WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1167 - Patti Smith

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

Patti Smith has been at the vanguard of art, poetry, rock and roll, and other forms of self-expression since the 1960s. But this talk with Marc happens to be her very first one-on-one conversation done over Zoom. They talk about Patti's days living at the Hotel Chelsea, carrying on the legacy of the Beat Generation, and forming life-changing relationships with William Borroughs, Sam Shepard, Allen Ginsberg, and Bob Dylan, among others. Patti also recalls the most mortifying live performance moment of her career, which happened for all the world to see. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's hockey season, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So, no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Gold tenders, no. But chicken tenders, yes. Because those are groceries, and we deliver those, too.

Along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace of mind. A lot can go wrong. A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you. That's why you need

insurance. Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. Lock the gate! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters

what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it How's it going? What are we in month seven of this shit? How are you? Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. How's the exercise going? How's the walk? How's your dog? How's your kid? How's your leg? How's your hand? How's your fucking head? Are you using whatever options you have at your disposal to maintain your sanity without hurting yourself or others? Are you trying to mind your mind so they don't mine your mind? Do you know what a mark is? Do you know what a mark is? Not me.

A mark. The intended victim of a swindler, hustler, or the like. A mark. An object of derision, scorn, manipulation, or the like. Example. He was an easy mark for this Trumpian bullshit. Marks. A nation of marks. for this Trumpian bullshit. Marx. A nation of Marx.

Why am I bringing that up? Why am I bringing that up? I tell you, man, President alluded to leaving the country if he loses. Good riddance! If he can't maintain power and continue to degrade the nature of the rule of law as we drift further into authoritarianism don't email me you know the three fucking trump supporters who listen to me don't email me with your fucking delusional bullshit about what's really happening.

Don't do it. It's not my fault that you're a mark. That you didn't mind your mind. Or that you're so myopic that your ability to contextualize or see through the veil of garbage is muted or destroyed wouldn't it be beautiful if he loses and then moves the entire operation and family to russia where he can be protected wouldn't it be the best thing in the world if this motherfucker lived in exile in Moscow?

He's got a lot of debt. He's got a lot of charges hanging over his head. I would just, I love that story. That's the best possible ending as the world ends. Patti Smith is on the show today. Patti fucking Smith is on the show today patty fucking smith is on the show today patty smith are you fucking kidding me when was the last time you listened to her first three albums in a row uh she's got her latest book out year of the monkey it's now

available in paperback you might have read some of her other stuff, Just Kids and Devotion and a few other books. But she's here, and I've been wanting to talk to her for a while. And she's here. I am her first Zoom interview. I was her first Zoom call. Patti Smith was a Zoom virgin before me. And I'm thrilled to have had that honor. And you'll hear me talking to Patti.

I just love her. She's the real fucking deal. She is the one and only Patti Smith. She's the raw goods, man. All there, all the time, right up front. Fucking love her. True beatnik legacy that's what i was trying to get at there's no context anymore really history is dissolving everything is all the time nothing is true

everything is permitted that's not true that's an old riff on a hassan asaba bit that burroughs used to do and then jim carroll did it in a song i can't think like that but the context of history is diminished when everything happens all the time and And no one is educated properly. No one is really schooled in critical thinking or civics. Or even American history in a proper way. Global history, myself included. It's just all there all the time. Nobody knows who did what or what anyone's importance was in the context of history. The big monsters and the do-gooders.

Nobody knows really how they fit in. It's a generation of young people who might say, yeah, you know, oh, Hitler, the guy with the mustache, right? That's the context. But history is being diminished. And that's why on some level i was happy to talk to patty because she comes directly from the new york that was still being occupied by a beatnik idea that was still being occupied by artists sort of like really pushing the envelope that first wave of performance artists the first wave of punk you know in the sort of like the beaten up city of the early 70s. Stuff was forming. Things were happening. There was no Internet. Everything was raw and dirty.

Yeah, that history. But she has a direct legacy. She knew Burroughs. She knew Ginsburg. They both took her under their wing. She was friends with Mapplethorpe. She dated Sam Shepard, Tom Verlaine. But she was there in the cauldron of that stuff in the 70s when those old timers were kind of fading out a bit, but still had some wisdom to share. Because I wanted to be part of the beatnik legacy. I

respected that history. I was a hero worshiper, even though I didn't quite understand it. And I don't think any of those people exist anymore. The people that sort of worship these times. Is it nostalgia? Is it wanting to live in the past? Or is it honoring the arc of history and where you land in it and where you come from. When I was in college, I was like all up in it, reading the books about the beatniks, reading the beatnik books, reading the beatnik heroes. Arthur Rambeau, Baudelaire, Blake, Ginsburg was a Blake guy, a Rambeau they were all rambo guys patty smith's a rambo woman a blake woman that poetic legacy the poetic journey of that particular type of poetry

shatter your senses man break it all down Like I got some quotes here from these people. From Rimbaud, the poet, therefore, is truly the thief of fire. He is responsible for humanity, for animals even. He will have to make sure his visions can be smelled, fondled, listened to. If what he brings back from beyond has form, he gives it form. If it has none, he gives it form if it has none he gives it none a language must be found of the soul for the soul and will include everything perfumes sounds colors thought grappling with thought arthur rembeau hero of patty smith hero of the beats hero of ginsburg i always feel like i don't get it i always thought

there was more there that i didn't understand it how do i crack this fucking code and then you kind of lighten up with it just take it in take what you can get the beats the. Burroughs was a great comedian and great philosopher. And I think he said something very relevant. My favorite Burroughs quotes apply directly to what we're living through. Like this one from Naked Lunch, I think. The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer. He sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client. God bless America. Here's a direct message to the piece of shit president of the United States we have currently. hustlers of the world there is one mark you cannot beat the mark inside end quote the mark the intended victim of a swindler hustler or the like that's from the dictionary my point being there was a progression there was a progression from the beatnik idea through

the poetry of patty smith through the playwriting of sam shepherd on into punk rock and burroughs was dug in in new york for a while but you know patty broke. There's nobody like Patti Smith. But she was shaped and molded in the cauldron of fucking poetic art. The vision of Rimbaud. I remember when I walked, I came home from college one year. I went into the Living Batch bookstore where my mentor Gus Blaisdell presided. He was the proprietor. Went into the Living Batch bookstore where my mentor Gus Blaisdell presided. He was the proprietor. There was a poster on the wall for some sort of big shindig up in Naropa.

This must have been in the 80s, the early 80s, at that Beatnik school. Yeah, I think it was the Naropa Institute. I remember seeing this poster, and they were all going to be there, all the living beats at that time. Burroughs, Ginsburg, Gary Snyder, maybeder maybe creely i don't know who was there and waldman they were all going to be there and i was such a fucking fan boy man i said i said to gus i said i gotta get up there and see that he goes what do you want to hang around with those geriatrics for do your own thing man and i'm like yeah but they were great i knew those guys and then he made a joke i want to i didn't want to believe it was a joke maybe it wasn't a

joke but he said yeah i met karolak once at a party in san francisco he was sitting on the floor in the corner drunk with vomit on his shirt talking to ne Neil Cassidy, saying, Live like a tree, Neil. Live like a tree. But that was Gus, man. He was a funny motherfucker. Changed my head, changed my mind, changed my heart. But I've been to the places. I've been to the graves. I've worshipped at the altars, and I come out, here I am. This is it. So now I got Patti Smith here.

Just so, so fucking excited about it. Seriously. I was your first Zoom. I hope it went well. I hope she enjoyed it. Right? Huh?

Her third and latest memoir is called Year of the Monkey. It's now available in paperback wherever you get books. And this is me and Patti Smith doing her first Zoom. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So, no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea and ice cream? Yes, we can deliver that.

Uber Eats. Get almost almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization,

it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know, we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under

the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Dig it. What's your cat's name cairo oh look at that she's 19 years old and she's uh she's a bit infirmed and she doesn't like to be separated from me so i'm gonna put it here oh no no it's great i just had to uh i had a i just had to put down a 16-year-old. I'm sorry. It's terrible. Jeez. And his sister went about six months ago. And then I have this other one who's about four. So I got one left.

Well, she's the last of three we had. But she's a little Abyssinian runt. She was born really small, kicked out of the litter box, kicked out of the mama's box. And they didn't think she'd last very long. And she's 19. The runts are tough. That's right. I wasn't a runt, but I was pretty scruffy. I was a scrawny thing. You seem pretty tough pretty early on. Yeah. I mean, I was, people would say I was sickly because I was sick all the time, but in the fifties you had everything. Measles, chickenpox,

scarlet fever, mumps, tuberculosis as a toddler. I mean, back then you got everything and two kinds of measles, but it didn't necessarily mean that you were a sickly child. It just meant that you were negotiating all of the things that came out out at you. So I'm pretty good at negotiating those type of things. So, you know, I'm hoping that that will give me extra strength in our present situation. What a situation it is, huh? Yeah.

Well, you know, just, you know, having been through so many different kinds of illnesses, I know, and this one seems extremely troublesome, unpredictable, potentially dangerous. So I've been respecting it. I've had my talk with it and said, I respect you. I'm 73. I have a little bronchial condition. I'll be prudent. And even though I'm restless and agitated, I'll be prudent and I do what I'm supposed to be doing. So that's all I can do. That's good. Well, I like this. You said in one of these epilogues, you said a psychic nausea that we were obliged to work off in every way available. A psychic nausea that we had.

That's every day. Well, the psychic nausea that I was speaking of then, because I wrote that very early, was our situation in terms of our government. Right. I was really talking about our political situation and what we have to deal with daily. That melded with, as you said, now we're dealing with a pandemic that makes us deal with things not only mentally, but physically. Yeah. No, it's all combined. But I do try to keep busy. I try to keep as busy as possible.

I've been saying use whatever option you have at your disposal to maintain your sanity without hurting yourself or others. Yes, I like that. That's good. And also do things that benefit you. I mean, it benefits me being alone in my house. I'm quite messy. So it benefits me to become more disciplined, to be neater, to clean up after myself, to shed things. it has benefited me to be um you know more domestically aware even though i didn't really want to and i don't like staying put but i feel better i feel like my surroundings are healthier they're um you know they they give me more space to think yeah so something like that you know just we all have to do whatever we can to survive emotionally physically and and uh psychologically yeah psychologically yeah i mean and i think it's been interesting for me because spending this type of

time with yourself it's it's not it's i guess it's not really challenging, but it is revealing. You know, I mean, in the book and in some of your other work, I mean, as a poet or as an artist, you know, you're sort of your job. Part of your job is to reflect and spend time meditating on life and whoever you are in relation to the world and your expression. But now you really find out what you're made of in terms of emotional survival psychological survival you know what's important to you and it's amazing how that list of things that you think are important to you gets smaller when you spend this type of frightened time alone you know i i that yeah well put, I mean, I, I am used to being on my own. I'm used to traveling and being on my own all over Europe or while I'm working or away from my band. I like my solitude. I'm not that social. I like to write on my own, but that's in motion. Yeah.

That's in motion. Yeah. Being stationary alone is a lot different. And I have found that challenging. So as you said, I've had to really go into myself and get to know what I'm like in this particular scenario. Yeah. It has been challenging, but I've learned a lot. I feel healthier. I'm attending to myself. I'm doing my own cooking and trying to develop new disciplines. But I find that I pace a lot, talk to myself more than usual. like when I look at your life I mean like there's this idea you know that there's some precedent for for for the type of chaos or for how bad this country can get in that but it it seems to me

that you grew up in the 50s but you got to New York what in the late 60s right yes so it must have been insane right well I mean for me uh it was was exciting because I lived in a very rural area of South Jersey. And just to see people on the streets was exciting. You know, to see all these stores, to see so many bookstores, so many possibilities for work. for work. That was one of the exciting things. There was no work for a 20-year-old in South Jersey or in Philadelphia because there was a huge shutdown of the New York shipyard in Camden. 30,000 people lost their jobs, and there were no real jobs for young people. So, New York was, for me, you know, it was like a goldmine. It was a down and out city like myself at the time, 1967. The city was nearly bankrupt. It was very cheap to live in New York City then. There were hundreds, it seemed, of bookstores, places to get a job. People on the streets were, you know, didn't bother you. There was things to see everywhere, museums.

It was amazing to me. So it didn't feel like, like I watched, I saw some documentary footage of you not, you know, with, with Robert, but also in, you know, I, I don't know what the interview was. I think it was an Adam Curtis documentary about New York. But I always get the feeling that, which is maybe wrong, that it felt chaotic and frightening. But that wasn't the sense you got. Oh, no.

I was never frightened in New York. Yeah. I was excited. I mean, because New York had its dangerous areas. There were areas back then that you just didn't go into. You didn't go down all the way down Avenue C in the East village. Right. There were certain areas that you stayed out of,

but I, I found all of the, the action exciting. Yeah. People on the streets. I mean, I, you know,

in, in the, in the parks, there were all these people protesting and singing and playing chess. And I you didn't see that where I came from. It was exciting. I mean, I never was harmed. In fact, it was a lot scarier walking down a dirt road at night and passing the pig farms in South Jersey in 1967 than walking through the East Village. That's for sure.

Well, I always felt that, too. I always felt the safest in New York because at any point and any time, you could walk outside and there'd be people. Yes. Right? And there'd be people that if something went down, someone was going to step in and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, you can't do that. You know, someone was going to step in and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, you can't do that. Someone was going to help out.

Yeah, I really felt I've never been harmed in New York City, never been harmed by another person. And I flourished here. I mean, New York has much changed, and it's not the New York that I knew when I was young, but I feel very grateful to it well it seems like you're I was thinking about like you know how to you know frame a conversation or to think about your work or or or you know how how you kind of became who

you are is that you're kind of like there's a your generation this sort of you of beatnik legacies and there was a sort of rock and roll slash beatnik ethic to it all and a sort of desire to push buttons even further. And it was all so earnest and it seemed like a small community and you still had some

of the old guys around. Well, we were all that's so nicely said. I feel like I should just be listening to you. You're much more articulate than I've been lately. But, well, I think also we were all bred on rock and roll. Right.

We were all, it was a, we were post-war kids. We wanted new things. We didn't want the things our parents desired, which was safety, security, their little house, and nothing wrong with the things that they wanted. We wanted something different. I wanted to be free of all of that. I didn't want to have things set up for me. I didn't want to be a secretary or a hairdresser or a homemaker. I wanted to see what else was out there. who came like-minded. We were all listening to the same music. We all, you know, our causes were the same, you know, whether it was, you know, human rights, gay rights, civil rights, the war

in Vietnam. We had our causes and our loves were very, were in tandem. So, you know, you felt kinship wherever you went. And even the people that were more well-known, when I lived at the Chelsea, you know, any given moment, Janis Joplin or the Allman Brothers or Jimi Hendrix, and all these people would walk in. And the only thing that separated us all was they had bigger rooms or they had more money to spend at the bar. We all dressed the same. You know, we had similar cadence in our speech. We all would get to know each other. There wasn't that it was it wasn't the cult of celebrity the way that it is now.

It was more like, ah, that's such and such. And he's done this you know he's created these songs that we're singing or that has really inspired us it wasn't uh people weren't taking people's pictures and asking for autographs we all sort of lived together there's a community of creative people pushing the envelope yeah yeah right Yeah. Right. And, and, and I, I don't know, like,

cause I'm, I I'm 50, I just turned 57. So like, you know, a lot of this stuff for me coming into it and, and being in college and, you know,

kind of being obsessed with the beats and then getting obsessed with the next generation of artists that, that you were part of. And, you know, by the time I, you know, spent any time at the Chelsea,

you know, it was not, it was just a mythological place almost and you know by the time i you know spent any time at the chelsea you know it was not yeah it was just a mythological place almost you know well it was that's funny because it was almost when i when i went there in 69 with robert people were saying that about it then oh it was over because uh you didn't have people like bob dylan andie Cedric and Dylan Thomas and the people before us had left or died but the people that were still there were pretty good yeah it was we were more of the early rock we were the rock and roll generation who was there oh when we I mean well Shirley Clark lived there Harry Smith was there you'd see Arthur C. Clarke. Salvador Dali came in and out.

Janis Joplin lived there for a while, and Leonard Cohen, and all kinds of musicians stayed there. You'd go into the bar next door, and you'd see whoever was playing would be at the El Quixote, but they were just there. And I lived there. So they were in my house and William Burroughs. And I remember sitting at the bar at the El Quixote bar because we're working on a project with William Burroughs. And it was William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg and Carl Solomon and Dennis Hopper. And then Sam Shepard came in and it was just another night. You know, Terry Southern, he was writing a script for William. We were going to do a version of Junkie.

Oh, really? And I was going to play Mary, but it all fell apart. But for a while, just hanging out with them was pretty great. I can't imagine. I just, like when i read this book you know the the new or the one that's coming out in paperback now you're the monkey i mean it seems like you were sort of straddling some of this stuff that burrows did you know moving between reality not reality dream not dream you having guides you know and and because like when when

all this shit started to go down, for some reason, I went back to Burroughs to try to decode some stuff because in my life, I always feel like it's all in there somewhere that, you know, all the answers are within Burroughs somewhere. You just have to figure out how to find them and sort it out from some of the other science fiction and weirdness. He believed it was all out there, was all out there. And he believed also, if you were lucky enough to have suffered scarlet fever, which both him and I

had, you had an open channel for all of these things to come from this great pool. So he, what you were getting from William, he was a good portal because William got all of those things from everywhere else. He believed in that. So he was the right guide for you. So the scarlet fever created the ability? Well, he believed that it didn't create the ability, but that it opened the portal wider. In the wild boys, Gianni and the wild boys had scarlet fever. We had a club, me and William called the Scarlet Fever Club. And but he really believed that if you had suffered a really deep fever at a very young age, it opened your portal forever.

That's interesting. Yeah, I went I I, for some reason, I started to plow into the, the Western lands, you know, which it seemed to me that I, and I think that maybe you're dealing with a bit of it too, that like he had to somehow reckon with mortality in a very sort of a practical way for himself. And it seemed like, you know, his interpretation of the Book of the Dead was how he was going to go about it. Is that true? Oh, I suppose. I don't I've never analyzed.

I never thought about it. I mean, to me, I mean, that's the kind of thing you'd have to talk. I just read his stuff. Yeah, me too. But like, I wanted to answer somehow. And, me too. But like I wanted answers somehow. And like I had to keep going back because structurally he's a little tricky for me. But like, you know, when I started to see that he was dealing with all these different levels that that once the guy person dies goes through and he created characters with names for each of those levels that were very burrows characters. I was sort of able to figure out oh this is the journey

man you know so uh it was a little you think deeper than i do i mean to me william sometimes reading william or reading certain writers is like listening to coltrane or something to or a saxophone solo right i never analyze it i just i'm just there and i just go with them and i go all the way as far as they're going to take me and by and then i come back and don't even remember where we been because i'm so immersed in the going i think that's right i think that's the best way to do it i always assume like i'm missing something they're like no no no no he's got so many blanks there yeah he wants you to fill in i mean you have to be the third mind with with william right because i i remember one of william's great disappointment in himself was that he couldn't write a straight lace detective

story or a straight lace novel he and we talked about this all of these books if you if you think about it they start very conventionally yeah you think you're you're going on you're you're going with this old guy sitting there with his you know shotgun on a barrel or something you're going to go straight through some plot with him. And then he starts cutting things up and going into several layers of worlds. And he told me he just couldn't help it. That's that's the way his mind works. And that's his process. He would have loved to have written even a two bit detective novel.

That's for sure. I've read his essays. And it's interesting when he writes with that type of clarity or you read the interviews. But like, yeah, and I get it. There's a magic to it. You guys, I mean, you're a magician as well. There is a magic to this idea of transcending space and time, you know, through cut ups and through, you know, I mean, I get it and I like it. So you were able to spend time with Burroughs early on, you know, before you started singing or as a poet? spend time with Burroughs early on you know before you started singing or as a poet? Oh yeah I met him in 1970 I think I met him I had a big crush on him so I was always. You know how to pick him. He would come into the Chelsea Hotel and he was so handsome and he was always so well dressed and

I just had the biggest crush on him and I would would try to, you know, I would talk to him. And I think he was amused by me. Yeah. But also, he got to trust me. I don't know. We became friends. But also, sometimes in the course of the night, William would get extremely disheveled. Because he'd come into the Chelsea.

And you had to come through the lobby and then go through the store into the bar. He would start out with his perfect tie and suit and overcoat. And then when he left, he was a bit stumbly. He'd get a bit intoxicated and I would wait. And then I would get him a cab and make sure that you know he didn't leave anything behind and just you know be his like little guardian angel girl oh that's sweet we just got to be friends and friends throughout his whole life and um right to the end of his life and he was a very kind and very principled man i know people know all different aspects of william yeah and he was many things and um but to me he was very good to

me he was a good teacher when my husband died he was um so supportive he was kind to my children you know i i, I loved him. Well, I feel a lot. I mean, that's one thing that comes through the writing and your life is that like the sort of amazing, deep and, you know, lasting friendships is really, it's like enviable. I mean, you know, when the way you talk about William and the way you talk about Sam Shepard in the book, just these, you know, this real appreciation of friends and people, and I guess people still do it. But when I look at my life, I have a few friends, but there's such because you the generation and the people that you guys, the crew of you are so daunting in your output and who you were in the world. I just love that you're not only your friends, but you stay together until the end. I mean, it's really kind of amazing. And it really is what life is about i mean at least half of it right well you find a few people that you really trust who you feel and you know understand you i was

just lucky the people that that i was close to as a young girl and remain close till, you know, their passing. We had, all of us had work-centric relationships, as well as sometimes romantic relationships. Right. Maybe Europe was my boyfriend. And, but when we, you know, had to, you know, transition our relationship, we had so much to salvage our, you know, our mutual respect for each other, the work that we did with each other, how we trusted each other's opinion, how comforted we felt by each other. And so there was no reason to, you know, tear our friendship apart. We had to work very hard, but we saved it.

And the same with Sam and I. Sam was my boyfriend when I was young. That was quite an exciting period, but we also worked together. But we had a great trust and great communication and the friendship that we had and that aspects of that working relationship and that trust were way more important than, you know, a romantic relationship. If that's not what you're destined to have, there's often even a greater jewel there if you recognize it and work to um to keep it alive and we we did yeah it's beautiful and it's so it it's sort of early on the only way i could picture you two at

that time was by actually you know reading or seeing a production of cowboy mouth and i was like wow that that that seemed exhausting we that writing that was sam was the easiest thing i mean it was this sam and i decided mutually that we would part yeah he did the family and it was the right thing to do but we were you know we were um we were sad and but one night he just said we were in the chelsea hotel and he said let's write a play yeah let's not sit and weep let's write a play and i i said i don't know how to write a play it was like you know doing zoom i don't know how to do that yeah and um so he said well i'll set set up a scenario and you be your character and I'll be my character. Yeah. So he set up a scenario and then he started writing.

And when it was my time to talk, he would just hand me the typewriter. We were sitting on the bed and he would slide over the typewriter and then I would write my part. Yeah. And then I would slide it back and we wrote a play and uh and um yeah it was just it had a naturalness to it but both of us being you know lovers of language you know yeah a lot of language in it too it's just so like you know these reflections in this book you know particularly like I don't I don't know all the books specifically, but, you know, I've kind of immersed myself in the music. You know, yesterday I listened to the the last album you did, which was great.

And, you know, I was I listened to the first four and kind of in the middle and picking up pieces here and there and then looking at the gaps. And I'm like, what was going on there? i just do a lot of thinking before i talk to you no kidding you've always you would like stop me in my tracks a couple of times i did in a bad way no in a good way i was like you know especially when you were talking about william and and where the the different uh layers and levels you were going i was just like again i just went with you and then you asked me a question about what you said and i was like huh i just like i was off with you man i didn't i wasn't analyzing what you were saying well that's that's i see i can do that with jazz man and i can do it with jazz yeah exactly that's what it's all about improvisation it's the miracle of improvisation i can lock into

that stuff you know but like i think there's some part of me that like i i guess it's not it's not about craving answers but it is sort of about about making sense you know what i mean and like you know and i'm looking to him to make sense you know control needs control to survive you know like i'm like what does that mean you know so but that's me man he was a lover of rambo too and it's like the whole idea was to explode the senses you know it was i mean think about it with doing cut-ups and all of the things he was doing yeah he was always looking for new things william was looking for like a new language a new alphabet you know some new aspect of the psyche but he wasn't really looking to make sense a part of him did crave to write the straight detective story but when he was writing he was looking for things he was looking he was looking

for something that no one had said before no one had seen before because that to william was what an artist did right that makes sense so like yeah rambo's another one like you know the the championing of rambo that you do and like jim carroll like there are people that do it the beats do it like that brought me to rembo and again like i was like do i just take this stuff at face value and you you you do because the images are mind blowing that's what you're looking for right i've never been an analytical person yeah but things do speak to us i mean i was like 11 years old when i saw cubism for the first time right art for the first time cubism spoke to me at 11 years old jackson pollack

spoke to me at 11 years old i can't say why i mean yeah one because well it's the time of rock and roll maybe it was the you know that 50s energy but i've never really been able to or even sought to analyze why things have spoken to me, why Rimbaud spoke to me. I didn't even understand his poems when I was like 15, but their beauty just captivated me. I didn't care what they meant. Now it's not so difficult to comprehend what he's laying out,

but back then it was like reading Wittgenstein. The world is everything that is the case. You know, what does that mean? Well, I don't know, but I'm, I'm there, you know, I'm there with you, man. I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm right with you. Yeah. I once, uh, I wrote something down once it said, you know, I don't know what it means, but when I'm reading it, it feels like I'm thinking it. it means but when i'm reading it it feels like i'm thinking it yeah yeah who said that me oh well see there you go again that that is a cool statement and i know exactly what you're talking about i like that yeah it's just like it's like feeding it you know and then you know something will something reconfigure something in your brain whether you understand it or not well and and sometimes why do we understand music you know you listen to you know hendrix or beethoven or something and you know you don't need to break it down if it like speaks to you or makes you weep or just

makes you feel you know uh you know like you could conquer the universe there's you know what's to analyze it's it's yeah no yeah you got to let it happen yeah there's no i i'm no i'm not great at analyzing things but when i feel i just always assume that i don't like understand certain things but you know as you get older those things become fewer and less important that's for fucking sure that you know oh there's another way to look at that how great it is that there's still stuff out there we don't understand oh yeah it's just more exciting more more adventure if we understood everything you know then it would you know might might get get a little boring but i i i love when uh things beguile me you know i i can look at like one of the things i love to do is look at like geometry

books or uh higher math books that have or that have all kinds of diagrams in them i don't know what it is but it's so beautiful and the language of mathematics is so beautiful i've never been able to figure it out but i'm endlessly entertained by it yeah i am no i am no good at math either good yeah what is it what's going on out there people. It's a thing they're doing now. People put their car radios up to as loud as possible and open the windows and sing. Oh, well, you know, people are kind of crawling out of their skin. They need some relief. It's becoming a thing.

I know it's becoming a thing because I sometimes see the same cars circling. Oh, doing it? I think they're, you know're hoping they'll be discovered. Oh, really? By me. Yeah. Just being a pain in the ass. But happy that they're having a good time.

What about Ginsburg? When did you meet Ginsburg? I met Alan, again, right near the Chelsea Hotel. And I had written about this in Just Kids. I met Alan. I knew who Alan Ginsberg was, of course. Yeah. And I actually think I learned about Alan Ginsberg through Bob Dylan, it seems to me.

Right. I had never met him. And then I think probably early 1971 or somewhere in 1970, I was going to automat and uh to get a sandwich and i was really hungry and robert and i had hardly any money and i didn't have enough money i just had enough money for a sandwich so i put the money in and i went to get my sandwich out and uh it wouldn't open because they had upped the price from like 55 cents for this cheese and mustard sandwich to 65 cents yeah so i was like devastated because i was so hungry yeah and i hear this voice behind me and i was dressed like i had a long overcoat on and a like a mayakovsky cap you know yeah

it's kind of cool looking i mean i was like 22 or something and uh this guy says can i can i help and i i turned around and it's alan ginsburg and i just i was like wow and i just like this and he put a dime in i got my my uh sandwich and then he went and got me a cup of coffee and then he sat with me and I was like, speechless. I thought, geez, Allen Ginsberg is like getting me food and coffee. And then he starts talking away to me. And then finally I answer him. We start, he was talking about Camden and I, I'm from that general area.

So I started talking about Walt Whitman. And he looked and he goes, are you a girl? And I was, I've already read this, but since you're asking me, and I said, it's a true story. And I said, yeah, is that a problem? And he went, oh, no, no, no, no. I'm sorry. I thought you were a very pretty boy.

And I figured it out. Yeah. So I asked him, I said, Well, do I have to give you back the sandwich? Or, you know, can I keep the coffee? Yeah. And he started laughing. He said, No, it was my mistake. And then just, we just hit it off. We kept talking about Walt Whitman. But he had come to my rescue because he thought I was, I was often mistaken for a, cause I didn't wear makeup or anything like that. I just had an androgynous look, I suppose. So it was, that's how Alan and I met. And, and we, it's funny cause I met William cause I was trying to pick him up. Yeah. And which was equally fruitless. Because when William realized I was trying to pick him up, he said, my dear, I'm a homosexual.

I don't care. That's okay. But both of these men really were such, for me, great teachers and great friends. I mean, really, again, when my husband died in 94 and I had two small children, had to come back to New York, I was really at the lowest point in my life. It was Alan who came. Alan came right to my rescue, drew me back into working again, actually talked to Bob Dillon to ask Bob to maybe take me on a tour, help me get work. So these men, you know, I met these men both in 1970 in humorous circumstances, but they were lifelong friends. So when you

started to do, like, it seemed like you landed on poetry. Like, it seemed like you were doing a lot of stuff and you continued to do a lot of stuff, but poetry seemed to be the thing. Was that a decision you made at some point? Like, this is it. You know, I wanted to be an artist. That's what I wanted.

Period. And to me, an artist was the whole spectrum. Right, right. And, you know, I dreamed of being a painter and I always wrote and i always i wrote poetry since i was about 14 yeah and um but when i first came to new york working at a bookstore robert and i lived in a little apartment and i did little drawings but it was really uh the lion's share of my energy went into poetry.

And that's really how I wound up performing and recording later. It's all, the poetry was the genesis. Like even horses, the first lines of horses is, you know, Gloria is from a poem I wrote in 1970. Right. And Redondo Beach came from a poem. A lot of the, and the idea of improvising came from the way I wrote and performed poems. So, I guess I've always been, you you know poetry centric when it comes to my work even now when i write a lot less poetry um i still feel it invading my books like in year of the

monkey and any of these books that i write yeah i'll read something and i'll think you know that's three quarters poem but uh oh definitely yeah there's like I ended up like last night I don't know I was listening to like tangerine dream you know reading the that's so awesome reading the the rest of your book and like you know I'd read like over half of it already but I've got tangerine dream on I'm reading your book and all of a sudden I'm like underlining shit like this is poetry yeah there's definitely like i definitely see parts where you know if you just spaced it differently they just it'd be poetry a lot of the poetry i wrote when i was younger was um love centric or relationship centric, you know, and it's just as I got older, I've written,

I don't write so much of that anymore. So I'm, I find myself gravitating almost completely to prose. Well, yeah, I mean, I was thinking about that, like, you know, what you just said about, you know, the, you wanted to be an artist and an artist is all of it. And I and I think it seems to me like even in that this being your first Zoom and I I mean, I'm very excited to be part of a Patti Smith first. And it's not so bad. I was I mean, I have to I have to say I was a little worried about it. I thought, well, I don't know. I just didn't know what to expect. It's all right. It's fun so far.

It works. Yeah. But like when you talk about being a full artist in that, you know, that you did, you had to do all these things, whatever it was, that there is this general sense of the artist and art. I was talking to my buddy, Sam Lipsight, last night. He's a writer, a genius. I love him. And, you know, it struck me that, you know, even, you know, the, that you don't, you don't zoom, you don't have the headphones and you live the life of an artist, but you also, it seems to me in reading the books that you look to art to resolve all the fundamental questions of,

of existence. You look to art for relief. You look to art to make sense of the world. You look to it when you're just hanging out having coffee. There is almost a religiosity to what it can do for somebody if they surrender to it wholly and fully. It seems that's the life you live. Well, thank you. That's really a nice thing to say. But I think it's also, I look at, when I was very young, I always looked at being, well, that one is called to be an artist. to be it could be a priest or a musician or a doctor i mean it's you know one has a calling but you know i felt like it it was my calling i've never wanted to do anything else i don't really not that adept to do anything else um it's been a part of my life my whole life and even when i was very ill anytime i've been very ill or at the, you know, at the brink of despair, it always comes to me. It always gives me refuge or it always gives me a voice. It always,

or makes me feel that I have some worth, you know, that I have something, you know, to offer the canon of art or offer to people or offer to the future. And it's just, but, you know, I think of all of these things are linked together. If one has a calling, where does the calling come from? You know, one can say from God, from nature, you know, from some kind of vast energy pool. And I believe in those things. I mean, how I believe in it shifts as I evolve, but I've always connected. Art for me has not been a godless pursuit. So I always, I have it all within my work. I have connections with everything within my work. But I've also understood that being an artist, you know, there's a certain amount of sacrifice and also there's a certain amount of self-orientation. I mean, self-centeredness in being, I'm not talking about being conceited. own work centric creative of course creative centric which uh can be at the detriment to

how much um uh time or how much of yourself you give to others so there is you know it's not like it's the most benevolent of all the vocations but it's the one i it's the one i got it's interesting because i feel a calling i feel like i had a calling and I felt like I had no choice but to be a stand-up comic. I mean, that was it. Like there was no other thing to do. So, you know, that's what I did. And I do. There's other things we do.

I do this now. But whatever. But it's the ability to identify the calling and then actually have it in your brain that you have no other option is some sort of strange, you know, you know, commitment that I can't explain it, but maybe it's a it's a God thing. It's a spiritual thing. But like there's literally when you have it and you honor it, you're like there are no other choices. And then when shit gets tough, you're like, well, I guess I'm just fucked or else it's going to get me out of this. I don't know. I have no idea. I also think that for myself, I've been very.

Lucky because lucky or unlucky, because it's almost like I have like like I live on the on in a constant fork in the road and I'm always going up this road or that road because one great part of me as a performer is entrenched in collaboration, public life, collaboration with a crew with technology

with the people with my band it's entirely collaborative and it's very outgoing. And then the other part of me requires no one and desires no one. The writer part of me, it really requires no technology. I mean, I can get a notebook and a pencil. I can be off by myself. I don't need anything. I don't need anyone. And I keep vacillating or going back and forth to these two vocations, which is, again, why of this, of our lockdown was difficult because I had my bags packed. I was going on a world tour, a whole year of touring. I got myself ready for that.

at 73, one can start questioning how long you're going to be doing this. And I was ready for that. My whole psyche was ready for that, to be outgoing, to be more giving, to be more open with people. And then suddenly, lockdown, in solitude and stationary, which I wasn't mentally or physically prepared for so i was quite restless to say the least but but i've gotten into a groove yeah i mean i see i see the instagram stuff you seem to be kind of like at least writing daily taking pictures i am right but the first couple months i i didn't write as much as i am writing daily, but the first couple months,

I didn't write as much as I wished. The first couple of months was really getting a new mindset, reprogramming myself to suddenly being alone, to being in one place, not going anywhere, not doing anything publicly. So it was, you know, I had to retune. But, you know, I'm doing my work. You are. Yeah, you seem good.

I mean, you know, you can do these Zoom calls with anybody, Patty. Like, if you get used to this, you can hang out with people like this. It's really funny. It's just, I just, I saw my kids did this once and they asked me to sit in it. And I was like, for like three minutes, this is my first, I mean, I did that, but this is the first all by myself doing it with figuring it out and pressing the pipe thing and everything. I lasted about four minutes and I was like, I'll be right back. And I lasted about four minutes and I was like, I'll be right back. They're my kids and I love my kids.

But it was like all this talking and all these faces that I was like, let me out of here. Yeah. The other thing when you were talking about art and about, you know, like, you know, about writing and about choosing writing, you know, that writing becomes the primary as you get older. Is that what you're able to do? I mean, it's certainly in this book and Just Kids as well, is you're able to take your experience with people you love and people you respect, and then as they pass on, you integrate them into the universe of your own creativity through how you represent them in these books.

They become characters that none of us knew. Like, I didn't know sandy at all you know but like i had when i when i went and looked him up and i saw the work he did i saw the records he produced i you know i hear what you had to say but you're sort of interpreting of their moving on of their passing uh it it it creates another world for their existence it's kind of it's a beautiful thing, but it seems like, you know, that you are doing a lot of reckoning with this loss business,

you know? Well, I have my whole life. It's just, it seems to be something that, you know, and especially in the past, well,

I've just had a string of losses, you know, my, my pianist, Robert Mapplethorpehorpe my brother my husband my parents and just so many friends and sam and sandy in one year was it was quite a blow but i know the i think robert asked me to write just kids i i would have never written that book ever i never wanted to write non-fiction i just wanted to write just kids i i would have never written that book ever i never wanted to write

non-fiction i just wanted to write fiction and poetry robert asked me to write it the day before he died and i promised i would and it took me over 10 years to write it and um but what i was trying to do was give people give give people robert as a, you know, what is his idiosyncrasies and, you know, his work ethic, the way, how funny he was, how loving he was, or I think he wanted to be remembered more spectrally, but he also knew he could trust me. Right. Robert and Sam was alive when I, when I wrote m train sam as a car sam is in

m train yeah uh he's in the m train as himself and he's in m train as my sort of like guardian angel cowpoke writer and he he he loved this he he saw himself in Just Kids, and he knew that I presented him as we were. And that's what he said to me. I said, were you mad? Were you okay with what I wrote? And he said, it was just like it was. Yes. I like giving people, I like sharing my people with everyone.

Right now, I'm writing about my brother. Very few people knew my brother. My brother was an extraordinary person. He died when he was 42. And I just want people to know him. And I don't know. I don't even know what to say. I feel like you put a mirror up to me and I'm

thinking, oh, should I be doing that or what? But it is what I do. Of course. Of course you should be doing it. I was sort of amazed because I recently lost somebody that I loved tragically and quickly. And reckoning with loss, I've never had to do it. This is the first time. My parents are still fucking alive, you know, and, you know, and this woman was, you know, my, my girlfriend and she was in my house, you know, and I never had to, to deal with that, the, the trauma, the tragedy, and then the absence, you know, living with the absence. So what do you do with that? So I felt, you know, especially reading this and reading parts of Just Kids that, you know, it seems that you are integrating, you know, that absence into, you know, what life is. I mean, it's it's it's as if there's nothing unusual about loss and about death. It's the most common thing in the the world but it's like it's really a lot to

deal with but it's perfectly human well i i also like i i i a lot of my relationships a lot of my friendships would be long distance you know we wouldn't see each other for a while so you know but i always felt them with me i always felt sam with me when i traveled yeah if i didn't see each other for a while. So, you know, but I always felt them with me. I always felt Sam with me when I traveled. Yeah. If I didn't see him for a couple of months, I knew him for half a century. I knew that he was in my corner and I was in his. And, you know, it doesn't feel any different.

I do long to see him. I mean, he was such a beautiful man and he was so protective and i just his presence i miss his physical presence um more than i could have imagined but um but i also feel um you know i'm sure i'll write something else again and he'll be back again yeah i keep bringing him back you know he's um because he'll always be with me yeah i i don't see why he shouldn't be with me right of course yeah and lenny and you have been together for a million years now right yes i met Lenny not long after I met Sam. Lenny and Sandy were very good friends as well.

We all knew each other. You knew Sandy was like Sandy Pearlstein, right? Is that Pearlman? Pearlman, yeah. Pearlman was the manager and producer of Blue Oyster Cult for a lot of records? Yes, and he wrote a lot of their songs. He wrote a lot of their lyrics and the concepts right and uh you know a lot of those songs astronomy a star i wrote some of the lyrics i wrote career of evil and some of the other ones but the night i met

sandy um was my first poetry reading and i was with Sam and Lenny did a little guitar with me, played some feedback on some poems and, um, and Sandy Pearlman came up to me and, and told me I should be front in a band and asked me if I wanted to come and audition to sing, to be the other singer with Eric on what became Blue Oyster Cult. Yeah. They were called Stock Forest at the time.

And I just thought that was, I thought it was really funny. I mean, I said, Sam, I said, I said, this guy said the funniest thing to me. And he said, I don't think that's so funny. You could do that. You know? Yeah. said this guy said the funniest thing to me and he said i don't think that's so funny you could do that you know yeah and uh yeah but that was 19 february 71 and i wasn't even thinking about doing anything like that i wanted to you know i i think i had my first poetry book and you know i was very um poetry was my vocation that I was magnifying never even occurred to me. Down at the St. Mark's Poetry Project? Is that what it

was called? Yeah. It's weird the convergence of like you know that scene and the punk rock scenes all sort of like swirling around and then it just blows up. The weird thing is about you is like I'm listening to you you know from Horses and the first three records.

It's like, you know, you're a fucking rock star. I mean, that shit holds up. And like, you know, whatever you were doing with the poetry or whatever, there is, you know, when you sing on those songs. I saw you perform here in L.A. a couple years ago at that small club. It was, you know, when johnny depp came up and i think joe perry was there that was a good show you you were great you rocked hard but like you're like you know when you when i see you do that or i listen to those records i'm like this is you know you're a singular force in rock and roll i mean i mean i'm sure the poetry was great but

was there a certain amount of relief when you started to do rock and roll? Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's why it happened, because I got bored really quickly. You know, I mean, just reading poems. I had so much energy. I had really 78-speed natural energy. You know, I was just a wired kid, and I couldn't really be contained easily. Yeah.

I found that, you know, it happened. It started slow, but when it started happening and I started improvising over three chords. Yeah. I could just spew language. And plus, I liked, you I liked the physicality of it. But I was still thinking of it as poetry. I wasn't thinking that I was like a rock and roll singer. I didn't have any visions of me singing.

I was a performer. I still think of myself as a performer. But when it evolved to rock and roll and we were recording and going on the road, of course, you know, I loved rock and roll. Rock and roll saved my life when I was a kid. You know, being part of the evolution of rock and roll was helped form me. And I wanted to be like the best, you know, if I was going to be even a minor rock and roll star, I was going to be a good one.

I don't mean even talented. I just mean I would put all of my everything into being like, you know. All in the real deal. Yeah. Because, you know know who wants to be a mediocre rock star nobody there's a lot of them around though so when you like who were i mean it's pretty you have pretty specific rock heroes, though, don't you? That kind of compelled you?

Well, I mean, for me, I mean, I love Jim Morrison. And, you know, I mean, I love Bob Dylan, of course. Bob Dylan was a very important mentor from afar for me. But one of the people that I learned so much from yeah um was johnny winner really well because i got a job um for a while with steve paul steve paul wanted to sign me up to his record he opened up a record company in 1971 called blue sky records. And he wanted to give me a record contract. Yeah. In 1971.

But he wanted me to, he wanted to form me. Yeah. You know, he wanted to grow me. And I said, and he offered me a lot of money. And I said, I ain't doing that. I actually talked to William Burroughs about that. I said, this guy offered me like a huge amount of money, but it's not something I want to do. And he said, you know, you got to keep your name clean.

You got to never do anything that you know isn't right for you. Keep your name clean. Wow. But I needed, I wanted a shift. I wanted a different job. So I didn't take that, but I took a different job from him, sort of shadowing Johnny Winner when they went. They had to go to England because Johnny was colorblind. And they needed somebody with them to go, you know, walk across the streets, look at the traffic lights and roam around with him.

And Johnny liked me because johnny lived in chelsea hotel for a while and robert designed some of his clothes so so i started going to some of johnny's concerts well he wasn't like anybody that i would have thought i would have liked yeah i mean i was all i was jimmy hendrix all jimmy hrix, all the time. But I saw Johnny live many times, and I have to say 1970, 71, 72, I never saw anybody like him. Anyone as fierce as him. He would leap, the first person I ever saw that leaped into the people, leaped into the people would leap right off the stage. He commanded that whole stage. And the energy that that guy had and his body language was like nothing I ever saw.

He was like a wizard. Yeah, yeah. He wasn't my favorite guy. I mean, it wasn't even like my kind of music, but his physicality. And I learned a lot from him.'s a he's a monster guitar player i mean he's like and always always was you know he was almost bewitched it was like he was like bewitched i learned a lot from him i learned a lot of course you know i modeled myself a little after bob dylan and you know i i was wasn't uh embarrassed about you know um modeling myself after these guys no i mean bob dylan modeled himself after rambling

jack elliott for years but i uh you know i just got what i i mean i was myself but i got certain things from these people i got certain things i know from from jimmy h myself, but I got certain things from these people. I got certain things I know from Jimi Hendrix, or I got certain things from Lada Lenya. Yeah, sure. So I just took the things from masters because I had no training. I had no musical training. And I didn't replicate them. I just absorbed what I could learn from them.

Of course. Yeah, because it becomes seamless and you know you you know you take the magic of the the the heroes and you you integrate them into your sense of self and confidence and then you kind of bloom into your own thing you know you don't you know you don't become them but you know it's definitely magic i like the way you characterize johnny that you just saw that he was a vessel. You didn't know what it was, but it was in there, you know? And also, he was fearless. I saw Jim Morrison, and Jim Morrison, he was awesome. And he, like, pushed things as far as he could, but he always seemed afraid.

Interesting. I thought of him as a very paranoid-style performer. He seemed, because he had had you could feel i don't know what his own demons whatever he feared yeah i was a young girl i mean i'm i saw him in 1968 or something or 67 um but what i got from him wasn't the same thing i got from johnny right i got you know he had you know, I'm sure sometimes he might have felt like a god, Jim Morrison, but you also felt a self-loathing or something. He had a strange, he lacked self-love, I think. And i can't say that i understood him but his style didn't appeal to me

right right no i looked at him and i thought i didn't feel intimidated by his presence right well it seems like with johnny and even i can see that with you that you know you're all you're all in and you're not afraid of the vulnerability of being all in. Like, this is it. It's going to be awkward for some of you, but this is what it is, right? Well, I just think the thing that I wanted for our band and for myself was just that we were ourselves. Right. band and for myself was just that we were ourselves right you know however flawed i don't

know even that sometimes when i was awkward or sometimes when it seemed like i was like and acted like an asshole it did it didn't matter it was all you know i hate to use the word authentic it's just uh we didn't have any artifice right no. Yep. And if I sensed artifice or because of repetition, you know, a lack of complete engagement, then I would like mentally counsel myself about that. Because I didn't want that. I just wanted. Oh, and I just thought of another great performer, Bob Marley. What a great performer. Oh, yeah. Oh, my. He was an he was an awesome performer. He was another one that had you could feel him. It was like shamanistic. You could feel him entered. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Just beautiful energy. Yeah. It's all about's all about energy sure well what about some of your contemporaries what about what do you think of iggy well he was he was iggy came out before he was he's a he came in the 60s oh did he i guess performer yeah yeah i mean i guess yeah he's younger and and lou reed too is older too you're younger than those guys but they were around right they left their mark on the city. Iggy just started younger. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he started in the 60s after the MC5. Yeah.

I never even saw Iggy before until later in life. He wasn't on my radar. That's all. Yeah, because I guess your husband your husband iggy used to hang around their house or something right well i mean even i mean my husband i didn't know about you know i was from south jersey i didn't even hear about the velvet underground there you know it was like i came to new york and had to learn a lot about our present culture right and i didn't know anything about the mc5 or right or yeah you know when i when i first saw fred i just saw him as a as a guy yeah you know

across a crowded room and that was that you know yeah and how are your kids good my kids are they're they're great my my daughter does um works tire tirelessly and or um you know for climate change awareness she has a non-profit and she's a musician and uh she writes and my son is a great guitar player and has a family they're they're awesome my kids are they're just they they they magnify their the best of their father and i see myself somewhat in them and you know i love my kids great sometimes we all play on stage together and uh i love my kids because they're always my kids yeah i mean my son has come up we once we were playing i don't i think we were in spain or something there was like 30 000 people at a festival and my son was playing um lead guitar that night and uh we were on some song i can't remember

i'm singing the chorus and then there was a breakdown and my son is going mom mom mom and i'm going like what is it and he was saying uh uh i'm having a little rough time he was having a little rough time physically he said i don't know what kind of solo i'll be doing but just do the best i can and i said yeah yeah just do the best you can jack but we're like talking he's always my son yeah you know i'm always mom you know and of course he played great but he's uh you know i remember also we were touring with bob dylan and some reporter you know asked him what's it like having your mom as your mom and he goes she's my mom you know she makes dinner and she's you know washes the clothes and that was the best answer of all

i don't want to be anything else but but mom to my kids well it seems like you had a lot of time there where you could really focus for a while right well they were quite young when they lost their father but uh six and twelve but but um when their father was alive we were always with each other every day because fred and i both left public life and we lived very simply and we were always together you know we uh so we have a lot to remember yeah you, we have all of that time together. Good foundation. But also they just, my daughter plays piano and she sounds like Fred. Wow.

And my son, sometimes he's playing guitar and just sometimes the faces he makes or the tones that he draws, which are very unique. Yeah. Were very unique to Fred. And I've stood on stage and actually almost burst into tears hearing my son play it's so much would sound just like his father wow and he wouldn't even be conscious of it wow i bet you some of that stuff is just in there it's carried on oh yeah absolutely it's i've it's it's been proven to me that, you know, there's so many ways that we become who we are, you know, from the people that nurture us and from, you know, experience and what we study and all of the influences that we have. But also, blood can be a gift, too.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I definitely believe that's true. And another Jersey guy, Bruce. Are you friends with Bruce? Well, I mean, I know him. I mean, we don't have, we're not like uh we don't hang out or anything we're happy to see each other but um yeah i mean i'm also not i'm i'm not really a musician i don't really have a musician's lifestyle or hang out with you know musicians i mean even when lenny

and i are together we're like you know we're like two bums that yeah you know writer bums that also you know yeah old friends hanging out and the dylan thing um has he is he present in your life bob yeah believe me if bob was present in my life that no one would hear about because he is the most private man you can imagine. But no, Bob is not in my life except in the way that he is. He's been in my life since I was 15 years old. And I've had time when I've spent, gotten to talk to him a lot or sit and listen to him play. And then years not. had time when I've spent, gotten to talk to him a lot or sit and listen to him play. And,

and then years not, you know, it's, I don't, we don't, I don't have any established relationship with him. He knows I'm in his corner. So. Right. How did the, like, I'm sure you've told this story, but I don't know. I just watched it. How did the, um, the, the, thebel prize gig come up the nobel prize uh job came because they asked me to it was the nobel people i i play a lot in sweden and uh actually sort of you know well liked in sweden so uh the nobel people asked if i would sing for whoever won the literary lore, you know, who won for the Nobel Prize for Literature. And that year, there was some talk it might be Murakami. Yeah. And so I thought I would sing this song Wing because of the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

Well, it wasn't, it turned out to be Bob Dylan. And then I, I thought, Oh my gosh, I singing, I'm going to be singing for Bob. I, I can't sing one of my songs. I should sing one of his. Yeah. So I chose, um, hard rain hard going to fall because I felt that even though it was an early song it encompasses everything his poetry his uh you know his his humanity his sense of the environment his sense of you know all of the things that he believed you know that we all believe in are in that song And I thought it was the perfect way to introduce him. And of course, I had this terrible episode of strange white-out nerves.

greatest moments of live performing I've ever seen in my life. It is so personal. It's so odd the way it kind of, I know it must have been just horrible for you. Oh, it was, I thought I would die. Yeah. And I can, I really, I don't have any, when it comes to performing, I don't mind screwing up anything. And I screw up a lot, but it's my own screw up. Yeah.

But to screw up another person's work, especially Bob Dylan, who has meant so much to me throughout my whole life. It was terrible. But the self-correction of it was beautiful, because it was ultimately an act of respect. But it just that moment where you make the decision to be like wait a minute like every time i watch it i'm like oh my god as a performer like it almost makes me cry because it's like because it's so honest though

it's so honest and you know i don't know i thought it was great and everybody it seemed like everybody kind of woke up and realized that they were seeing a human it was kind of an amazing moment well at all uh it seemed universally to people that way and i'm grateful for that because at the moment with the orchestra behind me yeah giant and these cameras because they were global cameras going all over the world you know massive cameras and looking down and the king and queen of of sweden and and all of the noble lords and and all of this expectation and then suddenly to just freeze i I just froze. I mean, a song that I knew backwards and forwards just suddenly escaped me. And I didn't know what to do. I've never, I've had these things happen to me on stage where I can laugh and make a joke and say, well, like, we'll do this and then talk to the

people. I've had paranoid moments where I had to actually talk myself down with the people and say, I don't know what's wrong with me, but I feel really self-conscious. And people are always with you. And I know that people, most of the time, people are with you. If they come, they're going to be with you. It was just so humiliating and so frightening. But it turned out that, you know, it made people seem to identify it because everybody has these moments where they're the worst moments of their life. Everybody has these moments. And I guess it was just, I guess i had to be the poster poster girl for the worst moment of your life but um i am i don't that if it i feel about it now like i feel about everything if it's if it's served anybody then it's okay yeah you. You know, I've been in a pub that says you've got to serve someone. Yeah. Yeah. It's it seemed to serve people. Did he say anything about it?

Not to me directly, but I I know from the family that everyone seemed very happy. They seemed content with good with with with everything. Well, it's great talking to you i wanted to you know i was going to talk more about some of this like this line the the evidence of an awareness of the relative value of insignificant things like it seems that you know that like and i see some of your photographs too and i have a lot of little things that that really become personal magic objects sort of like you know you know triggers of of of emotion and nostalgia and and place and time i i love that appreciation of that and i like the way you look at them oh thank you mark that's so nice well i guess it's we've moved a mosey on but i had i this was really fun um it was great i wish i would sometimes

a little more articulate but i'm just not my you know i've become very mentally abstract in these months but really fun to talk no i thought it was great and i love talking to you and you know who was always telling me that he wanted us to talk you know barry skills you're oh barry he's my he's Barry Skills. Oh, Barry. He's one of my favorite people. He is really, I've been blessed to have him as a crew member and a friend. And I don't know if you know this, but he has my husband's motorcycle. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yes.

My husband had a Harley Sportster and Barry and I just had it you know none of us ride a motorcycle and it was you know you can't leave a motorcycle for years

not doing anything you know and Barry's dream I found out was to have a harley sports sports journey yeah and he is really he is really taken he has loved that barry also i have to say reminds me of my late brother todd so i always say he gets the toddy Award. Okay. And Barry, my brother was the head of our crew when we performed in the 70s. And Barry became the head of our crew when I went and returned to performing in the 90s. And he has really shepherded that motorcycle. He goes everywhere in it. He named it Sonic after Fred.

Oh, that's great. It's actually, he had it painted on it. Oh, wow. That's great. I didn't know that. Like I know him from doing Conan as a comic and he he'll, he'll, he'll work on my guitars occasionally and we'll talk about this and that, but he's a great guy, but he always used to say like, look, I'm going to talk to Patty. You guys got to talk. No, he keeps, he's been the one. He keeps saying, you have to do this.

And you have to do this. And talk about being in one's corner. He is in your corner. That's for sure. Well, that's sweet. Well, I just want to acknowledge that he's a great guy. And that, you know, he was always championing this. And I'm glad it happened.

Me too. Well, we'll have to do it again sometime. Cause there's a million things we could talk about. I can see. Helpfully in person, you know, like maybe we'll get back to some sense of normal. I'll come to New York with some microphones and we'll do it. Although I, I forgot that we, I mean, I'm, you know,

cause I'm the, any interviews I've done in the past six or seven months have been on the telephone. I haven't anybody. So actually I almost forgot that we're not, you know, just talking. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's great.

I'm so happy that you, we, we got you involved in the zoom thing and it's working out. Yep. All right. Well, take care of yourself. It's officially zoomed. You're zoomed. You've been zoomed patty smith thanks mark talk to you again soon i love her so much patty smith the book is you're the

monkey and everything else she's ever done go listen to those first three or four records again man damn right out of the gate just fucking mind blowing dean delray's got acdc i'm let there be talk today and now i'll play some guitar now i'll do it Thank you. guitar solo Boomer lives Monkey The Fonda Monkey. The Fonda. Cat Angels. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence.

Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth

at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5pm in Rock City at torontorock.com.