The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Patti Smith Complete: Lyrics, Reflections & Notes for the Future by Patti Smith
Alexander Theroux

Patti Smith. Patti Smith Complete: Lyrics, Reflections & Notes for the
Future. Doubleday, 1998. 246 pp. $35.00.

“The first song I remember singing is ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ I can picture myself singing it while sitting on a stoop in Chicago, waiting for the organ grinder to come up the street with his pet monkey,” writes the Queen of Punk Rock in an unadorned two-page preface to this collection which then moves chronologically right into songs from her Horses LP and “Gloria,” with her pretentious but romantic announcement, “Jesus dies for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” all of it giving us the theological bookends that hold her sacred/profane presentations. “Use menace, use prayer,” she quotes Jean Genet in the “Easter” section of the book. I love Patti Smith. She believes in herself, hates authority, is strong. She’s a tall dark winged angel of confusion, daring, a lot of a kind of genius, womanly courage, and beauty. She is capable of a razor of a line, almost always simple:

In the medieval night
’Twas love’s design
And the sky was open
Like a valentine
All the lacy lights
Where wishes fall
And like Shakespeare’s child
I wished on them all.

Shakespeare’s child, Rimbaud’s avatar, Ginsberg’s friend, Burroughs’s buddy—and there are photos of Hendrix, Joan of Arc, Bob Dylan, Pope John Paul I, Kurt Cobain, Jackie Onassis all through the book—Patti worships heroes, paradigms mostly who embody various sides of herself: the sexy, defiant, poetic, rude, ass-kicking rocker of “Piss Factory,” “Because the Night,” “People Have the Power,” and an anthem of the sixties that she just happened to write in 1988. Her lyrics are simple and spare, allusive, narrative, drumbeating:

He sings a black embrace
And white opals swimming
In a child’s leather purse
Have you seen death swimming
Have you seen death swimming

and meant to be sung. I own many videos of her rocking, early and late, in Germany, France, Manhattan, being interviewed, waltzing in motion, throwing her legs, bashing her guitar, and yet what is amazing to me is her constant ability, almost mythically, to show a spiritual side to what is presented with rocking-horse urgency, angry youth, and dissatisfaction. She is a quester, asking hard questions in her music:

It’s wild wild wild wild
Wild wild wild wild
and always coming off so much more honest than people like Burroughs and Ginsberg and Cobain and lot of other yahoos she pushes. She is a waif and a street girl, has had her difficulties, fallen off stage, lost her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith of MC5, as well as her brother Todd and close friend Robert Mapplethorpe. Maybe because she so completely dropped out once before, for decades, going to Detroit to get married, have two kids, raise them, and be a mother, I am convinced that she’s the kind of person who would go to a convent or live in a desert to pray or become a true anchorite or just disappear, in a good way, getting rid of the world she knows is dumb.

I was feeling sensations in no dictionary
He was less than a breath of shimmer and smoke
The life in his fingers unwound my existence
Dead to the world alive I awoke.

Patti Smith doesn’t need the world in ways that a lot of common people do. The thing about her, for all the wildness at CBGB and flip profanity and photos in urinals and bedraggled dark shots of her wailing, these songs are prayers. All songs are, to a degree.

I’ve got seven ways of going seven wheres to be
Seven sweet disguises, seven ways of serving Thee.

But read these. They are psalms of a sort. It’s true. These are prayers. Laments. Chants. Litanies. And incantations. I’m not trying to baptize the girl. But Patti Smith is a very serious woman. [Alexander Theroux]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Patti Smith Complete: Lyrics, Reflections & Notes for the Future by Patti Smith Alexander Theroux Patti Smith. Patti Smith Complete: Lyrics, Reflections & Notes for the Future. Doubleday, 1998. 246 pp. $35.00. “The first song I remember singing is ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ I can picture myself singing it while sitting on a stoop in Chicago, waiting for the organ grinder to come up the street with his pet monkey,” writes the Queen of Punk Rock in an unadorned two-page preface to this collection which then moves chronologically right into songs from her Horses LP and “Gloria,” with her pretentious but romantic announcement, “Jesus dies for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” all of it giving us the theological bookends that hold her sacred/profane presentations. “Use menace, use prayer,” she quotes Jean Genet in the “Easter” section of the book. I love Patti Smith. She believes in herself, hates authority, is strong. She’s a tall dark winged angel of confusion, daring, a lot of a kind of genius, womanly courage, and beauty. She is capable of a razor of a line, almost always simple: In the medieval night ’Twas love’s design And the sky was open Like a valentine All the lacy lights Where wishes fall And like Shakespeare’s child I wished on them all. Shakespeare’s child, Rimbaud’s avatar, Ginsberg’s friend, Burroughs’s buddy—and there are photos of Hendrix, Joan of Arc, Bob Dylan, Pope John Paul I, Kurt Cobain, Jackie Onassis all through the book—Patti worships heroes, paradigms mostly who embody various sides of herself: the sexy, defiant, poetic, rude, ass-kicking rocker of “Piss Factory,” “Because the Night,” “People Have the Power,” and an anthem of the sixties that she just happened to write in 1988. Her lyrics are simple and spare, allusive, narrative, drumbeating: He sings a black embrace And white opals swimming In a child’s leather purse Have you seen death swimming Have you seen death swimming and meant to be sung. I own many videos of her rocking, early and late, in Germany, France, Manhattan, being interviewed, waltzing in motion, throwing her legs, bashing her guitar, and yet what is amazing to me is her constant ability, almost mythically, to show a spiritual side to what is presented with rocking-horse urgency, angry youth, and dissatisfaction. She is a quester, asking hard questions in her music: It’s wild wild wild wild Wild wild wild wild and always coming off so much more honest than people like Burroughs and Ginsberg and Cobain and lot of other yahoos she pushes. She is a waif and a street girl, has had her difficulties, fallen off stage, lost her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith of MC5, as well as her brother Todd and close friend Robert Mapplethorpe. Maybe because she so completely dropped out once before, for decades, going to Detroit to get married, have two kids, raise them, and be a mother, I am convinced that she’s the kind of person who would go to a convent or live in a desert to pray or become a true anchorite or just disappear, in a good way, getting rid of the world she knows is dumb. I was feeling sensations in no dictionary He was less than a breath of shimmer and smoke The life in his fingers unwound my existence Dead to the world alive I awoke. Patti Smith doesn’t need the world in ways that a lot of common people do. The thing about her, for all the wildness at CBGB and flip profanity and photos in urinals and bedraggled dark shots of her wailing, these songs are prayers. All songs are, to a degree. I’ve got seven ways of going seven wheres to be Seven sweet disguises, seven ways of serving Thee. But read these. They are psalms of a sort. It’s true. These are prayers. Laments. Chants. Litanies. And incantations. I’m not trying to baptize the girl. But Patti Smith is a very serious woman. [Alexander Theroux]

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