couldn’t mess with the Prime Directive. It was not my place to say anything. These kids didn’t know anything about me. But I really wanted to comfort them, tell them it was all right, that was his choice. I started writing “About a Boy” right after that.

FRICKE: What did you want to say in the song about his choice?
SMITH: He had the song “About a Girl,” and I got the title from that. Initially I had two parallel things I wanted to express in the double meaning of the chorus [“About a boy/Beyond it all”]. When I was a kid, the ones who were beyond it all were the ones who felt they were beyond responsibility. But I was also shifting it to mean beyond it all in terms of earthly things—and hopefully beyond all earthly pain, to some better place. Nirvana. [Smiles]

But I have to admit, originally it was written with a little more frustration and anger. In 1988–89, I watched my best friend die—slowly. Robert Mapplethorpe, in that time period, did every single thing he could to hold on to his life force. He let himself be a guinea pig for every type of drug. He met with mystics; he met with priests. Any scientist he could find. He was fighting to live even in his last hours. He was in a coma, but his breathing was so hard the room reverberated.

When you watch someone you care for fight so hard to hold on to their life, then see another person just throw their life away, I guess I had less patience for that. You want to take a person by the scruff of the neck and say, “Okay. You’re suffering? This is suffering. Check it out.”

I don’t say any of these things with any kind of judgement. It’s just frustration, concern for how something like that affects young people. I am aware that I am somewhat estranged and out of touch, maybe even a little out of time. But I’m not so out of time that I can’t see that young people feel even worse than I ever did. I remember the early Fifties and fallout shelters. But still, life in general seemed pretty safe. Now kids must look around—there are viral conditions, pollution, still the threat of nuclear war, AIDS. Drugs are so plentiful and scary.

FRICKE: What were some of your seminal rock & roll epiphanies?
SMITH: I grew up with the whole history of rock & roll. I was a little girl when Little Richard hit the scene. I remember the first time I heard Jim Morrison on the radio: “Riders on the Storm.” We were in a car, me and a friend of mine. We stopped the car—we couldn’t go on: “What is this? What are we hearing?” I remember that sense of wonder. When “Like a Rolling Stone” came out, I was in college—I think I was a freshman. It was so overwhelming that nobody went to class. We were just roaming around, talking about this song. I didn’t know what Dylan was talking about in the song. But it didn’t matter. It needed no translation. It just made you feel like you weren’t alone—that someone was speaking your language.

FRICKE: Did you read at rock & roll shows in the early days?
SMITH: Sometimes I’d get jobs opening up for other acts. The New York Dolls would play with three or four other bands you never heard of, and I’d have to open the whole night. Nobody wanted to see me. I had no microphone. I’d just yell my poetry. And these guys would yell, “Get a job! Get back in the kitchen!” I just shot it back at them. But as I started developing with Lenny and Richard [Sohl, Patti Smith Group bassist], we got sturdier, and our thing started to get more defined.

I seriously worried that I was seeing the decline of rock & roll. It was stadium rock and glitter bands. It was getting square from Peter Frampton on up. So I started aggressively pursuing what we were doing. But still not self-motivated—I don’t care if anybody believes me or not. My design was to shake things up, to motivate people and bring a different type of work ethic back into rock & roll.

FRICKE: Was there a defining moment when you sensed that real change was imminent?
SMITH: Seeing Television. On Easter of 1974, Lenny and I were invited to the premiere of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones. It was such an exciting night. I had my Horses clothes on; I looked like Baudelaire. I was so thrilled to be asked to see the premiere of a movie. I’d never been to one.

After the movie, Lenny told me he had promised to go down to CBGB to see this new group. It was about midnight, and there were like fourteen people there. We saw Television, and I thought they were great. I really felt that was it, what I was hoping for: to see people approach things in a different way with a street ethic but also their full mental faculties. Of course, Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell—he was in the group at the time—were both poets.

Then we started working together. They opened for us at Max’s Kansas City; I think we did eight weeks together at CBGB. They were really heightened nights. Sometimes I see 8 mm footage that somebody took and think, “God, did I have guts!” Because I wasn’t much of a singer. But I had bravado, and I could improvise.

FRICKE: You often use the word “work” when referring to your art. For someone who has been characterized as a bohemian poet and singer, you have a strong, focused work ethic.
SMITH: I always have. I really developed a high work ethic through Robert. He had the strongest work ethic I’ve ever seen. Until practically the day he died, when he was almost paralyzed and half blind, he was still trying to draw. And my parents have strong work ethics. They both worked hard all their lives.

People think, “You romanticize all these indulgent, decadent French artists.” I never romanticized their lifestyle, their waste. What I truly loved about them is the work they do. If someone had a great, romantic, self-indulgent life but did crappy art, I wouldn’t be interested.

FRICKE: Do you miss rock & roll stardom at all—even just a little bit?
SMITH: I didn’t really experience a lot of that. On our last tour of Europe [in 1979], we were extremely popular, so I did see all the fame and fortune and fawning that I needed to see in a lifetime: paparazzi, people cutting my hair and pulling my clothes off. I felt like Elvis Presley for a month or two.

Fred’s motto around the house—which I actually put in “Gone Again”—was “Fame is fleeting,” which he took from General Patton, which General Patton took from Alexander the Great. And to strip oneself of all that is quite interesting. It’s somewhat humiliating and painful at first, but once you do it, it’s very liberating.

I don’t look at all those things with contempt. I appreciate it when young bands say they were positively inspired by our work. And I’m proud that I can actually say, “Yes, for a brief period of my life, I was a rock & roll star.” I cherish that.But I don’t need it now. Nor do I want it. That’s youth’s game. And quite a game. It can be an admirable, even treacherous game. But it belongs to youth.