April 7, 2026 • 57 mins
The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping, Helter Skelter, the .44 Caliber Killers, the crime and grime of 70s New York; Central Park, the Chelsea Hotel, 42nd St., rape, murder, and the influence of junkie poets, and thieving novelists, all of it compelled Patti Smith to create music “for the criminals”, and perhaps to also survive, when so many other artists did not.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The story about
Patti Smith is steeped in true crime, everything from the
(00:21):
criminal influence of her artistic heroes Jean Jeanet and William S. Burrows,
to the impression made upon her from her mother's obsession
with America's first true crime of the century, the Lindberg kidnapping,
to the influence of the Manson murders in New York
City's forty four caliber killings that Patty lived through in
late seventies New York, to the crime and grime of
(00:43):
Central Park, the Chelsea Hotel in forty second Street, rape
and murder, all of it just to shot away, as
they say. But Patty Smith survived all of it to
become one of the last centuries great artists, a great musician,
someone who made great music. Unlike that music I played
(01:03):
for you at the top of the show. That wasn't
great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron
called Falling from Chelsea MK. Two. I played you that
loop because I can't afford the rights to One Bad
Apple by the Osmonds. And why would I play you
that specific slice of plastic sibling cheese? Could I afford
(01:27):
it because that was the number one song in America
on February tenth, nineteen seventy one. And that was the
day that Patti Smith first took the stage with more
than just words, with a guitarist at her side, and
began building a previously unimagined bridge between the art world
(01:47):
and rock and roll. And she did it for the criminals.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
On this episode, Junkies, Murderers, poets, playwrights, death, destruction, the
pursuing one's artistic calling, and how true crime helped Patti.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Smith survive at all. I'm Jake Brennan.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
This is Disgraceland.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Though Patti Smith is known as the godmother of Ponkin
was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
in two thousand and seven, She's much more than just
an iconic rock star. She's a literary luminary, a National
Book Award winner, and the recipient of the Penn Literary
Service Award. She's been honored by the French Ministry of
(02:53):
Culture and the Municipal Arts Society of New York, an
organization that in two thousand twenty four awarded Patty Smith
with their highest honor, the Jacqueline Kennedy on Nassis Medal,
She's met the Pope, she accepted a Nobel Prize on
behalf of and at the request of, none other than
Bob Dylan, and her name rings true throughout the same
(03:17):
universities and museums that teach and celebrate the author's poets
and artists Louisa may Alcott, Arthur Innbau, and Fried de Callo,
to name a few that Patty Smith has drawn inspiration
from throughout her life. To dismiss Patty Smith as merely
a rock star is like calling Steve Jobs a computer salesman.
(03:40):
She is not just a musician. She's what I refer
to as the high priestess of art, someone who holds
rare dual citizenship in the gritty origins of punk and
in the highest echelons of New York and European society.
(04:01):
Catholic priests speak of being called to the priesthood that
moment when they hear God's voice imploring them to serve Him,
to dedicate their lives to him, to sacrifice everything in
his name. Many of them faced not just persecution, but
even death in pursuit of their calling. Jesus's apostle Peter
(04:25):
was crucified upside down. Bartholomew, another apostle, was skinned alive,
tortured over days, and eventually decapitated. Deacon Lawrence of Rome
in the year two point fifty eight, a d was
roasted to death over an open fire. In seventeen ninety two,
(04:46):
during the French Revolution, over two hundred priests were massacred
by angry mobs in under forty eight hours. Spanish Clarician
priests Salvador and Jesuits, Mexican seminary students, and countless others
who were once called have been martyred and suffered horrific
deaths for their calling. But Patti Smith, who once famously
(05:11):
saying Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine, was
no martyr. She was and is an artist, and similar
to priests, artists here recalling they must also navigate danger,
violence and potential death murder even in pursuit of their art.
(05:34):
So when and where was Patti Smith, the high Priestess
of art called to become an artist And what kind
of danger of violence and true crime did she have
to escape to become the artist we all know her
to be As a little girl in suburban New Jersey
(05:55):
in the nineteen fifties. The first stories Patti Smith heard
were dark. The original Brother's Grim collection of children's fairy
tales from the eighteen hundreds spoke of a stepmother in
the Juniper Tree story who decapitated her step son and
cooked his flesh in a soup to serve to the
boy's unsuspecting father. In the original version of Cinderella entitled Askinputul,
(06:21):
one stepsister uses a knife to cut off her toes,
and another hacks off the heel of her foot. Yet
these stories were nothing compared to what Patty later read
in the Bible, specifically in the Old Testament, where in
Judges nineteen, one woman is severed into twelve different pieces,
(06:42):
each given to a different tribe of Israel. Her sin Nune,
she was offered up to protect the crimes of a rapist.
In Judge's four, Yale offers an unsuspecting enemy general hospitality.
When the general fall asleep, Yale takes a spike and
(07:03):
hammers it through his skull. In Kings nine, Queen Jezebel's
eunuchs throw her from a window, where she's then trampled
to death by horses. Horses horses and horse and later
on as a teenager, rape and murder were more than
just shot away. All of these stories were right there,
(07:29):
out in the open, in Patti Smith's Bible, and in
her history books, and in the museums she visited as
a child. If the executioner was feeling merciful, he'd build
the pire low to the ground to ensure a quick death.
But this executioner was not feeling merciful. He built the
(07:52):
pire extra high so that Joan of Arc would be
guaranteed a prolonged and painful death. That's exactly what happened.
The flames took their time. The ancient Greeks used funeral
pyres to honor their departed emperors and heroes. The Romans too,
not the English. When it came to Joan of Arc.
(08:14):
They had something else in mind, revenge, public disgrace, maximum
pain in the eyes of the English dominated Ecclesiastical Tribunal
of fourteen thirty one, nineteen year old Joan of Arc
was a heretic. She claimed she'd been called by a
divine voice. She cut her hair, she dressed like a boy.
(08:37):
She made a mockery of modern authority in social norms
and in the process inspired and uprising that turned the
tide of the hundreds years War, driving the English out
of France. And for those perceived sins, she was now
roped to a stake in Market Square in the city
of Ruan, high above a gritted stack of dry wind wood,
(09:00):
built to burn slow and fierce, with its blue flames
snapping at the skin of her feet, and black smoke
corroding her lungs, white hot pain piercing every cell in
her body. The blaze rose up over her legs, her midriff,
and no one heard her scream and no one saw
her cry when the inferno engulfed her completely. Soon enough,
(09:26):
Joan of Arc was gone, but embodied only another martyr,
this one officially executed for the crimes of heresy and
cross dressing, but whose life's work would inspire generations and
whose name would forever ring true. In nineteen sixty six,
(09:48):
herself just nineteen years old, Patti Smith stood outside on
the streets of Philadelphia, across from the Museum of Modern Art,
about five miles from the more modern Market Square, and
looked up at a statue of Joan of Arc, Emmanuel
Fremier's gilded bronze depiction of the young martyr cast a
piercing impression upon young Patty. Here was this woman her
(10:12):
own age, who gave everything for what she believes. It
was then that Patty knew she would have to do
the same. It was then that Patty Smith heard her
calling in the shadows of martyrs and museums, to become
an artist. The stakes of failing to fulfill her life's
(10:33):
goal were, as they are for most teenagers, dramatic and intense.
A life as anything but an artist, a life as
something else in suburban New Jersey, would be its own
kind of death. But art was dangerous, and not in
the fairy tale Old Testament, musty historical kind of way,
(10:55):
but in a real and scary kind of way. One
of Patty's favorite novelists, Jean Janet, lived in squalor, forced
into a life of crime, and nearly imprisoned for life.
One of her favorite musicians, the jazz singer Billie Holiday,
died addicted to heroin. In her final living moments, she
(11:17):
was handcuffed to her bed by federal agents and placed
under arrest for narcotics possession. One of Patty's favorite painters,
Jackson Pollock was driven to alcoholism and eventually off the
road in his Oldsmobile, where he flipped his car, crushed
his skull, and decapitated one of his passengers. And these
were just the artists that Patty knew about thanks to
(11:40):
her true crime obsessed mother. Patti Smith also knew about
the dangers of the world right outside her suburban window.
Nineteen thirty two, Patti Smith's mother was traumatized by events
that were unfolding over the radio airwaves, just as the
rest the nation was One of America's most famous sons,
(12:04):
the aviator Charles Lindberg, was the victim of what had
quickly become America's most famous crime. Lindbergh's twenty month old
son had been kidnapped. The kidnapper used the latter to
creep into the second story nursery of the Limburg's New
Jersey estate. Within twenty four hours of the abduction, the
(12:24):
crime was a national sensation. By daybreak, over one hundred
reporters and photographers had breached the gates of the estate
and contaminated the crime scene. Notorious mafioso Al Capone issued
a statement from a Chicago jail cell offering a reward
for the return of the baby, and before the night
(12:45):
of the crime had ended, newswires like the Associated Press
were deluged with bulletins, transmitting over fifty thousand words in
just hours. Radio stations across the country took the unprecedented
step of canceling all all programming to issue a coordinated
bulletin describing the child's appearance, in effect creating a complete
(13:08):
national radio blackout, And it was through the radio that
Patty Smith's mother became transfixed with the early details of
the crime, as well as the saga's conclusion. Ten weeks
after the kidnapping, the badly decomposed body of Charles Lindbergh's
baby was found by a truck driver relieving himself on
(13:30):
the side of a New Jersey highway. The infant's corpse
had been partially scavenged by animals, Just like Jezebel and
the horses, and like Pollock and the crushed skull, like
Yale's enemy a hole through the head, and like Joan
of Arc, the Lindbergh Baby would not soon be forgotten.
(13:51):
Young Patty Smith was transfixed by her mother's retelling of
this story. She never forgot it, just like she never
forgot the grim or the Old Testament where Jean, Billy
Jackson or Joan. The lesson she took was that life
was dangerous, and so too the pursuit of art was dangerous,
(14:13):
and in nineteen sixty seven, the only place to really
pursue art was in America's most dangerous place, New York City.
(14:51):
The whispers Patty Smith heard at night in Central Park
where the stuff of terror. The park was more than
a few colic playground for New Yorkers to laze away
their afternoons. Each night it became a den of violent criminals, thieves, rapists,
and murderers, all prowling about for the ruination of souls.
(15:15):
Central Park was also Patti Smith's sometime bedroom. It was
where she'd lie down during that first summer when she
arrived in the city. On those nights when she couldn't
find a welcoming doorway in which to lay her head,
Central Park was where she slept, And in nineteen sixty seven,
Central Park was also the place where a fifteen year
(15:39):
old girl was brutally raped and her friend stomped so
severely that he was left in critical condition. It was
in the mid nineteen sixties, a place where nearly one
thousand felonies were committed on average each year. In Central
Park during the Summer of Love. For all the groups
(16:00):
of young hippies strewn about on blankets with acoustic guitars
and flowers in their hair, there were just as many
self described wolf packs, hordes of young neighborhood delinquents swarming
the park in shifts to rob in Maine, not just
the hippies, but the homosexuals cruising the park so called
predatory zones. Patti Smith may have slept in Central Park,
(16:25):
but it was in another park where she met the
first great love of her life, Robert Maplethorpe. She knew
him from the bookstore where she'd taken a job. He
was a customer, and she was in Tompkins Square Park
on a date with an older man, a man who
could afford to buy her a meal that she could
not afford to buy herself. But in New York City,
(16:49):
nothing's free, so just before the man attempted to collect
his payment sexually, Patti Smith recognized the good looking boy
from the bookstore and ran to him in the park,
introducing him on the spot to a predatory lunch date
as her boyfriend Robert Maplethorpe, who was high on LSD
(17:10):
at the time, went along with the ruse, which he
no doubt thought was hilarious. Robert found Patty Lee Smith
to be not only funny, but also sexy, intelligent, creative,
a perfect partner in crime for his own first foray
into New York City. They shared the same goal to
(17:31):
become artists. They weren't sure what kinds of artists they
wanted to become, just that they were most certainly destined
to create things that would change the world of culture
and art as they knew it. In their first apartment together,
the one in Brooklyn where they had to scrub the
wall of the splattered blood and psychotic scribblings from the
(17:52):
previous tenant, they painted, created drawings and collages, and wrote.
They read the great of the great writers, those who
were also criminals, not just Jean Jannet, but Paul Verlaine,
oh Henry and William S. Burrows, Burrows who shot and
killed his wife in a game of William Tell and
(18:14):
got away with it. And they studied to Cooney and Rivera,
Warhol and Picasso, and prayed at the altar of Coltrane
sympathized with those devils, the rolling Stones, and filled in
the oor gaps with the Cherells and Dylan Bob not Thomas.
They had little food, even less money, and they stole
(18:35):
when they had to, but they never begged. What they
did have was desire, and that desire gave way to faith,
and faith to creation, and soon the artistic callings of
each would bear fruit. Robert with photography and Patty with words.
(18:56):
A new apartment, this one in Manhattan, signified progress, with
the chalk outline of the dead body outside the front
door precipitated another move to a less dangerous neighborhood, so
further uptown they went to the Chelsea Hotel. These days,
(19:16):
the Chelsea Hotel on West twenty third Street, like most
of Manhattan, is a glitzy, gentrified incarnation of what it
once was a dangerous rooming house for bohemian vagabonds. In
nineteen sixty nine, the Chelsea was part artist colony, in
part central command for the drug fueled late sixties counterculture,
(19:39):
housing and hosting the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen
in The Velvet Underground's Nico Salvador Dali, stayed at the
Chelsea when there was no room at the Saint Regis.
Alan Ginsburg cruised the lobby for dates, even taking Patty
to lunch one day, mistaking her with her short crop
Joan of arc Hare to be a young pretty boy.
(20:01):
Dylan died at the Chelsea Thomas not Bob, while the
poet fell into a coma in Room two five after
downing eighteen straight whiskies before he was carried off to
be pronounced dead at Saint Vincent's. The Andy Warhol superstar
Edie Cedric set her room at the Chelsea on fire
while high on barbituates. She had to be rescued from
(20:23):
room one oh five, where Warhol has shot part of
his acclaim nineteen sixty six film Chelsea Girls. In a
few years prior, a twenty year old dancer named Lucille
Andell found herself on the roof of the Chelsea Hotel.
She walked carefully on her tiptoes close to the edge
(20:43):
before giving into the darkness that had overtaken her and
plunging to her death ten stories below. Along the way,
the usually graceful Lucille struck the third floor fire escape
with a thud, partially dismembering herself before pancaking on West
twenty third. But all the danger that the Chelsea Hotel
(21:06):
represented didn't scare Patty Smith. Instead, it compelled her. Besides,
Patty could navigate it. She wasn't big into drugs and
she seldom drank. And besides, she and her partner, Robert
Maplethorpe were broke. Which other hotel would take art as
collateral until they could come up with the cash to
(21:27):
rent a room. None, and no other hotel had Burrows
and the poet Jim Carroll roaming its halls. Patty befriended
both of them. She also befriended Janis Joplin, who stayed
in Room four or eleven during her run of shows
at the Fillmore East. Patty listened to Janis express herself
(21:47):
through music. Patty worked up poems with Jim Carroll, and
Patty met Bob Dylan's fixer and confident on, Bob Newarth.
Bob Newarth encouraged Patty to work her poems into songs,
to listen Hank Williams, to listen to blind Willie mctel,
to get down to the root of what she felt
and to pull it out and spill it all over
(22:09):
open chords on an acoustic guitar creatively. Patty was encouraged
and compelled. Robert was too, but in a darker way.
It was nineteen sixty nine The Rolling Stones, as Brian
Jones had died, and so too did the lsd Dreams
(22:30):
from the Summer of Love. Robert took the stone sympathy
for the devil a little too literally. Charles Manson was
all anyone at the Chelsea could talk about in nineteen
sixty nine. Just as Patty Smith's mother had been obsessed
with the Lindberg case, Robert Maplethorpe was obsessed with this
latest crime of the century. Out in Hollywood. Seven people
(22:52):
were dead in what appeared to be a ritualistic murder
spree with a decidedly rock and roll edge. The Tate
Labians in August of nineteen sixty nine were hard not
to be affected by, and so Robert Maplethorpe began working
a darker vision into his art. He became obsessed with
(23:13):
the concept of evil. It was a stark counterpoint to
his Catholic upbringing, a reflection of what he saw on
the street up on forty Second, where he hustled sex
for cash to help support himself and Patty. Patty worried
about Robert. Sex work was as dangerous as a gun.
(23:35):
Nineteen sixty nine, Midtown Manhattan, forty second Street aka the Deuce,
a neon open air sex market, predators and prey pros
and junkies applying their trade for pimps and pushers, chicken hawks,
older skeevee looking men in trench coats on the prow
(23:57):
for young runaways. A few went a long way. A
runaway could make a buck or two with one job
and be able to afford a slice of pizza, a coke,
and a movie ticket into one of the theaters, the Liberty,
the Empire, the Victory, and be able to pass out
in relative peace and quiet until the shakedown artist showed
up looking to rob this loosing patrons out on the street,
(24:22):
Robert Maplethorpe kept as cool. It was all about the look,
the right nod from the right dude, and Robert knew
it was on. But danger was everywhere. Cops supposed as
John's to entrap hustlers and turn their backs when they
were harassed and assaulted. Many clients refused to pay. Some
(24:44):
insisted on rough stuff with hustlers, strangulation, knife play. Sickos
were slitting the throats and the theaters and the working
boy's screams drowned out by the soundtracks blasting from the screens.
Robert was a quote unquote rent boy, or so he
told himself. He worked the streets to help pay his
(25:05):
and Patty's rent at the Chelsea. It wasn't the sex
so much that bothered Patty, it was the danger. Their
relationship was an open one, and Robert's homosexuality by this
time was no secret. It was also around this time
that Patty became romantically involved with the poet Jim Carroll.
Jim hustled up on forty second Street as well. Robert
(25:29):
asked Jim how he knew that he wasn't gay. Jim
told him that he knew because he always asked for money,
whereas sometimes Robert didn't. Either way, Jim hustled for heroin
and Robert hustled for rent. For Robert there was no
other way to support his pursuit of becoming an artist,
(25:51):
and for Patty there had to be a less dangerous way.
Sam Shephard was that way. Sam was a writer, a
California Cowboy a musician, an established off Broadway playwright, and
by the time he and Patty Smith began their affair
(26:12):
at the Chelsea Hotel, already a husband and father. It
didn't matter. Sam encouraged Patty to sing, He bought her
her first guitar. He encouraged her artistically romantically. Sam was dangerous,
but compared to Jim Carroll.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
He was safe.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Sam Shepherd exuded life, not junkie death. Sam didn't hustle, well,
he did, but in a different way. Sam made shit happen,
and by the time he was twenty seven, he'd won
four Obie Awards for four different plays. The Obis are
the highest awards given to off Broadway artists. Sam Shephard
(26:53):
won three in one year. Sam convinced Patty that she
had something to say, as if she needed further validation,
but still hearing that her words carried weight from a
sexy award winning playwright, couldn't hurt. Sam prevailed upon Patty
to collaborate with him on a new play, and they
(27:14):
called it Cowboy Mouth. Cowboy Mouth was a semi autobiographical
account of Sam and Patty's relationship. Both acted in the
two lead Roles when it was staged in April of
nineteen seventy one, and there it was Sam and Patty's
illicit relationship brought to life for all to see. Afterward,
(27:37):
Sam freaked out, he had a wife and a kid,
that it was wrong and he knew it. He abruptly
left New York City to return to his family in Vermont.
At first, Patty was devastated, but it didn't take long
before she put a relationship with Sam Shepard in the
proper perspective. It was brief, explosive, and overall a positive
(28:00):
experience in the end, despite who got hurt and how
it was worth it because Sam Shepard helped Patty Smith
finally find her voice. Cowboy Mouth wasn't just autobiographical. It
was also about a character who moves seamlessly between art
and crime, specifically music, rock and roll, actually and crime.
(28:26):
To this point in her life, Patti Smith had spent
her life moving between art and crime, shoplifting, harrowing, hustling,
Charles Lindbergh, Charles Manson, chalk outlined bodies and blood stained
tenement walls, Jean Janet, William Burrows and William Tell, Willie Micktell,
Bob Newarth, Robert Maplethorpe, and Jim Carroll, Sam Shepherd. It
(28:51):
was all one big art and crime collage. It was
who she had become, and now it was time to
give voice to all of that transgressive inn influenced, to
bridge the gap between art and artist, to be the
voice of the voiceless, for those persecuted for following their calling,
for their crimes, and to do it all with rock
(29:14):
and roll. We'll be right back after this.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
We're We're where.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
On February tenth, nineteen seventy one, Patti Smith stood on
stage at Saint Mark's Church in New York's East Village
and stared out at the crowd. By her side, a
lanky and musically lethal guitar playing friend Lenny Kay, staring
up at them. From the audience, who's who of Downtown Cool,
(29:48):
Lou Reed, Todd Rudgren, Robert Maplethorpe, Alan Ginsburg, and Moore.
The evening was billed as a night of poetry featuring
the Warhol, performance artist and poet Gerard la and Patty Smith.
For whatever reason, Patty decided to include a musical element. Lenny.
(30:09):
Lenny was already a musical Encyclopedia. He wrote for jazz
and pop Rolling Stone Crawdaddy, and at the time was
busy assembling songs for what would become one of the
greatest compilation albums in rock and roll history, The Nuggets
Original Artifacts from the Psychedelic Era nineteen sixty five to
nineteen sixty eight set, which would become the definitive collection
(30:32):
of American garage rock singles and eventually one of punk
rock's guiding lights. In fact, the Nuggets Liner Notes feature
one of the earliest uses of the term punk rock.
Lenny Kay not only knew how to play guitar, Lenny
Kay knew his ship. With Lenny at her side, Patty
(30:54):
Smith stared out into the audience. As the crowd settled,
the two performers looked at get their faces flushed with anticipation.
They could all sense it something different was about to happen.
New Yorkers know this feeling. It's familiar, the promise of
the new that feeling that you're about to be let
(31:15):
in on the secret, in on something special. It's a
promise that in the nineteen seventies, New York City seemed
to constantly fulfill. The lights dimmed guitar feedback began to
creep from Lenny's amplifier, and the crowd dropped their nervous chatter.
The feedback unfurled throughout the room, bending both piercing and
(31:39):
warm at the same time, like a blanket of nails,
and Patty grabbed the microphone atop the stand with one hand,
raised her other hand in the air, and abruptly brought
it down to her side. Lenny muted his guitar silence.
Patti Smith leaned into the microphone and said, said, this
(32:01):
one's for the criminals. With that, Lenny kay released the
squeal and squawk from his Gibson melody Maker, and Patty
meted out the powerful words from the first lines of
her poem Oath, Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine.
And suddenly it wasn't a poem anymore. It was a song,
(32:26):
and with Lenny it was rock and roll. Patty Smith
had answered her calling and people loved it. The crowd
that night adored her, and Patty was indeed something new,
something unseen, a transgressive hybrid of poetry and music with
something powerful to say. The sins of her generation were
(32:48):
not yet answered for and maybe they weren't even sins
who knew? That was the point, all the crime, all
the transgression, the so called sins, The cross was there
and theirs alone to bear heresy. Like all great art,
the action is in the risk. Patty's words were shocking,
(33:11):
like Joan of ARC's words. Patty's possessed unyielding conviction, and
those words had the power to inspire. And inspire they did.
Patty and Lenny brought their rock and roll poetry hybrid
to other stages. After this, they opened for the New
York Dolls at their famed Mercer Art Center gigs. They
(33:32):
played Le Jardin at the Other End, which had been
and would again be called the Bitter End, And before long,
in nineteen seventy five, Patty found herself on the Bowery
in Manhattan's Lower East Side, with all its grit and grime,
a motley collection of the unhoused and unwashed, derelics and
(33:53):
artists clinging desperately to a world trying to shake them
loose like fleas on the backside of a rabid dog,
all just steps from William S. Burrows's apartment, where the
iconic novelists lived in Squalor and would receive Patty as
a guest whenever she was in the neighborhood. It was
just Patty in her fearlessness, in her curiosity, and Borrows
(34:15):
and his heroin and his shotgun. Down the street near Bleaker,
the crowd assembled outside the doors of Cebe Gebi's A
Little Die. No one had cared about five minutes before.
But tonight, Patty, in the new band she'd assembled with
Lenny on guitar, Richard Sole on piano, Ivan Carl on bass,
and j. D. Darty was set to perform the Patti
(34:38):
Smith Group, along with one of the most inventive groups
to come out of the nineteen seventies in New York television.
Both bands were in the midst of a multi week residency.
Just like at the Saint Mark's Church gig a few
years prior, you could feel the anticipation in the air,
except now there were actual stakes. Ever since that first
(35:00):
performance at Saint Mark's, Patty was heralded as a savior.
This new art she was creating, this poetry rock and
roll hybrid. It was the natural progression of a century
long march from the romance of Arthur Rimbau to the
squalor of Jean Jeannet, to the grime of Jim Carroll,
to the pop of the Andy Warhol, to the music
(35:22):
of Patti Smith. And therefore, Patty's music was seen as
the antidote to the poisonous, drivel filling airwaves in the
mid seventies, soulless, bloated, spiritually starved rock music. Patty was
unofficially drafted by New York's downtown tastemakers and uptown glitterati too.
(35:43):
As she said, quote, preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary
spirit of rock and roll unquote, And that's exactly what
the Patti Smith Group did each night at CBGB's. Patty
drew strength from her mentor William S. Burrows in her
best friend, the first great love of her life, Robert Maplethorpe,
(36:03):
both of whom positioned themselves each night right up front.
Robert was devoted to Patty's success as an artist in
the same way he was to his own, on a
near spiritual level. Soon, the powerful executive Clive Davis from
Arista Records would also devote himself to Patty's success, signing
her to a lucrative recording contract. The Patti Smith group's
(36:28):
debut album, Horses, produced by the Velvet Undergrounds John Cale,
the one with the stark and beautiful Robert Maplethorpe portrait
of Patty on the cover, did what it was supposed
to do, its part to save rock and roll. The
album begins with a bang, just as Patty did at
Saint Mark's, with the powerful rejection of the past. Somebody
(36:50):
sins but not mine. Horses nailed the moment. Kids loved it,
so did the critics. None other than america greatest rock
critic Lester Bangs said in his Cream magazine review that
Patty's songs on Horses touched quote deep wellsprings of emotion
that extremely few artists in rock or anywhere else are
(37:13):
capable of reaching. Unquote that was just it, few artists
in rock or anywhere else. I don't know if Lester
Bangs intended to cast Patty's are outside the parameters of
rock or not, but that's exactly where her creativity was
leading her. She wasn't just a musician. She was clearly
(37:35):
something else, something new, someone an artist who wasn't only
revealing something about herself and her listeners. She was revealing
something that hadn't been revealed before. Here was an artist
who was reclaiming rock and roll from under the safe
nightlight of mainstream rocks radio play duvet and dragging it
(37:55):
back under the grimy blanket of nails inhabited by the
criminal underworld, both the perpetrators and the victims. Patty Smith
was a revolution in an iconic twist. Her cause was
celebrated not only downtown but uptown as well. Soon elite
culture would take note and open its doors. Aside from
(38:20):
the predictable grousing from conservative detractors over her line about Jesus, everyone,
it seemed, loved Patty Smith's music except Robert Maplethorpe. Well,
not exactly. Robert was an ardent supporter of Patty's, but
ever since their earliest days, when Patty would sing to
them back in that Brooklyn apartment, Robert would always say
(38:42):
to her, sing me a song I can dance to, Patty.
The world didn't dance to the songs on horses. They
studied them like something worthy of a museum exhibit. No,
the dancing would come later with Bruce Springsteen, perhaps you've
heard of. At the time, Bruce Springsteen had just become
(39:02):
the definition of an overnight sensation upon releasing his third album,
Born to Run. The previously obscure rock and roll bandleader
had rocketed to stardom when he appeared on the covers
of both Newsweek and Time magazine simultaneously. Now, in July
of nineteen seventy six, he was filing a lawsuit against
his manager, trying to extricate himself from a horrible contract,
(39:27):
one that he believed to be criminal. Patti Smith, at
the time, was playing shows in support of horses and
preparing to record her follow up album, Radio Ethiopia, while
living with her new boyfriend, the guitarist from Blue Oyster Cult,
Alan Lanier. None of them knew it yet, but all
three of these artists, much like their New York City fans,
(39:49):
were about to be gripped in fear. Young lovers like
Patty and Allen, and like the couples who flocked to
records stores to purchase Springsteen's records, were about to get
swept up in a year of paranoia because the New
York City night now belonged to a lunatic July twenty ninth,
(40:13):
nineteen seventy six, one ten Am Pellam Bay the Bronx,
two women eighteen year old Donna Lauria and nineteen year
old Jody Valenti sat in a nosemobile on the side
of the road in the dark of night, discussing the
time they just had at Peachtrees, a local discotheque, and
the heavy rhythm from the tramps that's where the happy
(40:35):
people go supplied the adrenaline still coursing through them. The
vibe was pierced by a passing car on a not
so far away street blaring the haunting new hit by
Blue Oyster Cult, Don't Fear the Reaper. Suddenly the mood turned,
the street got a little darker, the inside of the
(40:55):
car a little quieter. Donna opened the door to leave.
From out of the darkness a man with a gun.
Donna startled. The man crouched onto one knee, took aim
at Donna with both hands, and Jody screamed. Donna Lauria
died instantly. The gunman got off another two shots, and
(41:17):
one hit Jody in the thigh. She lived to tell
the harrowing story to the New York newspapers. Three months later.
The next shootings happened two young lovers, eighteen year old
Rosemary Keenan and twenty year old Carl Denaro escaped the
killer who fired into Karl's car and Queen's Carl took
(41:39):
a bullet in the head but survived and sewed, did Rosemary.
The cops connected the forty four caliber shell casings from
the Queen shooting to the Bronx shooting, and the papers
came up with a spiffy name for this lunatic terrorizing
New Yorkers, the forty four caliber killer. Baby, Don't Fear
the Reaper. That line from the Blue Oyster cult single
(42:03):
kept asking the impossible from speakers across the city in
the spring. In summer of seventy six and later in November,
another shooting Seasons, Don't Fear the Reaper. Another couple of
teenage girls, another Donna, this one Donna Demassi sixteen, along
(42:23):
with joe Anne Lomino eighteen. Two shots and both girls survived,
but the papers, especially the New York Daily News columns
Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, traded ink for industry scale paranoia.
New Yorkers sweated out the winter. La la la la La,
(42:44):
Don't Fear the Reaper. The new year nineteen seventy seven
new shootings, another couple alone in the car. Christine Freud
twenty six and John Diale thirty both were shot. She survived,
he didn't, and the papers did their thing and the
public paranoia ratcheted even higher. Love of two is one here,
(43:10):
but now they're gone. March eighth, nineteen seventy seven, another
shooting college student, Virginia Vouscashin, was walking back to her
home in Queen's in the dark after class when the
gunman appeared out of nowhere. She saw the gun, she
raised her textbook in front of her face. The gunman shot,
and the bullet blasted through the book and into Virginia's face.
(43:33):
Virginia was dead here, but now they're gone. A month later,
a model and her boyfriend parked at about three am
on the side of the Hutchinson Parkway in the Bronx.
One dead model, one dead boyfriend. Romeo and Juliet are
together in eternity. Come on, baby, don't fear the reaper.
(43:58):
And on May thirtieth, nineteen seventy seven, when Daily News
Calmness Jimmy Breslin was revealing to the world the psychotic
ramblings of the forty four caliber killer sent to Breslin
himself by the Killer, who claimed for all to be,
in his words, the Son of Sam aka the self
proclaimed Chubby Bohemoth aka Beezlbub aka Satan aka Death Himself
(44:24):
aka the Reaper. While Breslin freaked New York City the
fuck out, while cops hunted for the killer and the
killer hunted for victims, Patty Smith was planning her next album,
her third, the follow up to Radio Ethiopia. And while
the NYPD hunted for the Son of Sam, Patty was
(44:48):
still hunting for a song her friend Robert Maplethorpe could
dance to. By June of that year, Bruce Springsteen had
finally extracted himself from his legal problems. It was work
on his belated follow up to Born to Run, an
album called Darkness on the Edge of Town, and there
was plenty of darkness to go around, especially in New Yorktown.
(45:12):
Investigators were at a dead end, unable to hunt down
the Sun of Sam. The Knight no longer belonged to
the city's lovers, but Springsteen didn't care. There was something there,
the wisp of a song. As the sessions began with
producer Jimmy Iavin, Springsteen had the chorus it was defiant, triumphant.
(45:33):
It reclaimed something. It went because the knight belongs to lovers.
But that was it. That was all he had. The
end of June came and the Son of Sam shot
another couple, Salvatore Lupo twenty and Judy Placibo seventeen, and
both survived. The Cobs kept up their hunt for the killer,
(45:56):
but were still coming up empty by the end of
the month. July hit with the heat of a thousand suns,
and that meant that it had been a full year
of terror in New York City. The self proclaimed chubby
bohem Is celebrated by shooting at a parked car a
couple kissing on their first date. Stacey Moskowitz and Robert Violente,
(46:17):
both twenty. Both were shot in the head. Stacy lived,
Robert did not. In August, Patty Smith entered the record
Plan to begin work on her new album. That same week,
police acting on a tip interviewed a chubby twenty something
postal worker up in Yonkers named David Berkowitz. The following day,
(46:41):
Berkowitz was arrested. The Son of Sam manhunt had ended.
New York breathed a sigh of relief. Patty Smith kept
her head down and worked, still hunting for a hit,
a song Robert Maplethorpe could dance to. On September twenty seventh,
(47:02):
Jimmy Ivien, who was also now producing Patty's new album,
brought Springsteen's demo of Because the Knight into the studio
for Patty. Patty heard something in the song that Bruce
hadn't not just defiance, but again reclamation. She channeled it
all into verse lyrics, Come on, now, try and understand
(47:24):
the way I feel when I'm in your hands, take
my hand, come undercover. They can't hurt you now, can't
hurt you now, can't hurt you now, because The Knight
belongs to lovers once more, and now the Son of
Sam was behind bars, and young couples in New York
(47:45):
were once again free to frolic. Because The Knight was
a massive smash. Patty Smith had her hit, and Robert
Maplethorpe had a song he could dance to. Now Patty
(48:24):
Smith was more than just an artist. For a minute,
it seemed Patty Smith was a pop star. Because The
Night was Patty Smith's commercial breakthrough. It was a top
forty hit, top five in the UK Easter. The album
that the single supported sold better than Patty's previous two
(48:45):
albums combined. But pop stardom was never her goal being
an artist was. An artist need fuel and inspiration, and
sometimes the only source for them is love and Naturally,
while at the top of her game, Patti Smith walked
away from the game. She fell in love with another artist,
(49:07):
another guitarist, this one fred Sonic Smith from the proto
punk anarchists and Motor City Legends the MC five. In
nineteen seventy nine, Pattie moved to Detroit to marry Fred
and traded a quote unquote career for fulfillment, the kind
of fulfillment that only creating a family can bring. But
(49:28):
soon enough, New York City would come calling again with
some very bad news. By the late eighties, Patti Smith's
best friend, the first great love of her life, her
creative confidant, her literal infigurative partner in crime. During those
formative years in New York, Robert Maplethorpe, after having become
(49:48):
one of the most successful photographers on the planet, was
dying from AIDS related complications. On his deathbed, Robert asked
Patty appointed question, did art get us. Perhaps art took Robert,
but it didn't take Fred's Sonicsmith heart failure did Patty's
(50:10):
other great love. Fred Smith died in nineteen ninety four,
five years after Robert Maplethorpe, and Patty did what all
great artists do to process grief. She worked, She made
new music, went on tour with Bob Dylan, moved back
to New York City, and she wrote prodigiously, publishing books
(50:31):
of poetry, books about her obsession with the works of Warhol,
books of drawings, of photography, a collection of song lyrics,
all to critical acclaim, and in twenty ten she released
Just Kids, a personal memoir of her early life in
her time in New York City with Robert Maplethorpe, and
later that year, Just Kids won the National Book Award
(50:54):
for non Fiction, one of the most prestigious literary honors
in the world. In twenty fifteen, Patty released a second memoir, Mtrain,
which focused more on her present life and the unconventional
ways in which she'd pursued making art and the irredeemable
loss she felt after the death of her husband Fred.
(51:17):
Mtrain was a national best seller, and Patty followed it
up with four more titles, including the recent Bread of Angels,
another memoir. Each book was released to more critical praise
and numerous awards and nominations Grammys, a Pen Award, the
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, honorary doctorates from prestigious universities. It's
(51:39):
now twenty twenty six, and it's clear that Patti Smith
is still living a life that few artists get to live.
She is, as I mentioned earlier, the high priestess of art.
She has enjoyed both critical and commercial success, artistic credibility
in the underground, and doors that fly open for her
at elite cultural institutions. Most importantly, she survived. She's seventy
(52:05):
nine years old and has lived to harvest the fruits
of her artistic labor, no small feat. Most artists of
consequence succumbed to the ever present danger that surrounds them.
Jean Janey and William S. Burrows lived to be seventy
five and eighty three, respectively, but Rimbaud died at thirty seven,
(52:26):
Pollock at forty four, Coltrane at forty, Brian Jones twenty seven,
and too many other artists to name, all of whom
died too young, And of course there was Robert Maplethorpe,
who asked, did Art get us dead at just forty two.
(52:46):
Perhaps the reason Patty Smith survived is something that she
revealed in m Train. When you read it, you can't
help but feel Patty writing at times in a sort
of gumshoe detective way, channeling her inner Mickey Lane, her
inner Raymond Chandler. It's not full on Philip Marlowe. It's subtle.
But what isn't subtle is Patty's love of detective fiction,
(53:10):
both on the page and on screen. In a word,
Patti Smith is crime obsessed. Law and Order, The Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo, Midsummer Murders, Sherlock Holmes, Luther, CSI, Miami,
The Killing. Patti Smith reveals an m Train that she
(53:31):
is so obsessed with some of these crime series that
she will sometimes rearrange her travel schedule in order to
catch various shows when they air on TV in different countries.
Her obsession with the show The Killing was so intense
that she wrote to the producers when it was canceled
to mourn the loss. The producers responded by giving Patty
(53:51):
a cameo on one of the series' last episodes, but
Patty Smith's obsession with TV crime shows I don't believe
that it's just folly. I believe that it comes from
Patty's extensive exposure to actual crime throughout the course of
her life. The Lindbergh Baby, Charles Manson, The Son of Sam.
(54:14):
These true crime stories were formative for Patty Smith, as
was the ever present danger of New York City in
the nineteen sixties and seventies. The blood splattered walls of
her first apartment, the body outlined in chalk on the
street outside Roberts, the dancer plunging to her death from
the top of the Chelsea, her friend William S Burrows,
(54:35):
who shot and killed his wife and got away with it.
Jim Carroll's deadly addiction to heroin, Robert Maplethorpe's forty Second
Street Hustling. Not to mention the addiction, violence, and deadly
recklessness that accompanies most artists lives. Patty Smith was a
hair's breath from all of it, and she learned from
it all, learned from the crime, learned how not to
(54:58):
succumb to the danger of it, but instead to use
it as creative fuel. Patti Smith survived to become that
rare type of artist that she became because I believe
Patty Smith knew what all crime fiction and true crime
fans know, and that's how to stay safe, to be
(55:19):
vigilant aware, and like all great artists, to trust her intuition,
to believe in that calling, because the Knight doesn't just
belong to lovers, it belongs to the criminals. I'm Jake
Brennan in this is Disgraceland. All right, guys, you've not
(55:57):
heard the Patti Smith episode of the Disgrace lamp polls.
The question I want to ask you all is which
musicians memoir or autobiography would you recommend? Get your answers
in via voicemail and text to six one seven nine
oh six six six three eight, or hit me on
the socials at Disgrace lampod in the comments. Here comes
some credits. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is
(56:19):
produced in partnership with Double Elvis, the Exactly Right Network
in iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found
on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If
you're listening as a Disgraceland all Access member. Thank you
for supporting the show, we really appreciate it, and if not,
you can become a member right now by going to
disgracelampod dot com slash Membership members can listen to every
(56:43):
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disgracelampod and on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash at Disgracelampod,
rock a Rolla
Speaker 2 (57:01):
He's a bad dead Man.
Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The story about
Patti Smith is steeped in true crime, everything from the
(00:21):
criminal influence of her artistic heroes Jean Jeanet and William S. Burrows,
to the impression made upon her from her mother's obsession
with America's first true crime of the century, the Lindberg kidnapping,
to the influence of the Manson murders in New York
City's forty four caliber killings that Patty lived through in
late seventies New York, to the crime and grime of
(00:43):
Central Park, the Chelsea Hotel in forty second Street, rape
and murder, all of it just to shot away, as
they say. But Patty Smith survived all of it to
become one of the last centuries great artists, a great musician,
someone who made great music. Unlike that music I played
(01:03):
for you at the top of the show. That wasn't
great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron
called Falling from Chelsea MK. Two. I played you that
loop because I can't afford the rights to One Bad
Apple by the Osmonds. And why would I play you
that specific slice of plastic sibling cheese? Could I afford
(01:27):
it because that was the number one song in America
on February tenth, nineteen seventy one. And that was the
day that Patti Smith first took the stage with more
than just words, with a guitarist at her side, and
began building a previously unimagined bridge between the art world
(01:47):
and rock and roll. And she did it for the criminals.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
On this episode, Junkies, Murderers, poets, playwrights, death, destruction, the
pursuing one's artistic calling, and how true crime helped Patti.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Smith survive at all. I'm Jake Brennan.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
This is Disgraceland.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Though Patti Smith is known as the godmother of Ponkin
was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
in two thousand and seven, She's much more than just
an iconic rock star. She's a literary luminary, a National
Book Award winner, and the recipient of the Penn Literary
Service Award. She's been honored by the French Ministry of
(02:53):
Culture and the Municipal Arts Society of New York, an
organization that in two thousand twenty four awarded Patty Smith
with their highest honor, the Jacqueline Kennedy on Nassis Medal,
She's met the Pope, she accepted a Nobel Prize on
behalf of and at the request of, none other than
Bob Dylan, and her name rings true throughout the same
(03:17):
universities and museums that teach and celebrate the author's poets
and artists Louisa may Alcott, Arthur Innbau, and Fried de Callo,
to name a few that Patty Smith has drawn inspiration
from throughout her life. To dismiss Patty Smith as merely
a rock star is like calling Steve Jobs a computer salesman.
(03:40):
She is not just a musician. She's what I refer
to as the high priestess of art, someone who holds
rare dual citizenship in the gritty origins of punk and
in the highest echelons of New York and European society.
(04:01):
Catholic priests speak of being called to the priesthood that
moment when they hear God's voice imploring them to serve Him,
to dedicate their lives to him, to sacrifice everything in
his name. Many of them faced not just persecution, but
even death in pursuit of their calling. Jesus's apostle Peter
(04:25):
was crucified upside down. Bartholomew, another apostle, was skinned alive,
tortured over days, and eventually decapitated. Deacon Lawrence of Rome
in the year two point fifty eight, a d was
roasted to death over an open fire. In seventeen ninety two,
(04:46):
during the French Revolution, over two hundred priests were massacred
by angry mobs in under forty eight hours. Spanish Clarician
priests Salvador and Jesuits, Mexican seminary students, and countless others
who were once called have been martyred and suffered horrific
deaths for their calling. But Patti Smith, who once famously
(05:11):
saying Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine, was
no martyr. She was and is an artist, and similar
to priests, artists here recalling they must also navigate danger,
violence and potential death murder even in pursuit of their art.
(05:34):
So when and where was Patti Smith, the high Priestess
of art called to become an artist And what kind
of danger of violence and true crime did she have
to escape to become the artist we all know her
to be As a little girl in suburban New Jersey
(05:55):
in the nineteen fifties. The first stories Patti Smith heard
were dark. The original Brother's Grim collection of children's fairy
tales from the eighteen hundreds spoke of a stepmother in
the Juniper Tree story who decapitated her step son and
cooked his flesh in a soup to serve to the
boy's unsuspecting father. In the original version of Cinderella entitled Askinputul,
(06:21):
one stepsister uses a knife to cut off her toes,
and another hacks off the heel of her foot. Yet
these stories were nothing compared to what Patty later read
in the Bible, specifically in the Old Testament, where in
Judges nineteen, one woman is severed into twelve different pieces,
(06:42):
each given to a different tribe of Israel. Her sin Nune,
she was offered up to protect the crimes of a rapist.
In Judge's four, Yale offers an unsuspecting enemy general hospitality.
When the general fall asleep, Yale takes a spike and
(07:03):
hammers it through his skull. In Kings nine, Queen Jezebel's
eunuchs throw her from a window, where she's then trampled
to death by horses. Horses horses and horse and later
on as a teenager, rape and murder were more than
just shot away. All of these stories were right there,
(07:29):
out in the open, in Patti Smith's Bible, and in
her history books, and in the museums she visited as
a child. If the executioner was feeling merciful, he'd build
the pire low to the ground to ensure a quick death.
But this executioner was not feeling merciful. He built the
(07:52):
pire extra high so that Joan of Arc would be
guaranteed a prolonged and painful death. That's exactly what happened.
The flames took their time. The ancient Greeks used funeral
pyres to honor their departed emperors and heroes. The Romans too,
not the English. When it came to Joan of Arc.
(08:14):
They had something else in mind, revenge, public disgrace, maximum
pain in the eyes of the English dominated Ecclesiastical Tribunal
of fourteen thirty one, nineteen year old Joan of Arc
was a heretic. She claimed she'd been called by a
divine voice. She cut her hair, she dressed like a boy.
(08:37):
She made a mockery of modern authority in social norms
and in the process inspired and uprising that turned the
tide of the hundreds years War, driving the English out
of France. And for those perceived sins, she was now
roped to a stake in Market Square in the city
of Ruan, high above a gritted stack of dry wind wood,
(09:00):
built to burn slow and fierce, with its blue flames
snapping at the skin of her feet, and black smoke
corroding her lungs, white hot pain piercing every cell in
her body. The blaze rose up over her legs, her midriff,
and no one heard her scream and no one saw
her cry when the inferno engulfed her completely. Soon enough,
(09:26):
Joan of Arc was gone, but embodied only another martyr,
this one officially executed for the crimes of heresy and
cross dressing, but whose life's work would inspire generations and
whose name would forever ring true. In nineteen sixty six,
(09:48):
herself just nineteen years old, Patti Smith stood outside on
the streets of Philadelphia, across from the Museum of Modern Art,
about five miles from the more modern Market Square, and
looked up at a statue of Joan of Arc, Emmanuel
Fremier's gilded bronze depiction of the young martyr cast a
piercing impression upon young Patty. Here was this woman her
(10:12):
own age, who gave everything for what she believes. It
was then that Patty knew she would have to do
the same. It was then that Patty Smith heard her
calling in the shadows of martyrs and museums, to become
an artist. The stakes of failing to fulfill her life's
(10:33):
goal were, as they are for most teenagers, dramatic and intense.
A life as anything but an artist, a life as
something else in suburban New Jersey, would be its own
kind of death. But art was dangerous, and not in
the fairy tale Old Testament, musty historical kind of way,
(10:55):
but in a real and scary kind of way. One
of Patty's favorite novelists, Jean Janet, lived in squalor, forced
into a life of crime, and nearly imprisoned for life.
One of her favorite musicians, the jazz singer Billie Holiday,
died addicted to heroin. In her final living moments, she
(11:17):
was handcuffed to her bed by federal agents and placed
under arrest for narcotics possession. One of Patty's favorite painters,
Jackson Pollock was driven to alcoholism and eventually off the
road in his Oldsmobile, where he flipped his car, crushed
his skull, and decapitated one of his passengers. And these
were just the artists that Patty knew about thanks to
(11:40):
her true crime obsessed mother. Patti Smith also knew about
the dangers of the world right outside her suburban window.
Nineteen thirty two, Patti Smith's mother was traumatized by events
that were unfolding over the radio airwaves, just as the
rest the nation was One of America's most famous sons,
(12:04):
the aviator Charles Lindberg, was the victim of what had
quickly become America's most famous crime. Lindbergh's twenty month old
son had been kidnapped. The kidnapper used the latter to
creep into the second story nursery of the Limburg's New
Jersey estate. Within twenty four hours of the abduction, the
(12:24):
crime was a national sensation. By daybreak, over one hundred
reporters and photographers had breached the gates of the estate
and contaminated the crime scene. Notorious mafioso Al Capone issued
a statement from a Chicago jail cell offering a reward
for the return of the baby, and before the night
(12:45):
of the crime had ended, newswires like the Associated Press
were deluged with bulletins, transmitting over fifty thousand words in
just hours. Radio stations across the country took the unprecedented
step of canceling all all programming to issue a coordinated
bulletin describing the child's appearance, in effect creating a complete
(13:08):
national radio blackout, And it was through the radio that
Patty Smith's mother became transfixed with the early details of
the crime, as well as the saga's conclusion. Ten weeks
after the kidnapping, the badly decomposed body of Charles Lindbergh's
baby was found by a truck driver relieving himself on
(13:30):
the side of a New Jersey highway. The infant's corpse
had been partially scavenged by animals, Just like Jezebel and
the horses, and like Pollock and the crushed skull, like
Yale's enemy a hole through the head, and like Joan
of Arc, the Lindbergh Baby would not soon be forgotten.
(13:51):
Young Patty Smith was transfixed by her mother's retelling of
this story. She never forgot it, just like she never
forgot the grim or the Old Testament where Jean, Billy
Jackson or Joan. The lesson she took was that life
was dangerous, and so too the pursuit of art was dangerous,
(14:13):
and in nineteen sixty seven, the only place to really
pursue art was in America's most dangerous place, New York City.
(14:51):
The whispers Patty Smith heard at night in Central Park
where the stuff of terror. The park was more than
a few colic playground for New Yorkers to laze away
their afternoons. Each night it became a den of violent criminals, thieves, rapists,
and murderers, all prowling about for the ruination of souls.
(15:15):
Central Park was also Patti Smith's sometime bedroom. It was
where she'd lie down during that first summer when she
arrived in the city. On those nights when she couldn't
find a welcoming doorway in which to lay her head,
Central Park was where she slept, And in nineteen sixty seven,
Central Park was also the place where a fifteen year
(15:39):
old girl was brutally raped and her friend stomped so
severely that he was left in critical condition. It was
in the mid nineteen sixties, a place where nearly one
thousand felonies were committed on average each year. In Central
Park during the Summer of Love. For all the groups
(16:00):
of young hippies strewn about on blankets with acoustic guitars
and flowers in their hair, there were just as many
self described wolf packs, hordes of young neighborhood delinquents swarming
the park in shifts to rob in Maine, not just
the hippies, but the homosexuals cruising the park so called
predatory zones. Patti Smith may have slept in Central Park,
(16:25):
but it was in another park where she met the
first great love of her life, Robert Maplethorpe. She knew
him from the bookstore where she'd taken a job. He
was a customer, and she was in Tompkins Square Park
on a date with an older man, a man who
could afford to buy her a meal that she could
not afford to buy herself. But in New York City,
(16:49):
nothing's free, so just before the man attempted to collect
his payment sexually, Patti Smith recognized the good looking boy
from the bookstore and ran to him in the park,
introducing him on the spot to a predatory lunch date
as her boyfriend Robert Maplethorpe, who was high on LSD
(17:10):
at the time, went along with the ruse, which he
no doubt thought was hilarious. Robert found Patty Lee Smith
to be not only funny, but also sexy, intelligent, creative,
a perfect partner in crime for his own first foray
into New York City. They shared the same goal to
(17:31):
become artists. They weren't sure what kinds of artists they
wanted to become, just that they were most certainly destined
to create things that would change the world of culture
and art as they knew it. In their first apartment together,
the one in Brooklyn where they had to scrub the
wall of the splattered blood and psychotic scribblings from the
(17:52):
previous tenant, they painted, created drawings and collages, and wrote.
They read the great of the great writers, those who
were also criminals, not just Jean Jannet, but Paul Verlaine,
oh Henry and William S. Burrows, Burrows who shot and
killed his wife in a game of William Tell and
(18:14):
got away with it. And they studied to Cooney and Rivera,
Warhol and Picasso, and prayed at the altar of Coltrane
sympathized with those devils, the rolling Stones, and filled in
the oor gaps with the Cherells and Dylan Bob not Thomas.
They had little food, even less money, and they stole
(18:35):
when they had to, but they never begged. What they
did have was desire, and that desire gave way to faith,
and faith to creation, and soon the artistic callings of
each would bear fruit. Robert with photography and Patty with words.
(18:56):
A new apartment, this one in Manhattan, signified progress, with
the chalk outline of the dead body outside the front
door precipitated another move to a less dangerous neighborhood, so
further uptown they went to the Chelsea Hotel. These days,
(19:16):
the Chelsea Hotel on West twenty third Street, like most
of Manhattan, is a glitzy, gentrified incarnation of what it
once was a dangerous rooming house for bohemian vagabonds. In
nineteen sixty nine, the Chelsea was part artist colony, in
part central command for the drug fueled late sixties counterculture,
(19:39):
housing and hosting the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen
in The Velvet Underground's Nico Salvador Dali, stayed at the
Chelsea when there was no room at the Saint Regis.
Alan Ginsburg cruised the lobby for dates, even taking Patty
to lunch one day, mistaking her with her short crop
Joan of arc Hare to be a young pretty boy.
(20:01):
Dylan died at the Chelsea Thomas not Bob, while the
poet fell into a coma in Room two five after
downing eighteen straight whiskies before he was carried off to
be pronounced dead at Saint Vincent's. The Andy Warhol superstar
Edie Cedric set her room at the Chelsea on fire
while high on barbituates. She had to be rescued from
(20:23):
room one oh five, where Warhol has shot part of
his acclaim nineteen sixty six film Chelsea Girls. In a
few years prior, a twenty year old dancer named Lucille
Andell found herself on the roof of the Chelsea Hotel.
She walked carefully on her tiptoes close to the edge
(20:43):
before giving into the darkness that had overtaken her and
plunging to her death ten stories below. Along the way,
the usually graceful Lucille struck the third floor fire escape
with a thud, partially dismembering herself before pancaking on West
twenty third. But all the danger that the Chelsea Hotel
(21:06):
represented didn't scare Patty Smith. Instead, it compelled her. Besides,
Patty could navigate it. She wasn't big into drugs and
she seldom drank. And besides, she and her partner, Robert
Maplethorpe were broke. Which other hotel would take art as
collateral until they could come up with the cash to
(21:27):
rent a room. None, and no other hotel had Burrows
and the poet Jim Carroll roaming its halls. Patty befriended
both of them. She also befriended Janis Joplin, who stayed
in Room four or eleven during her run of shows
at the Fillmore East. Patty listened to Janis express herself
(21:47):
through music. Patty worked up poems with Jim Carroll, and
Patty met Bob Dylan's fixer and confident on, Bob Newarth.
Bob Newarth encouraged Patty to work her poems into songs,
to listen Hank Williams, to listen to blind Willie mctel,
to get down to the root of what she felt
and to pull it out and spill it all over
(22:09):
open chords on an acoustic guitar creatively. Patty was encouraged
and compelled. Robert was too, but in a darker way.
It was nineteen sixty nine The Rolling Stones, as Brian
Jones had died, and so too did the lsd Dreams
(22:30):
from the Summer of Love. Robert took the stone sympathy
for the devil a little too literally. Charles Manson was
all anyone at the Chelsea could talk about in nineteen
sixty nine. Just as Patty Smith's mother had been obsessed
with the Lindberg case, Robert Maplethorpe was obsessed with this
latest crime of the century. Out in Hollywood. Seven people
(22:52):
were dead in what appeared to be a ritualistic murder
spree with a decidedly rock and roll edge. The Tate
Labians in August of nineteen sixty nine were hard not
to be affected by, and so Robert Maplethorpe began working
a darker vision into his art. He became obsessed with
(23:13):
the concept of evil. It was a stark counterpoint to
his Catholic upbringing, a reflection of what he saw on
the street up on forty Second, where he hustled sex
for cash to help support himself and Patty. Patty worried
about Robert. Sex work was as dangerous as a gun.
(23:35):
Nineteen sixty nine, Midtown Manhattan, forty second Street aka the Deuce,
a neon open air sex market, predators and prey pros
and junkies applying their trade for pimps and pushers, chicken hawks,
older skeevee looking men in trench coats on the prow
(23:57):
for young runaways. A few went a long way. A
runaway could make a buck or two with one job
and be able to afford a slice of pizza, a coke,
and a movie ticket into one of the theaters, the Liberty,
the Empire, the Victory, and be able to pass out
in relative peace and quiet until the shakedown artist showed
up looking to rob this loosing patrons out on the street,
(24:22):
Robert Maplethorpe kept as cool. It was all about the look,
the right nod from the right dude, and Robert knew
it was on. But danger was everywhere. Cops supposed as
John's to entrap hustlers and turn their backs when they
were harassed and assaulted. Many clients refused to pay. Some
(24:44):
insisted on rough stuff with hustlers, strangulation, knife play. Sickos
were slitting the throats and the theaters and the working
boy's screams drowned out by the soundtracks blasting from the screens.
Robert was a quote unquote rent boy, or so he
told himself. He worked the streets to help pay his
(25:05):
and Patty's rent at the Chelsea. It wasn't the sex
so much that bothered Patty, it was the danger. Their
relationship was an open one, and Robert's homosexuality by this
time was no secret. It was also around this time
that Patty became romantically involved with the poet Jim Carroll.
Jim hustled up on forty second Street as well. Robert
(25:29):
asked Jim how he knew that he wasn't gay. Jim
told him that he knew because he always asked for money,
whereas sometimes Robert didn't. Either way, Jim hustled for heroin
and Robert hustled for rent. For Robert there was no
other way to support his pursuit of becoming an artist,
(25:51):
and for Patty there had to be a less dangerous way.
Sam Shephard was that way. Sam was a writer, a
California Cowboy a musician, an established off Broadway playwright, and
by the time he and Patty Smith began their affair
(26:12):
at the Chelsea Hotel, already a husband and father. It
didn't matter. Sam encouraged Patty to sing, He bought her
her first guitar. He encouraged her artistically romantically. Sam was dangerous,
but compared to Jim Carroll.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
He was safe.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Sam Shepherd exuded life, not junkie death. Sam didn't hustle, well,
he did, but in a different way. Sam made shit happen,
and by the time he was twenty seven, he'd won
four Obie Awards for four different plays. The Obis are
the highest awards given to off Broadway artists. Sam Shephard
(26:53):
won three in one year. Sam convinced Patty that she
had something to say, as if she needed further validation,
but still hearing that her words carried weight from a
sexy award winning playwright, couldn't hurt. Sam prevailed upon Patty
to collaborate with him on a new play, and they
(27:14):
called it Cowboy Mouth. Cowboy Mouth was a semi autobiographical
account of Sam and Patty's relationship. Both acted in the
two lead Roles when it was staged in April of
nineteen seventy one, and there it was Sam and Patty's
illicit relationship brought to life for all to see. Afterward,
(27:37):
Sam freaked out, he had a wife and a kid,
that it was wrong and he knew it. He abruptly
left New York City to return to his family in Vermont.
At first, Patty was devastated, but it didn't take long
before she put a relationship with Sam Shepard in the
proper perspective. It was brief, explosive, and overall a positive
(28:00):
experience in the end, despite who got hurt and how
it was worth it because Sam Shepard helped Patty Smith
finally find her voice. Cowboy Mouth wasn't just autobiographical. It
was also about a character who moves seamlessly between art
and crime, specifically music, rock and roll, actually and crime.
(28:26):
To this point in her life, Patti Smith had spent
her life moving between art and crime, shoplifting, harrowing, hustling,
Charles Lindbergh, Charles Manson, chalk outlined bodies and blood stained
tenement walls, Jean Janet, William Burrows and William Tell, Willie Micktell,
Bob Newarth, Robert Maplethorpe, and Jim Carroll, Sam Shepherd. It
(28:51):
was all one big art and crime collage. It was
who she had become, and now it was time to
give voice to all of that transgressive inn influenced, to
bridge the gap between art and artist, to be the
voice of the voiceless, for those persecuted for following their calling,
for their crimes, and to do it all with rock
(29:14):
and roll. We'll be right back after this.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
We're We're where.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
On February tenth, nineteen seventy one, Patti Smith stood on
stage at Saint Mark's Church in New York's East Village
and stared out at the crowd. By her side, a
lanky and musically lethal guitar playing friend Lenny Kay, staring
up at them. From the audience, who's who of Downtown Cool,
(29:48):
Lou Reed, Todd Rudgren, Robert Maplethorpe, Alan Ginsburg, and Moore.
The evening was billed as a night of poetry featuring
the Warhol, performance artist and poet Gerard la and Patty Smith.
For whatever reason, Patty decided to include a musical element. Lenny.
(30:09):
Lenny was already a musical Encyclopedia. He wrote for jazz
and pop Rolling Stone Crawdaddy, and at the time was
busy assembling songs for what would become one of the
greatest compilation albums in rock and roll history, The Nuggets
Original Artifacts from the Psychedelic Era nineteen sixty five to
nineteen sixty eight set, which would become the definitive collection
(30:32):
of American garage rock singles and eventually one of punk
rock's guiding lights. In fact, the Nuggets Liner Notes feature
one of the earliest uses of the term punk rock.
Lenny Kay not only knew how to play guitar, Lenny
Kay knew his ship. With Lenny at her side, Patty
(30:54):
Smith stared out into the audience. As the crowd settled,
the two performers looked at get their faces flushed with anticipation.
They could all sense it something different was about to happen.
New Yorkers know this feeling. It's familiar, the promise of
the new that feeling that you're about to be let
(31:15):
in on the secret, in on something special. It's a
promise that in the nineteen seventies, New York City seemed
to constantly fulfill. The lights dimmed guitar feedback began to
creep from Lenny's amplifier, and the crowd dropped their nervous chatter.
The feedback unfurled throughout the room, bending both piercing and
(31:39):
warm at the same time, like a blanket of nails,
and Patty grabbed the microphone atop the stand with one hand,
raised her other hand in the air, and abruptly brought
it down to her side. Lenny muted his guitar silence.
Patti Smith leaned into the microphone and said, said, this
(32:01):
one's for the criminals. With that, Lenny kay released the
squeal and squawk from his Gibson melody Maker, and Patty
meted out the powerful words from the first lines of
her poem Oath, Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine.
And suddenly it wasn't a poem anymore. It was a song,
(32:26):
and with Lenny it was rock and roll. Patty Smith
had answered her calling and people loved it. The crowd
that night adored her, and Patty was indeed something new,
something unseen, a transgressive hybrid of poetry and music with
something powerful to say. The sins of her generation were
(32:48):
not yet answered for and maybe they weren't even sins
who knew? That was the point, all the crime, all
the transgression, the so called sins, The cross was there
and theirs alone to bear heresy. Like all great art,
the action is in the risk. Patty's words were shocking,
(33:11):
like Joan of ARC's words. Patty's possessed unyielding conviction, and
those words had the power to inspire. And inspire they did.
Patty and Lenny brought their rock and roll poetry hybrid
to other stages. After this, they opened for the New
York Dolls at their famed Mercer Art Center gigs. They
(33:32):
played Le Jardin at the Other End, which had been
and would again be called the Bitter End, And before long,
in nineteen seventy five, Patty found herself on the Bowery
in Manhattan's Lower East Side, with all its grit and grime,
a motley collection of the unhoused and unwashed, derelics and
(33:53):
artists clinging desperately to a world trying to shake them
loose like fleas on the backside of a rabid dog,
all just steps from William S. Burrows's apartment, where the
iconic novelists lived in Squalor and would receive Patty as
a guest whenever she was in the neighborhood. It was
just Patty in her fearlessness, in her curiosity, and Borrows
(34:15):
and his heroin and his shotgun. Down the street near Bleaker,
the crowd assembled outside the doors of Cebe Gebi's A
Little Die. No one had cared about five minutes before.
But tonight, Patty, in the new band she'd assembled with
Lenny on guitar, Richard Sole on piano, Ivan Carl on bass,
and j. D. Darty was set to perform the Patti
(34:38):
Smith Group, along with one of the most inventive groups
to come out of the nineteen seventies in New York television.
Both bands were in the midst of a multi week residency.
Just like at the Saint Mark's Church gig a few
years prior, you could feel the anticipation in the air,
except now there were actual stakes. Ever since that first
(35:00):
performance at Saint Mark's, Patty was heralded as a savior.
This new art she was creating, this poetry rock and
roll hybrid. It was the natural progression of a century
long march from the romance of Arthur Rimbau to the
squalor of Jean Jeannet, to the grime of Jim Carroll,
to the pop of the Andy Warhol, to the music
(35:22):
of Patti Smith. And therefore, Patty's music was seen as
the antidote to the poisonous, drivel filling airwaves in the
mid seventies, soulless, bloated, spiritually starved rock music. Patty was
unofficially drafted by New York's downtown tastemakers and uptown glitterati too.
(35:43):
As she said, quote, preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary
spirit of rock and roll unquote, And that's exactly what
the Patti Smith Group did each night at CBGB's. Patty
drew strength from her mentor William S. Burrows in her
best friend, the first great love of her life, Robert Maplethorpe,
(36:03):
both of whom positioned themselves each night right up front.
Robert was devoted to Patty's success as an artist in
the same way he was to his own, on a
near spiritual level. Soon, the powerful executive Clive Davis from
Arista Records would also devote himself to Patty's success, signing
her to a lucrative recording contract. The Patti Smith group's
(36:28):
debut album, Horses, produced by the Velvet Undergrounds John Cale,
the one with the stark and beautiful Robert Maplethorpe portrait
of Patty on the cover, did what it was supposed
to do, its part to save rock and roll. The
album begins with a bang, just as Patty did at
Saint Mark's, with the powerful rejection of the past. Somebody
(36:50):
sins but not mine. Horses nailed the moment. Kids loved it,
so did the critics. None other than america greatest rock
critic Lester Bangs said in his Cream magazine review that
Patty's songs on Horses touched quote deep wellsprings of emotion
that extremely few artists in rock or anywhere else are
(37:13):
capable of reaching. Unquote that was just it, few artists
in rock or anywhere else. I don't know if Lester
Bangs intended to cast Patty's are outside the parameters of
rock or not, but that's exactly where her creativity was
leading her. She wasn't just a musician. She was clearly
(37:35):
something else, something new, someone an artist who wasn't only
revealing something about herself and her listeners. She was revealing
something that hadn't been revealed before. Here was an artist
who was reclaiming rock and roll from under the safe
nightlight of mainstream rocks radio play duvet and dragging it
(37:55):
back under the grimy blanket of nails inhabited by the
criminal underworld, both the perpetrators and the victims. Patty Smith
was a revolution in an iconic twist. Her cause was
celebrated not only downtown but uptown as well. Soon elite
culture would take note and open its doors. Aside from
(38:20):
the predictable grousing from conservative detractors over her line about Jesus, everyone,
it seemed, loved Patty Smith's music except Robert Maplethorpe. Well,
not exactly. Robert was an ardent supporter of Patty's, but
ever since their earliest days, when Patty would sing to
them back in that Brooklyn apartment, Robert would always say
(38:42):
to her, sing me a song I can dance to, Patty.
The world didn't dance to the songs on horses. They
studied them like something worthy of a museum exhibit. No,
the dancing would come later with Bruce Springsteen, perhaps you've
heard of. At the time, Bruce Springsteen had just become
(39:02):
the definition of an overnight sensation upon releasing his third album,
Born to Run. The previously obscure rock and roll bandleader
had rocketed to stardom when he appeared on the covers
of both Newsweek and Time magazine simultaneously. Now, in July
of nineteen seventy six, he was filing a lawsuit against
his manager, trying to extricate himself from a horrible contract,
(39:27):
one that he believed to be criminal. Patti Smith, at
the time, was playing shows in support of horses and
preparing to record her follow up album, Radio Ethiopia, while
living with her new boyfriend, the guitarist from Blue Oyster Cult,
Alan Lanier. None of them knew it yet, but all
three of these artists, much like their New York City fans,
(39:49):
were about to be gripped in fear. Young lovers like
Patty and Allen, and like the couples who flocked to
records stores to purchase Springsteen's records, were about to get
swept up in a year of paranoia because the New
York City night now belonged to a lunatic July twenty ninth,
(40:13):
nineteen seventy six, one ten Am Pellam Bay the Bronx,
two women eighteen year old Donna Lauria and nineteen year
old Jody Valenti sat in a nosemobile on the side
of the road in the dark of night, discussing the
time they just had at Peachtrees, a local discotheque, and
the heavy rhythm from the tramps that's where the happy
(40:35):
people go supplied the adrenaline still coursing through them. The
vibe was pierced by a passing car on a not
so far away street blaring the haunting new hit by
Blue Oyster Cult, Don't Fear the Reaper. Suddenly the mood turned,
the street got a little darker, the inside of the
(40:55):
car a little quieter. Donna opened the door to leave.
From out of the darkness a man with a gun.
Donna startled. The man crouched onto one knee, took aim
at Donna with both hands, and Jody screamed. Donna Lauria
died instantly. The gunman got off another two shots, and
(41:17):
one hit Jody in the thigh. She lived to tell
the harrowing story to the New York newspapers. Three months later.
The next shootings happened two young lovers, eighteen year old
Rosemary Keenan and twenty year old Carl Denaro escaped the
killer who fired into Karl's car and Queen's Carl took
(41:39):
a bullet in the head but survived and sewed, did Rosemary.
The cops connected the forty four caliber shell casings from
the Queen shooting to the Bronx shooting, and the papers
came up with a spiffy name for this lunatic terrorizing
New Yorkers, the forty four caliber killer. Baby, Don't Fear
the Reaper. That line from the Blue Oyster cult single
(42:03):
kept asking the impossible from speakers across the city in
the spring. In summer of seventy six and later in November,
another shooting Seasons, Don't Fear the Reaper. Another couple of
teenage girls, another Donna, this one Donna Demassi sixteen, along
(42:23):
with joe Anne Lomino eighteen. Two shots and both girls survived,
but the papers, especially the New York Daily News columns
Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, traded ink for industry scale paranoia.
New Yorkers sweated out the winter. La la la la La,
(42:44):
Don't Fear the Reaper. The new year nineteen seventy seven
new shootings, another couple alone in the car. Christine Freud
twenty six and John Diale thirty both were shot. She survived,
he didn't, and the papers did their thing and the
public paranoia ratcheted even higher. Love of two is one here,
(43:10):
but now they're gone. March eighth, nineteen seventy seven, another
shooting college student, Virginia Vouscashin, was walking back to her
home in Queen's in the dark after class when the
gunman appeared out of nowhere. She saw the gun, she
raised her textbook in front of her face. The gunman shot,
and the bullet blasted through the book and into Virginia's face.
(43:33):
Virginia was dead here, but now they're gone. A month later,
a model and her boyfriend parked at about three am
on the side of the Hutchinson Parkway in the Bronx.
One dead model, one dead boyfriend. Romeo and Juliet are
together in eternity. Come on, baby, don't fear the reaper.
(43:58):
And on May thirtieth, nineteen seventy seven, when Daily News
Calmness Jimmy Breslin was revealing to the world the psychotic
ramblings of the forty four caliber killer sent to Breslin
himself by the Killer, who claimed for all to be,
in his words, the Son of Sam aka the self
proclaimed Chubby Bohemoth aka Beezlbub aka Satan aka Death Himself
(44:24):
aka the Reaper. While Breslin freaked New York City the
fuck out, while cops hunted for the killer and the
killer hunted for victims, Patty Smith was planning her next album,
her third, the follow up to Radio Ethiopia. And while
the NYPD hunted for the Son of Sam, Patty was
(44:48):
still hunting for a song her friend Robert Maplethorpe could
dance to. By June of that year, Bruce Springsteen had
finally extracted himself from his legal problems. It was work
on his belated follow up to Born to Run, an
album called Darkness on the Edge of Town, and there
was plenty of darkness to go around, especially in New Yorktown.
(45:12):
Investigators were at a dead end, unable to hunt down
the Sun of Sam. The Knight no longer belonged to
the city's lovers, but Springsteen didn't care. There was something there,
the wisp of a song. As the sessions began with
producer Jimmy Iavin, Springsteen had the chorus it was defiant, triumphant.
(45:33):
It reclaimed something. It went because the knight belongs to lovers.
But that was it. That was all he had. The
end of June came and the Son of Sam shot
another couple, Salvatore Lupo twenty and Judy Placibo seventeen, and
both survived. The Cobs kept up their hunt for the killer,
(45:56):
but were still coming up empty by the end of
the month. July hit with the heat of a thousand suns,
and that meant that it had been a full year
of terror in New York City. The self proclaimed chubby
bohem Is celebrated by shooting at a parked car a
couple kissing on their first date. Stacey Moskowitz and Robert Violente,
(46:17):
both twenty. Both were shot in the head. Stacy lived,
Robert did not. In August, Patty Smith entered the record
Plan to begin work on her new album. That same week,
police acting on a tip interviewed a chubby twenty something
postal worker up in Yonkers named David Berkowitz. The following day,
(46:41):
Berkowitz was arrested. The Son of Sam manhunt had ended.
New York breathed a sigh of relief. Patty Smith kept
her head down and worked, still hunting for a hit,
a song Robert Maplethorpe could dance to. On September twenty seventh,
(47:02):
Jimmy Ivien, who was also now producing Patty's new album,
brought Springsteen's demo of Because the Knight into the studio
for Patty. Patty heard something in the song that Bruce
hadn't not just defiance, but again reclamation. She channeled it
all into verse lyrics, Come on, now, try and understand
(47:24):
the way I feel when I'm in your hands, take
my hand, come undercover. They can't hurt you now, can't
hurt you now, can't hurt you now, because The Knight
belongs to lovers once more, and now the Son of
Sam was behind bars, and young couples in New York
(47:45):
were once again free to frolic. Because The Knight was
a massive smash. Patty Smith had her hit, and Robert
Maplethorpe had a song he could dance to. Now Patty
(48:24):
Smith was more than just an artist. For a minute,
it seemed Patty Smith was a pop star. Because The
Night was Patty Smith's commercial breakthrough. It was a top
forty hit, top five in the UK Easter. The album
that the single supported sold better than Patty's previous two
(48:45):
albums combined. But pop stardom was never her goal being
an artist was. An artist need fuel and inspiration, and
sometimes the only source for them is love and Naturally,
while at the top of her game, Patti Smith walked
away from the game. She fell in love with another artist,
(49:07):
another guitarist, this one fred Sonic Smith from the proto
punk anarchists and Motor City Legends the MC five. In
nineteen seventy nine, Pattie moved to Detroit to marry Fred
and traded a quote unquote career for fulfillment, the kind
of fulfillment that only creating a family can bring. But
(49:28):
soon enough, New York City would come calling again with
some very bad news. By the late eighties, Patti Smith's
best friend, the first great love of her life, her
creative confidant, her literal infigurative partner in crime. During those
formative years in New York, Robert Maplethorpe, after having become
(49:48):
one of the most successful photographers on the planet, was
dying from AIDS related complications. On his deathbed, Robert asked
Patty appointed question, did art get us. Perhaps art took Robert,
but it didn't take Fred's Sonicsmith heart failure did Patty's
(50:10):
other great love. Fred Smith died in nineteen ninety four,
five years after Robert Maplethorpe, and Patty did what all
great artists do to process grief. She worked, She made
new music, went on tour with Bob Dylan, moved back
to New York City, and she wrote prodigiously, publishing books
(50:31):
of poetry, books about her obsession with the works of Warhol,
books of drawings, of photography, a collection of song lyrics,
all to critical acclaim, and in twenty ten she released
Just Kids, a personal memoir of her early life in
her time in New York City with Robert Maplethorpe, and
later that year, Just Kids won the National Book Award
(50:54):
for non Fiction, one of the most prestigious literary honors
in the world. In twenty fifteen, Patty released a second memoir, Mtrain,
which focused more on her present life and the unconventional
ways in which she'd pursued making art and the irredeemable
loss she felt after the death of her husband Fred.
(51:17):
Mtrain was a national best seller, and Patty followed it
up with four more titles, including the recent Bread of Angels,
another memoir. Each book was released to more critical praise
and numerous awards and nominations Grammys, a Pen Award, the
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, honorary doctorates from prestigious universities. It's
(51:39):
now twenty twenty six, and it's clear that Patti Smith
is still living a life that few artists get to live.
She is, as I mentioned earlier, the high priestess of art.
She has enjoyed both critical and commercial success, artistic credibility
in the underground, and doors that fly open for her
at elite cultural institutions. Most importantly, she survived. She's seventy
(52:05):
nine years old and has lived to harvest the fruits
of her artistic labor, no small feat. Most artists of
consequence succumbed to the ever present danger that surrounds them.
Jean Janey and William S. Burrows lived to be seventy
five and eighty three, respectively, but Rimbaud died at thirty seven,
(52:26):
Pollock at forty four, Coltrane at forty, Brian Jones twenty seven,
and too many other artists to name, all of whom
died too young, And of course there was Robert Maplethorpe,
who asked, did Art get us dead at just forty two.
(52:46):
Perhaps the reason Patty Smith survived is something that she
revealed in m Train. When you read it, you can't
help but feel Patty writing at times in a sort
of gumshoe detective way, channeling her inner Mickey Lane, her
inner Raymond Chandler. It's not full on Philip Marlowe. It's subtle.
But what isn't subtle is Patty's love of detective fiction,
(53:10):
both on the page and on screen. In a word,
Patti Smith is crime obsessed. Law and Order, The Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo, Midsummer Murders, Sherlock Holmes, Luther, CSI, Miami,
The Killing. Patti Smith reveals an m Train that she
(53:31):
is so obsessed with some of these crime series that
she will sometimes rearrange her travel schedule in order to
catch various shows when they air on TV in different countries.
Her obsession with the show The Killing was so intense
that she wrote to the producers when it was canceled
to mourn the loss. The producers responded by giving Patty
(53:51):
a cameo on one of the series' last episodes, but
Patty Smith's obsession with TV crime shows I don't believe
that it's just folly. I believe that it comes from
Patty's extensive exposure to actual crime throughout the course of
her life. The Lindbergh Baby, Charles Manson, The Son of Sam.
(54:14):
These true crime stories were formative for Patty Smith, as
was the ever present danger of New York City in
the nineteen sixties and seventies. The blood splattered walls of
her first apartment, the body outlined in chalk on the
street outside Roberts, the dancer plunging to her death from
the top of the Chelsea, her friend William S Burrows,
(54:35):
who shot and killed his wife and got away with it.
Jim Carroll's deadly addiction to heroin, Robert Maplethorpe's forty Second
Street Hustling. Not to mention the addiction, violence, and deadly
recklessness that accompanies most artists lives. Patty Smith was a
hair's breath from all of it, and she learned from
it all, learned from the crime, learned how not to
(54:58):
succumb to the danger of it, but instead to use
it as creative fuel. Patti Smith survived to become that
rare type of artist that she became because I believe
Patty Smith knew what all crime fiction and true crime
fans know, and that's how to stay safe, to be
(55:19):
vigilant aware, and like all great artists, to trust her intuition,
to believe in that calling, because the Knight doesn't just
belong to lovers, it belongs to the criminals. I'm Jake
Brennan in this is Disgraceland. All right, guys, you've not
(55:57):
heard the Patti Smith episode of the Disgrace lamp polls.
The question I want to ask you all is which
musicians memoir or autobiography would you recommend? Get your answers
in via voicemail and text to six one seven nine
oh six six six three eight, or hit me on
the socials at Disgrace lampod in the comments. Here comes
some credits. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is
(56:19):
produced in partnership with Double Elvis, the Exactly Right Network
in iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found
on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If
you're listening as a Disgraceland all Access member. Thank you
for supporting the show, we really appreciate it, and if not,
you can become a member right now by going to
disgracelampod dot com slash Membership members can listen to every
(56:43):
episode of disgracelan ad free, rate and review the show,
and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook at
disgracelampod and on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash at Disgracelampod,
rock a Rolla
Speaker 2 (57:01):
He's a bad dead Man.
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