by Patti Smith
He was beginning to penetrate higher society. In some ways his social shift was harder to surmount than his sexual shift. I needed only to comprehend and accept the duality of his sexuality. But to stay in step with him socially I would have needed to change my ways.
Some of us are born rebellious. Reading the story of Zelda Fitzgerald by Nancy Milford, I identified with her mutinous spirit. I remember passing shopwindows with my mother and asking why people didn’t just kick them in. She explained that there were unspoken rules of social behavior, and that’s the way we coexist as people. I felt instantly confined by the notion that we are born into a world where everything was mapped out by those before us. I struggled to suppress destructive impulses and worked instead on creative ones. Still, the small rule-hating self within me did not die.
When I told Robert of my child-self ’s desire to shatter windows, he teased me about it.
“Patti! No. You’re the bad seed,” he said. But I wasn’t.
Sam, on the other hand, identified with the little story. He had no problem imagining me in my little brown shoes itching to cause a ruckus. When I told him I sometimes had the impulse to put my foot through a window, he just said, “Kick it in, Patti Lee. I’ll bail you out.” With Sam I could be myself. He understood more than anyone how it felt to be trapped in one’s skin.
Robert didn’t warm up to Sam. He was encouraging me to be more refined and worried that Sam would only magnify my irreverent ways. Both of them were wary of each other, and they were never able to bridge this divide. A casual observer might have thought it was because they were different species, but to me, it was because they were both strong men who had my best interests at heart. Table manners aside, I recognized something of myself in both of them and accepted their locking horns with humor and pride.
Encouraged by David, Robert took his work from gallery to gallery without results. Undaunted, he sought an alternative and decided to show his collages on his birthday at Stanley Amos’s gallery in the Chelsea Hotel.
The first thing Robert did was to go to Lamston’s. It was smaller and cheaper than Woolworth’s. He and I enjoyed any excuse to raid their outdated stock: yarn, patterns, buttons, drugstore items, Redbook and Photoplay, incense burners, holiday cards and family-size bags of candy, barrettes and ribbons. Robert bought stacks of their classic silver frames. They were very popular at a dollar apiece, and even the likes of Susan Sontag could be seen purchasing them.
Wanting to create a unique invitation, he took soft-porn playing cards that he got on Forty-second Street and printed the information on the back. Then he slipped them in a fake leather cowboy-style ID case that he found in Lamston’s.
The show consisted of Robert’s collages that centered on freaks, but he prepared one fairly large altarpiece for the event. He used several of my personal objects in this construction, including my wolf skin, an embroidered velvet scarf, and a French crucifix. We had a little sparring over his appropriating my things, but of course I gave in, and Robert pointed out that no one would buy it. He just wanted people to see it.
It was in suite 510 of the Chelsea Hotel. The room was packed. Robert arrived with David. As I looked around the room, I could trace our entire history at the hotel. Sandy Daley, one of Robert’s greatest champions, beamed. Harry was so taken by the altarpiece that he decided to film it for his Mahagonny movie. Jerome Ragni, the co-creator of Hair, bought one of the collages. The collector Charles Coles made an appointment to discuss a future purchase. Gerard Malanga and Rene Ricard mingled with Donald Lyons and Bruce Rudow. David was an elegant host and spokesman for Robert’s work.
Observing people taking in the work I had watched Robert create was an emotional experience. It had left our private world. It was what I had always wanted for him, but I felt a slight pang of possessiveness sharing it with others. Overriding that feeling was the joy of seeing Robert’s face, suffused with confirmation, as he glimpsed the future he had so resolutely sought and had worked so hard to achieve.
Contrary to Robert’s prediction, Charles Coles bought the altarpiece, and I never did get my wolf skin, my scarf, or my crucifix back.
“The lady’s dead.” Bobby called from California to tell me that Edie Sedgwick had died. I never knew her, but when I was a teenager I found a copy of Vogue with a photograph of her pirouetting on a bed in front of a drawing of a horse. She seemed entirely self-possessed, as if nobody in the world existed but her. I tore it out and put it on my wall.
Bobby seemed genuinely stricken by her untimely death. “Write the little lady a poem,” he said, and I promised I would.
In writing an elegy to a girl like Edie, I had to access something of the girl in myself. Obliged to consider what it meant to be female, I entered the core of my being, led by the girl poised before a white horse.
I was in a Beat humor. The Bibles were piled in small stacks. The Holy Barbarians. The Angry Young Men. Rummaging around, I found some poems by Ray Bremser. He really got me going. Ray had that human saxophone thing. You could feel his improvisational ease the way language spilled out like linear notes. Inspired, I put on some Coltrane but nothing good happened. I was just jacking off. Truman Capote once accused Kerouac of typing, not writing. But Kerouac infused his being onto rolls of Teletype paper, banging on his machine. Me, I was typing. I leapt up frustrated.
I picked up the Beat anthology and found “The Beckoning Sea” by George Mandel. I read him softly, and then at the top of my voice, to get the sea he embedded in the words and the accelerating rhythm of the waves. I kept going, spitting out Corso and Mayakovsky and back to the sea, to be pushed off the edge by George.
Robert had entered on his cat feet and sat down nodding his head. He listened with his full being. My artist who would never read. Then he bent down and picked up a handful of poems off the floor.
“You have to take better care of your work,” he said.
“I don’t even know what I’m doing,” I shrugged, “but I can’t stop doing it. I’m like a blind sculptor hacking away.”
“You need to show people what you can do. Why don’t you do a reading?”
I was getting frustrated with writing; it wasn’t physical enough.
He told me he had some ideas. “I’ll get you a reading, Patti.”
I didn’t really have any expectations about having a poetry reading anytime soon, but the thought did intrigue me. I had been writing my poems to please myself and a handful of people. Maybe it was time to see if I could pass the Gregory test. Inside I knew I was ready.
I was also writing more pieces for rock magazines—Crawdaddy, Circus, Rolling Stone. This was a time when the vocation of a music journalist could be an elevated pursuit. Paul Williams, Nick Tosches, Richard Meltzer, and Sandy Pearlman were some of the writers I held in esteem. I modeled myself after Baudelaire, who wrote some of the great idiosyncratic critiques of nineteenth-century art and literature.
I received a Lotte Lenya double album amongst a pile of records to review. I was determined that this great artist should be acknowledged, and called Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone. I had never spoken with him, and he seemed perplexed by the request. But when I pointed out that Bob Dylan was holding a Lotte Lenya album on the cover of Bringing It All Back Home, he relented. Primed by writing my Edie Sedgwick poem, I tried to articulate Lotte Lenya’s role as an artist and a strong feminine presence. The concentration on this piece bled into my poems, offering me another mode of self-expression. I didn’t think they would publish it, but Jann called and said that although I talked like a truck driver, I had written an elegant piece.
Writing for rock magazines brought me in contact with the writers I admired. Sandy Pearlman gave me a copy of The Age of Rock II, an anthology edited by Jonathan Eisen that gathered some of the best writing on music from that past year. What most touched me was a warm yet knowledgeable piece on a cappella music by Lenny Kaye. It spoke to me of my own roots, recalling the street corners of my youth where the boys would gather singing R&
B songs in three-part harmony. It also contrasted with some of the cynical, holier-than-thou tone of much criticism of the time. I decided to seek him out and thank him for such an inspiring article.
Lenny worked downtown as a clerk at Village Oldies on Bleecker Street, and I stopped by one Saturday night. The store had hubcaps on the wall and shelves of vintage 45s. Almost any song you could think of could be dug out of those dusty stacks. In future visits, if there were no customers, Lenny would put on our favorite singles, and we’d dance to the Dovells’ “Bristol Stomp” or do the 81 to Maureen Gray singing “Today’s the Day.”
The scene was shifting at Max’s. The summer residency of the Velvet Underground attracted the new guardians of rock and roll. The round table was often filled with musicians, the rock press, and Danny Goldberg, who conspired to revolutionize the music business. Lenny could be found alongside Lillian Roxon, Lisa Robinson, Danny Fields, and others who were slowly making the back room their own. One could still count on Holly Woodlawn sweeping in, Andrea Feldman dancing on the tabletops, and Jackie and Wayne spewing cavalier brilliance, but increasingly their days of being the focal point of Max’s were numbered.
Robert and I spent less time there and pursued our own scenes. Yet Max’s still reflected our destiny. Robert had begun to photograph the Warhol denizens even as they were departing. And I was slowly becoming enmeshed in the rock world, along with those who inhabited it, through writing and ultimately performing.
Sam got a room with a balcony at the Chelsea. I loved staying there, having a room back in the hotel. I could get a shower anytime I wanted. Sometimes we just sat on the bed and read. I was reading about Crazy Horse and he was reading Samuel Beckett.
Sam and I had a long discussion about our life together. By then he had revealed to me that he was married and had an infant son. Perhaps it was the carelessness of youth but I was not completely cognizant of how our irresponsible ways could affect others. I met his wife, Olan, a young and gifted actress. I never expected him to leave her, and we all fell into an unspoken rhythm of coexistence. He was often gone and let me stay in his room by myself with remnants of him: his Indian blanket, typewriter, and a bottle of Ron del Barrilito three-star rum.
Robert was appalled by the thought that Sam was married. He’ll leave you eventually, he would say, but I already knew that. He figured Sam to be an erratic cowboy.
“You wouldn’t like Jackson Pollock, either,” I retorted. Robert just shrugged.
I was writing a poem for Sam, an homage to his obsession with stock cars. It was a poem called “Ballad of a Bad Boy.” I pulled it out of the typewriter, pacing the room, reading it aloud. It worked. It had the energy and the rhythm I was looking for. I knocked on Robert’s door. “Want to hear something?” I said.
Although we were a bit estranged in this period, Robert off with David and me with Sam, we had our common ground. Our work. As he had promised, Robert was determined to get me a reading. He spoke on my behalf to Gerard Malanga, who was scheduled to read at St. Mark’s Church in February. Gerard generously agreed to let me open for him.
The Poetry Project, shepherded by Anne Waldman, was a desirable forum for even the most accomplished poets. Everyone from Robert Creeley to Allen Ginsberg to Ted Berrigan had read there. If I was ever going to perform my poems, this was the place to do it. My goal was not simply to do well, or hold my own. It was to make a mark at St. Mark’s. I did it for Poetry. I did it for Rimbaud, and I did it for Gregory. I wanted to infuse the written word with the immediacy and frontal attack of rock and roll.
Todd suggested that I be aggressive, and he gave me a pair of black snakeskin boots to wear. Sam suggested I add music. I thought about all the musicians who had come through the Chelsea, but then I remembered Lenny Kaye had said he played electric guitar. I went to see him.
“You play guitar, right?”
“Yeah, I like to play guitar.”
“Well, could you play a car crash with an electric guitar?”
“Yeah, I could do that,” he said without hesitation, and agreed to accompany me. He came to Twenty-third Street with his Melody Maker and a little Fender amp, and while I recited my poems, he fell in.
The reading was scheduled for February 10, 1971. Judy Linn took a photo of Gerard and me smiling in front of the Chelsea for the flyer. I researched for any auspicious signs connected to the date: Full moon. Bertolt Brecht’s birthday. Both favorable. With a nod to Brecht, I decided to open the reading singing “Mack the Knife.” Lenny played along.
It was a night of nights. Gerard Malanga was a charismatic poet-performance artist and drew much of the crème of the Warhol world, everyone from Lou Reed to Rene Ricard to Brigid Berlin to Andy himself. Lenny’s people came to cheer him on: Lillian Roxon, Richard and Lisa Robinson, Richard Meltzer, Roni Hoffman, Sandy Pearlman. There was a contingent from the Chelsea including Peggy, Harry, Matthew, and Sandy Daley. Poets like John Giorno, Joe Brainard, Annie Powell, and Bernadette Mayer. Todd Rundgren brought Miss Christine of the GTOs. Gregory was restlessly shifting in his aisle seat waiting to see what I’d come up with. Robert entered with David and they sat front and center. Sam hung over the balcony rail, urging me on. The atmosphere was charged.
Anne Waldman introduced us. I was totally wired. I dedicated the evening to criminals from Cain to Genet. I chose poems like “Oath,” which began, “Christ died for somebody’s sins / But not mine,” and took a slow turn on “Fire of Unknown Origin.” I read “The Devil Has a Hangnail” for Robert, and “Cry Me a River” for Annie. “Picture Hanging Blues,” written from the perspective of Jesse James’s girlfriend, was, with its chorus, closer to a song than anything I’d written before.
We finished with “Ballad of a Bad Boy” accompanied by Lenny’s strong rhythmic chords and electric feedback. It was the first time an electric guitar had been played in St. Mark’s Church, provoking cheers and jeers. As this was hallowed ground for poetry, some objected, but Gregory was jubilant.
The reception had its thundering moments. I drew from all the submerged arrogance I may have possessed for the performance. But afterward I was so filled with adrenaline that I behaved like a young cock. I failed to thank Robert and Gerard. Nor did I socialize with their people. I just high-tailed it out with Sam and we had a couple of tequilas and lobster.
I had my night and it was exciting but I thought it best to take it in stride and forget about it. I had no idea how to process such an experience. Although I knew I hurt Robert’s feelings, he still could not conceal his pride in me. Yet I had to take into account that I seemed to have a whole other side. What it had to do with art I wasn’t certain.
I was bombarded with offers stemming from my poetry reading. Creem magazine agreed to publish a suite of my poems; there were proposed readings in London and Philadelphia; a chapbook of poems for Middle Earth Books; and a possible record contract with Steve Paul’s Blue Sky Records. At first this was flattering, and then seemed embarrassing. It was a more extreme reaction than had greeted my haircut.
It came, I felt, too easy. Nothing had come to Robert so easily. Or for the poets I had embraced. I decided to back off. I turned down the record contract but left Scribner’s to work for Steve Paul as his girl Friday. I had more freedom and made a little more money, but Steve kept asking me why I chose to make his lunch and clean his birdcages instead of making a record. I didn’t really believe I was destined to clean the cage, but I also knew it wasn’t right to take the contract.
I thought of something I learned from reading Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz. Crazy Horse believes that he will be victorious in battle, but if he stops to take spoils from the battlefield, he will be defeated. He tattoos lightning bolts on the ears of his horses so the sight of them will remind him of this as he rides. I tried to apply this lesson to the things at hand, careful not to take spoils that were not rightfully mine.
I decided I wanted a similar tattoo. I was sitting in the lobby drawing versions of lightn
ing bolts in my notebook when a singular woman entered. She had wild red hair, a live fox on her shoulder, and her face was covered with delicate tattoos. I realized that if one erased the tattoos, they would reveal the face of Vali, the girl on the cover of Love on the Left Bank. Her picture had long ago found a place on my wall.
I asked her outright if she would tattoo my knee. She stared at me and nodded in assent, not saying anything. In the next few days we arranged that she would tattoo my knee in Sandy Daley’s room, and that Sandy would film it, just as she had filmed Robert getting his nipple pierced, as if it were my turn to be initiated.
I wanted to go alone, but Sam wanted to be there. Vali’s technique was primitive, a large sewing needle which she sucked in her mouth, a candle, and a well of indigo ink. I had resolved to be stoic, and sat quietly as she stabbed the lightning bolt into my knee. When it was over, Sam asked her to tattoo his left hand. She repeatedly pierced the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger until a crescent moon appeared.
One morning Sam asked me where my guitar had gone and I told him I had given it to my youngest sister, Kimberly. That afternoon he took me to a guitar shop in the Village. There were acoustic guitars hanging on the wall, like in a pawnshop, only the cantankerous owner seemed not to want to part with any of them. Sam told me to choose any one I wanted. We looked at a lot of Martins, including some pretty ones with mother-of-pearl inlay, but what caught my eye was a battered black Gibson, a 1931 Depression model. The back had been cracked and repaired, and the gears of the tuning pegs were rusted. But something about it captured my heart. I thought by the looks of it that nobody would want it but me.
“Are you sure this is the one, Patti Lee?” Sam asked me.
“It’s the only one,” I said.
