Patti Smith on the only worthwhile musician of the 1970s
(Credits: Richard Thompson)
From the sweat-stains of punk rock to the glitz and glamour of the disco age, the 1970s gave way to an incredibly diverse, inventive musical landscape in the United States. One of the crowning stars of that age was punk progenitor Patti Smith, but she wasn’t quite convinced of the era’s revolutionary power.
It was from the dark, sweat-strained, and likely disease-ridden walls of New York’s CBGB Club that the world first became aware of Patti Smith. With a confrontational attitude and unshakable power as a songwriter, the Chicago-born performer ushered in the age of punk rock with her 1975 record Horses – which remains one of the greatest punk albums to ever grace the airwaves. Perhaps more importantly, though, her songwriting and performance style inspired countless future punk and alternative artists to follow in her wake.
One of the prevailing factors which inspired the punk explosion was the rather lacklustre nature of mainstream rock at that time. The ‘peace and love’ counterculture rock of the 1960s had largely dissipated, and in its place came the self-aggrandising sounds of progressive rock, or the uninspiring landscape of radio-friendly soft-rock. So, it should come as no real surprise that Patti Smith doesn’t remember the music of the 1970s very fondly.
“The ’70s basically were a period where different people were trying to take a throne, you see?” Smith said during a 1988 conversation with William S Burroughs in Spin. Although she didn’t expand on that point very much, it seems as though the scene in which Smith was immersed was more concerned with getting to the top, than any kind of artistic innovation or inspiration. However, that is not to say that the decade was devoid of any heroes.
Highlighting one of the only musicians that Smith deemed worthy during that age, the songwriter shared, “The only people that were interesting at all — not always even anyone that I liked—were people like David Bowie.” From the glam rock mastery of records like Hunky Dory, to the profound genius of his Berlin period later in the decade, Bowie was an unending source of artistic inspiration for countless artists during that period.
Although Smith isn’t overly gushing in her praise of the ‘Starman’, she did note, “I don’t demean David Bowie, in fact, some of his work has been inspirational to me.” Before conceding, “But he’s still… he’s not an American. You know, he doesn’t move me. I don’t want to say anything negative, because he does enough positive things that make him worthwhile to me.”
It’s difficult to imagine anybody being unmoved by a track like ‘Heroes’, ‘Five Years’, ‘Life On Mars’, or any of Bowie’s other 1970s-era masterpieces, but then Patti Smith isn’t like most people. Still, her admission that the Brixton-born songwriter was among the only worthwhile artists of the 1970s is certainly telling.
After all, you would be forgiven for assuming that she would name-drop some of the names she crossed paths with during the CBGB scene – the likes of Television, Talking Heads, or Blondie, for instance. In fact, it appears as though Smith looked outside of her immediate surroundings to find musical inspiration during that time, trading in the safety pins and bondage trousers of punk rock for the flamboyant stage outfits of the glam rock icon.
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