Rock Chicks

by Alison Stieven-Taylor

  The CBGB residency gave the band an opportunity to hone their skills. It also got them a record deal. Clive Davis signed them to his Arista label in 1975. Within weeks they were putting down tracks for Horses. Drummer Jay Dee Daugherty had been added to the line-up, and Verlaine and Allen Lanier from Blue Oyster Cult performed and contributed songs. John Cale from the Velvet Underground was brought in to produce, but he and Patti clashed, sometimes spectacularly. She was determined not to compromise her vision.

  Horses captured the Patti Smith Group’s live essence, which was what Patti was after—she loathed the over-produced ‘manufactured’ rock current. The group was about three-chord rock delivered without frills. It was a raw, bare, honest sound that would carry Patti’s music directly to that place in the brain where random thoughts tumble across emotional landscapes.

  The album contained an eclectic mix of covers, original songs and the spoken word. Patti tackled Van Morrison’s ‘Gloria’ and ‘Land (of a Thousand Dances)’ written by New Orleans songwriter/performer Chris Kenner. Both songs were features of Patti’s live performances. Horses also captured the brilliance of her improvisational skills—the track ‘Birdland’ was recorded as a stream-of-unconscious poetry that went on for nine minutes and which Patti attributes to the angst she felt about working with Cale, who at times drove her insane.

  Making it into the top fifty on the US charts, Horses opened the door for alternate musicians and took the provocative New York underground art to a wider audience. To support its release, Patti and the boys toured the USA and Britain, where her anarchistic, outrageous on-stage antics were likened to those of the Sex Pistols.

  Patti confused many. She dressed like a man and tackled subjects that were verboten for women. When asked by Penthouse magazine in 1976 if she masturbated, the reply was a definitive yes. ‘To me fucking and masturbation and art is all the same because all it is is total concentration ... a good artist’s always got his hand in his zipper.’

  she was no longer the angry, volatile artist. Her happiness left her unable to produce the gut-wrenching emotion of earlier work

  The next year Patti and her band were back in the studio to record Radio Ethiopia. Produced by John Douglas, Patti’s friend Lou Reed and the New York Dolls, it featured nine original tracks all co-written by Patti. Radio Ethiopia failed to re-capture the creative freedom of Horses. Critics suggested the band had lost its innocence. Unmoved, Patti stated she was proud of the record.

  The next Patti Smith Group album was Easter, released in 1978. It featured the single ‘Because the Night’, which became her greatest commercial success. The lyrics were written by Patti for her new lover Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, the leader of Sonic Rendezvous Band and ex-MC5 guitarist, and the music by another New Jersey singer, Bruce Springsteen. Jimmy Iovine, producing his first solo album, would go on to make a name for himself working with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Stevie Nicks.

  ‘Because The Night’ shot to number thirteen and the album settled at twenty on the Billboard pop charts. The songs on the album reflected Patti’s continued fascination with sex and religion. Her version of ‘Privilege (Set Me Free)’ included a recitation of the Twenty-third Psalm and ‘Easter’ evoked images of Christ’s resurrection.

  she channelled her grief into work. By 1995 she felt strong enough to start performing again

  After touring extensively, the Patti Smith Group recorded their final album Wave, which was released in 1979. It was produced by Todd Rundgren, whose pop treatment left Patti’s diehard fans wanting. Despite the album becoming her highest charting release, the creative forces that had defined the group and put Patti on the world stage were waning.

  She was no longer the angry, volatile artist who had blown everyone away with Horses. Her obvious personal happiness—she and Fred Smith were deeply in love—shifted her focus and left her unable to produce the gut-wrenching emotion that had fuelled her earlier work. She performed to more than 70,000 fans at a farewell concert in Florence, Italy, before dropping out of sight for nearly a decade. She traded her rock’n’roll life for one of wedded bliss.

  Patti married Fred Smith in 1980 and they set up house in Detroit. In 1982 Jackson, their first child, was born, followed five years later by daughter Jesse. She threw herself into the role of mother. Both Patti and Fred continued to compose material together, but they were content to lay low and live quietly.

  In 1988 she released Dream of Life, which featured songs written with Fred, including ‘People Have the Power’ and ‘Paths That Cross’. Co-produced by Fred Smith and Jimmy Iovine, the album was another step away from her previous work, reflecting a more mature and content Patti. She published more poetry and gave intermittent readings, but in the main was happy to stay at home.

  Fred and Patti worked on a collection of songs they intended to record in 1995. But Fred died from heart failure in November 1994. Patti’s heart was broken. As she struggled to cope, her brother Todd, who she was very close to, died unexpectedly from a heart attack.

  She channelled her grief into work. By 1995 she felt strong enough to start performing music again. Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty rejoined her, and along with bassist Tony Shanahan formed the nucleus of the Patti Smith Group. They embarked on a tour of the West Coast of the USA.

  performing for more than three hours, Patti was as compelling at fifty-nine as she had been in her twenties

  Returning to Electric Ladyland, where she’d made her first single, she laid down tracks for her next album. Tom Verlaine, John Cale and Jeff Buckley as well as Patti’s youngest sister Kimberley on mandolin played on the album.

  Patti went back to Michigan with her kids to start the school year. But the need to submerge herself in work continued. Peace and Noise, her seventh album which she dedicated to William Burroughs, was released in 1997. The album featured a number of songs written with a new collaborator, guitarist Oliver Ray, who first appeared on 1996’s Gone Again.

  It was three years to the next album, Gung Ho, on which her son Jackson played guitar along with Tom Verlaine, Oliver Ray and Lenny Kaye. Michael Stipe from REM added vocals. Gung Ho heralded a new era—less attention to personal meanderings and more focus on social and political statements.

  In 2002 she had an exhibition at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. The eighty-five drawings spanned four decades and included various self-portraits, images of Christ, a sketch of Rimbaud and a portrait of Robert Mapplethorpe.

  Continuing her preoccupation with politics and social justice, Trampin’ included plenty of material about 9/11 and the war on Iraq, against which she has protested loudly. The album was released in 2004 with Lenny Kaye, Jay Dee Daugherty, Tony Shanahan and Oliver Ray on board again. It sounded closer to her earlier work than anything she had done in the previous two decades.

  The following year she curated the Meltdown Festival in Britain, putting together a program that featured works by Bertold Brecht and performances by Yoko Ono, Television and Sinead O’Connor. One of the festival highlights was a full performance of the Horses album—something never done before.

  Since then she has appeared as a support act for U2 at Madison Square Gardens and for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. She was the last performer to take the stage at CBGB before the club closed its doors in 2006. Performing for more than three hours, Patti was as compelling at fifty-nine as she had been in her twenties.

  Patti was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. The closing song of the award’s ceremony featured Patti and Fred’s ‘People Have the Power’. On stage she was joined by her son Jackson, Keith Richards, Eddie Vedder, Stephen Stills, Sammy Hagar, the Ronettes and the evening’s other inductees, who included close friend Michael Stipe, the man who said Horses defined his musical destiny.

  Twelve, her first album of covers, was released the same year. In it she pays tribute to real rock’n’rollers, includ
ing Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane and Kurt Cobain. Patti Smith has no intention of fading away into the ether: ‘I want to be a thorn in the side of everything as long as possible.’

  Of her body of work she has said, ‘we never compromised any record for a company, we never compromised for money or career ... I feel good about all of them.’

  STEVIE NICKS

  the White-Winged Dove

  Stephanie Lynn Nicks was born in 1948 in Phoenix, Arizona. From the age of five, the little girl with gorgeous blonde locks and the face of an angel was singing and dancing with her grandfather Aaron Jess Nicks, a country singer, at a bar owned by her parents. Even at that age she was confident and bubbly, aware of the audience and their appreciative responses.

  Much of her childhood was spent on the move in Texas, Utah and New Mexico, as her father Jess rose up the management ladder of major corporations. The constant moves made it difficult to develop friendships and Stevie and her brother Christopher relied on each other, and their imaginations, to entertain themselves.

  On her sixteenth birthday she was given a guitar and promptly sat down to write her first song. From that moment Stevie became a compulsive songwriter, locking herself away in her room for hours at a time as she created imaginary tales of loves lost, pouring her heart out in her lyrics.

  Her parents encouraged her musical aspirations. Both loved gospel music and Stevie learned from listening to its harmonies. She also had a solid diet of country music via her grandfather. In her teens her tastes shifted to the Beach Boys, the Ronettes and the Spinners. When Janis Joplin and Grace Slick hit the airwaves, Stevie switched allegiance to rock.

  By the mid 1960s the Nicks were living in Los Angeles and Stevie was singing in Changing Times, a group modelled on the Mamas and the Papas. Before she finished high school, the family moved to San Francisco, where Stevie met Lindsay Buckingham at a church social. There were no romantic sparks at first. But Stevie made quite an impression with her beautiful singing voice.

  San Francisco—then at the height of its flower-power hippy fame—would be the last move she made with her family. When they left for Chicago in 1967 Stevie stayed behind. In the same year she joined Fritz, a band of high school seniors—Brian Kane (lead guitar), Bob Aguirre (drums), Javier Pacheco (keyboards) and Lindsay Buckingham (bass and vocals). Fritz played mostly local gigs around Santa Clara County and soon they were on the bill at local festivals with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Joplin made a huge impact on the impressionable Stevie, who was mesmerised by the woman’s magnetism and the way she controlled the crowd.

  Fritz moved to LA, having been promised a record contract that never eventuated. By 1971 they had folded. Buckingham and Stevie, who by now were romantically involved, wanted to move in a different musical direction. They stayed in LA.

  Buoyed by the interest shown by sound engineer Keith Olsen, who worked at Sound City Studios, Stevie and Buckingham worked tirelessly, putting down demo tracks at night. They recorded in the coffee factory owned by Buckingham’s father. Olsen, who was keen to turn his hand to producing, worked with the duo—now performing as Buckingham Nicks—on their self-titled album and brokered a deal with Polydor in 1972. Sales of the album, a mix of country/rock/folk songs written by the pair, were hampered by a lack of promotional support and Polydor dropped the duo shortly after its release.

  They were back to square one. Moving into a share house, Stevie went out to work as a waitress while Buckingham worked on his music.

  He dominated the relationship. ‘He was the artist: he didn’t know how to do anything except music. What was he going to do, sell shoes?’ Stevie said. She paid for the rent, the food, the car. It was ‘going to take my strength’ to ‘make it in the music business’.

  By 1974 they were no closer to signing a new record deal. The constant struggle to make ends meet was taking its toll on the relationship and on Stevie, the breadwinner. She made a deal with her father to give it another six months and then to go back to study—her fallback position was to become a teacher. Her parents were not only concerned about her financial struggles. They were worried by the constant fighting between Stevie and Buckingham.

  Stevie was mesmerised by Joplin’s magnetism and the way she captured the crowd and held them in her grasp

  One month before her deadline their fortunes changed. Mick Fleetwood was in LA looking for a new guitarist to replace Bob Welch, who was tired of all the emotional dramas rocking their band. Olsen had been enlisted to produce the next Fleetwood Mac album and played Mick Fleetwood a track on which Buckingham played. On New Year’s Eve 1974, when Mick Fleetwood put in a call to Olsen saying he wanted Buckingham to join the band, he was told Stevie was part of the package.

  Within weeks the duo was in the studio with Fleetwood Mac, recording the self-titled album that became known as The White Album. Stevie contributed material, including ‘Landslide’ and ‘Rhiannon’. The latter song cemented her ethereal, mystical on-stage power. Performing ‘Rhiannon’ was like an out-of-body experience that left her exhausted. As Mick Fleetwood said, ‘“Rhiannon” was like an exorcism’ for Stevie.’

  Plucked from obscurity to driving in limousines and travelling first class, Stevie began living the fantasy life that is rock’n’roll. ‘It was one big outrageous morning til night party everyday for years,’ she marvelled.

  it was ‘going to take my strength’ to ‘make it in the music business’

  Fleetwood Mac, originally from London, had been around since 1967 and had a reputation as one of the best British blues bands. In 1970, Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie were joined by Christine Perfect (who would marry McVie—she had been singing with popular blues band Chicken Shack and had been voted female vocalist of the year by Melody Maker.

  From the outset Fleetwood Mac was plagued by internal strife. Peter Green left in 1970 with a serious psychotic disorder after downing too much LSD. Guitarist Jeremy Spencer departed to join the Children of God cult and was replaced by Bob Welch. At that point the band left behind the blues and began playing soft rock. Then guitarist Bob Weston left after having an affair with Fleetwood’s wife. By 1973 Fleetwood, the McVies and Welch had moved to LA and set their sights on cracking America. They had achieved critical acclaim, but nothing like they would experience with the addition of Stevie and Buckingham.

  Stevie’s voice, mellifluous and at times quavering with emotion, brought a distinctive resonance to Fleetwood Mac. Her ability to harmonise was now in full flight. The combination of vocals from Stevie, Christine McVie and Buckingham created the sound for which Fleetwood Mac became renowned.

  The White Album reached number one and its three singles—‘Over My Head’ and ‘Say You Love Me’, both written by Christine McVie, and Stevie’s ‘Rhiannon’—made it into the top twenty, with ‘Rhiannon’ charting at number eleven.

  Stevie added a sexual spark and quickly became the pin-up girl. Everyone wanted Stevie, which created tensions with the other band members.

  But she was the star. Ninety per cent of the people who went to Fleetwood Mac concerts wanted to see Stevie. Decked out in ethereal garb—platform boots, long flowing dresses and scarves she twirled across the stage—she spun a web of sex, sorcery and mystique, with her soul-reaching vocals and mesmerising tiny twirling body. Watching her was like taking LSD—a real head trip that took the audience soaring as she emptied her heart on stage in front of thousands of strangers.

  Women related to her. Men desired her. But not everyone appreciated her style. Early critics dismissed her as an airhead and a ‘California girl prone to writing songs about witches, mysticism and all the other shit one would conjure up sautéing in a Jacuzzi.’

  Stevie’s on-stage persona, her stage costumes, were an extension of her personal style. She still wears the long dresses, velvet, lace, leather and chiffon. ‘I love the same eye make-up. I’m not a fad person.’
she explained.

  She spoke openly about her belief in reincarnation and of the influence of the supernatural on her life. For a time rumours abounded that Stevie was a white witch and groups formed around the world to worship the new queen of the occult. She did little to quash the misperception. She loved ‘Halloween and fairy tales’, including the one she was living.

  As the adoration of her fans and her sexy, confident on-stage persona grew, her relationship with Buckingham began to erode. The band’s popularity was skyrocketing and its two warring couples, Buckingham and Stevie and the McVies, were pulling each other apart. At the same time Fleetwood Mac was recording its second album, Rumours. Buckingham admitted later to deliberately sabotaging the work he did during the recording of Rumours because he was angry with Stevie for ending their relationship.

  The split was incredibly acrimonious, but that had been the tone of their relationship right from the outset. Buckingham had a vile temper and Stevie retaliated with equal venom. ‘He’s scary when he gets mad,’ Stevie said.

  Rumours was a torturous exercise that took a year to complete. The songs on the album document the heartbreak, anger and frustration in their relationships. Angst makes for great creativity and the album includes some of Fleetwood Mac’s most brilliant material. The result was twenty-five million sales and a smash hit that charted for thirty-one weeks upon its debut. In comparison, The White Album had sold five million.

  there were rumours that Stevie was a white witch and groups formed around the world to worship the new queen of the occult