From Rimbaud Back to Patti Smith

This was originally a part of an overly large out of control post that I have since sliced up. To see the various slices, go to Two Poets.

Returning to Patti Smith, it is now with Blake and Rimbaud. It changes how we look at Babel and Horses and Easter. We still begin with Gloria, and we will focus primarily on the Horses album. Even with our prelude to Blake and Ribaud, her version of Gloria seems her own. For many the significance of that song is right there in that first verse:

Jesus died for somebody’s sins

But not mine

Melting in a pot of thieves

Wild card up my sleeve

Thick, heart of stone

My sins my own, they belong to me

Me

People said “Beware”

But I don’t care

Their words are just rules and regulations to me

Me

Such an assertion by itself, the first verse of the first song on an artist’s first album, is powerful. So we have that verse. Its irreverence, its challenge to Christianity and its radical freedom all in one verse is provocative. To state that Jesus did not die for my sins, they are mine is a radical claim. I arrive at it at the end of this essay. She chose to put it right there, front and center. First.

It ends with “People said “Beware”, But I don’t care, Their words are just rules and regulations to me, Me”. Once again there is that subjectivity that I keep pointing to. Once again there is that challenge to the rational, to reason, what can be said and done.

This song of course has a history. It was originally performed by Them which featured Van Morrison. That was in 1964. Patti Smith’s Horses came out in 1975. Ten years later. Musically the two versions are fairly consistent. Both of them had the basic three chord progression, along with some tasty keyboards. Critics and fans alike celebrated Smith’s update. It was seen as more than just a cover. She had taken it somewhere else. It starts of course with the music.

So there is that verse that she added at the start. It sets the tone. It had its origins in a poem she had written, Oath. She read that poem at her first time at St Marks. It starts there but then you have the Van Morrison song, which if I can believe the web, Lenny Kaye claimed was one of the best garage band tunes ever. He loved it as it allowed one the freedom to go in various directions. You could solo, you could have the crowd sing along, Patti could improvise lyrics. It was basically three chords. Smith says in a recent NPR interview that “we just chose songs that were basically three chords so I could improvise over them.” Again there is that theme of freedom.

Add to this the sexual overtones. Van Morrison’s version certainly involves such, with Gloria going upstairs to the gentleman’s room and what follows. Smith adds to that whole dynamic: She ups the ante referencing in the second verse a “sweet young thing, humping a parking meter” Not only that, but she is referencing a sweet young thing. She is singing about a sweet young that that in the song comes up to the man’s room. The song is from the view of the man, so not only does she describe a sweeter more desirous young thing, but she is the man. She transcends gender. She is the man and so wants and needs this sexy sweet young thing.

Through all of this is that theme of freedom. From the claiming of her sins, to the disregard for warnings and rules, to her hunger and desire for this sweet young thing, to now being a man and having this sweet thing in his room. It is me, she says. That freedom again is expressed in the performance, allowing her to explore and improvise and do what is inspired at that moment. And all of it is her’s. She takes ownership and responsibility for this freedom, for sin. It is her’s in its entirety. I will create and I will judge. Jesus did not die for my sins. “My sins my own, they belong to me. Me”.

So you have all of this and even though Smith says in the course of the NPR interview that she really did not care about doing Gloria, it was done. It started with an oath and this idea of freedom. The song goes from a convenient cover of a Van Morrison tune to a type of hymn. It becomes her hymn to freedom. It becomes her “Gloria in excelsis Deo” – Glory to God in the highest.

She follows Gloria with Birdland. Little to do with the Jazz club of the same name in NYC, except perhaps at the end, where she laments that they like Birdland. No it is much more to do with the death of a child’s father and the child’s dealing with that event. One search of the web points to the song being inspired by a memoir of Wilhelm Reich written by his son. Regardless, it is also the mix of poetry and rock. At the end even Smith goes into a variation or hint of Doo Wop. There is this merging of things ranging from Blake, who is referenced in the lyrics, to Reich who was a disciple of Freud and who was a precursor to the sexual revolution, to Doo Wop. All done in this cocoon of garage band rock.

Lyrically, the song goes from memories of the boy’s father, a farmer, who drives his tractor across his fields. In the song, the tractor and the birds over head converge and become a spaceship. The boy’s father is no longer human. I imagine for the boy to sit with his father in that tractor did suspend or stop time. Such occasions were special moments. And when the man passed, he was simply without life.

Both moments were in their way not human. In both, his father was in charge, in control or more accurately the son was not. In both, his father is alien, and in both, the boy wants to be with his father. At the end of the song the son wants to be up there with his father, in his ship. And in the end it is but a song, “Sha do do wop”, but we do like Birdland.

This song is a stream of consciousness, similar to what Rimbaud offers. Each verse exploring and showing where this stream travels to. And then you read that the song or the music was composed or arrived at through improvisation. Perhaps, that is why Birdland is liked. The stream, this improvisation, this mix of the spoken and the sung are all products of the freedom introduced in Gloria.

The son’s mother is referenced only once in the song. She wants her sons to now be not presidents, but prophets. She wants them now not to act, but to see. The verse reminds me of the last part of the first stanza of italy (the round) found in Smith book of poetry, Babel. There she references “a still from a film not shot”. One of the first poems in the collection, that line grabbed me. For me, that is to experience, it is to be conscious, which may or may not be recorded in any fashion. This is perhaps the difference between Lynott and Smith, and the Germans I began with and the more recent poets I alluded to, Blake and Rimbaud. For Lynott, Blake, and the Germans it was all about what was done, the actions of individuals. For Smith, and Rimbaud it was this free-ranging creative experience, this stream of consciousness. And all of them have this radical freedom which either ignores or challenges that which is around them. Each is focused on something other, either nature or ancient myth, or the act of creation itself. Each of them grasps and makes it their own.

We are not done yet. Let us look at one last song from Horses. Land. The album, Horses, starts with Patti declaring that Jesus did not die for her sins. From Gloria we jumped to Birdland, which we describe above, basically a son’s dealing with the death of his father. We skipped over Redondo Beach, with its reggae beat and dealing with a quarrel between sisters and the resulting suicide drowning of one of them.

Likewise there is Free Money, which follows Birdland. At one level Free Money is a pretty simple song, talking of free money and how it would be spent. Actually it is more a song dealing with the dream of free money, the dream of of winning the lottery. It is a song of dreams and possibilities, stolen or not. My money is on that when she sings that “she knows they are stolen, it is not the money, but the dreams which are stolen. What she describes are not purely her dreams. These dreams, what is in this stream, are stolen from here and borrowed from there, hidden away, buried, forgotten, and uncovered, and stolen yet again.

Land deals with possibilities. The song starts with her reading her poetry, the verse, but as it continues her reading becomes possessed by a certain rhythm, a certain violence before going to the song proper. Musically, Land is at moments reminiscent of Gloria. It owes a debt lyrically to Chris Kenner’s Land of a Thousand Dances”, with that song’s references to Johnny B. Goode, Boney Maroney, and the dance craze from the sixties, the Watusi. It goes from quiet verse to intense, to just rock n roll.

It is not just rock n roll. That first verse starts with Johnny, a character inspired by the novel, The Wild Boys, written by William S. Burroughs. In the song, Johnny encounters another young man. The encounter seems to take place in a school hallway, with lockers. What began with two young men walking towards each other in that hallway, becomes an assault, a rape. It ends with Johnny collapsing on the floor, crashing his own head against the locker, and laughing hysterically.

The boy looked at Johnny, Johnny wanted to run

But the movie kept moving as planned

The boy took Johnny, he pushed him against the locker

He drove it in, he drove it home, he drove it deep in Johnny

The boy disappeared, Johnny fell on his knees

Started crashing his head against the locker

Started crashing his head against the locker

Started laughing hysterically

That is the first and second verse. The third verse is Johnny on the floor after this encounter. He imagines being surrounded by horses. Surrounded by white shining silver studs breathing flames.

When suddenly Johnny gets the feeling he’s being surrounded by

Horses, horses, horses, horses

Coming in in all directions

White shining silver studs with their nose in flames

He saw horses, horses, horses, horses

Horses, horses, horses, horses

It is in the middle of this third verse that they transition to their variation of “A Land of a Thousand Dances”. Which is bizarre. I did not know by title the song, but a moment into the YouTube video, I recognized it. What was she saying? Again she has gone from assault and rape to silver studs to a land of a thousand dances – to a pop song. For me it goes back to this radical freedom, to the possible. It goes back to Gloria. That is one possibility. The other is that this swirl of dance, pop and violence is Johnny’s state.

The song continues. Johnny, now alone, still on the floor, still in despair, now pulls out a knife. And after she shares this, she goes on to tell us of filling her own nose with snow and Rimbaud. It is part throwing gas to the fire, and part disclosure. She leaves nothing to speculate about, she references Rimbaud. And with Rimbaud comes an allusion to cocaine. She is upping the ante.

Life is filled with holes, Johnny’s laying there, his sperm coffin

Angel looks down at him and says, “Oh, pretty boy

Can’t you show me nothing but surrender?”

Johnny gets up, takes off his leather jacket

Taped to his chest there’s the answer

You got pen knives and jack knives and

Switchblades preferred, switchblades preferred

Then he cries, then he screams, saying

Life is full of pain, I’m cruisin’ through my brain

And I fill my nose with snow and go Rimbaud

Go Rimbaud, go Rimbaud

And go Johnny go, and do the watusi, oh do the watusi

The rest of the song entails a mix or flashes of the above. She offers Johnny a branch of the cold flame. The celebrate and suffer together. They seem to explore this space, this sea of possibilities together. The sea becomes a wall and then there is one that seizes the opportunity, the possibility. Johnny explores his smooth throat with his knife or perhaps takes a spoon deep into his veins. There is a black shiny horse and entwining coiled snakes. There are multiple possibilities in this space, in this sea. It seems that to not go to sea, is to not engage, to not grab those possibilities. It seems she has to guide him out, and we do not know the outcome.

This continues for several verses. She references the Tower of Babel. It ends though referencing a line from Gloria.

Saw this sweet young thing (Fender one)

Humping on the parking meter, leaning on the parking meter

And the next and last line or verse goes:

In the sheets

There was a man

Dancing around

To the simple

Rock & roll

Song

It ends with those words and the slowing beat of the drums. It ends with a man dancing in the sheets dancing to a rock & roll song. Is it an act of violence or masturbation? All against a backdrop of 60’s pop and dance. Nothing more.

The radical freedom I suggest, the subjectivity I allude to is largely synonymous with the creativity of these songs. It is found in the free ranging stream of consciousness in these verses. The sea and the wall of possibilities, the stolen dreams and phrases are all found in these songs, the verses, and their performance. The sexuality, the carnality, the overcoming of gender are all found in these verses, these songs.

The music itself is standard guitar based garage rock with some keyboards for good measure. The music surely was pushed to its limits by the lyrics, by the verses and the response of Smith and her mates to them.

I can imagine that the performance of these pieces varied greatly, and did vary contingent upon the band and Smith. Kaye, again on the web. . . talks of 40 plus minute versions of Gloira. Upon the release of Easter, Smith became at least uncertain of her words in Gloria and explored various options in that first line before returning to the original. This is one instance and she was writing and re-writing throughout. You catch pieces of her sharing poems live and I am certain there was a good amount of free riffing of poems and verses, in songs and free standing.

These poetic explorations are in addition to the normal musical experimentation and variations of live shows. Add to all of this the audience, and their response, but that is true of any performance, That is simply the beauty of live music, here simply amplified and challenged by the words and verses offered up by Smith.

Going back to the Horses album and the second to last song, Land, we now have some explanation of where the title comes from. If you recall after be assaulted by the other young man, Johnny is on the floor. He has been assaulted, beaten, perhaps raped, humiliated. And over him he sees these horses:

White shining silver studs with their nose in flames

He saw horses, horses, horses, horses

Horses, horses, horses, horses

Horses are referenced several times in the poem. Typically big horses, studs. There is one reference to sea horses. These are again all possibilities, They challenge and intimidate and inspire and tease. At the point where Johnny and her pair up, converge, in the song, she goes on to describe Johnny as a horse. She talks of her fingers going through his mane:

Your nerves, your mane of the black shining horse

And my fingers all entwined through the air

I could feel it, it was the hair going through my fingers

(I feel it I feel it I feel it I feel it)

The hairs were like wires going through my body

She is attuned to him. What he had suffered, how he feels, what he desires. His mane was entwined around and through her fingers, through her body. That which she had created had begun to consume her, penetrate her. What she describes is perhaps a bestial incestuous affair. And in this collection it appears in addition to Johnny or what we call Land, there are seven more, a total of eight; eight songs. Just as Johnny has his possibilities, his horses that stand over him and breathe flames, so does she. She has at the least eight that have been grasped., challenged, wrestled with, perhaps even overcome or mastered.