STACK #182 Dec 2019

MUSIC NEWS

visit stack.com.au

As Patti Smith’s unending life adventure shoots her toward Australia again for Blues Fest in April 2020 (and sideshows), STACK re-appraises her mighty catalogue. Words Jonathan Alley PATTI SMITH

PATTI SMITH'S 2020 LIVE DATES Byron Bay Bluesfest: April 11 (Saturday) Sydney: April 15-16, Enmore Theatre Melbourne: April 21-22, Forum Theatre

T he American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald ( The Great Gatsby ) infamously opined that "there are no second acts in American lives." Granted, Fitzgerald comes from another age. In another way, so does American singer, poet and novelist Patti Smith – as obsessed with French surrealist writer Arthur Rimbaud as the first-generation punk that rumbled around her at CBGB, and out onto NYC’s skid row, The Bowery. She's also living proof that Fitzgerald's dictum is best rebutted by fearlessly living any unforeseen second chance – indeed, ‘living well, remains the best revenge’. Smith retired from music around 1980 and, barring 1988's Dream of Life , was silent until she unleashed the mighty Gone Again in 1996, created in the crushing aftermath of the death of her husband, ex-MC5 guitarist Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith. Her brother Todd, former keyboardist Richard Sohl, and her lifelong friend, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, also died around the same period. Since then, Smith has just worked: recording, touring, occasionally acting, and writing. (She published the well-received memoirs Just Kids, MTrain and Year of Monkey over the years 2015-2019.)

HORSES (1975) If you must own one Patti Smith

RADIO ETHIOPIA (1976) Radio Ethiopia was no 'difficult

The much misunderstood Rock’n’Roll Nigger – an attempt to re-appropriate the phrase to refer to ‘outsiders’ such as Jesus Christ, painter Jackson Pollock, and herself – remains often maligned, despite its blinding, unhinged power. Available: CD, vinyl reissue WAVE (1980) The poised beauty and powerful elegance of Dancing Barefoot , delirious lover’s paen Frederick , and the title track’s off-beat story-song about meeting Pope John Paul I on the beach are worth the price of admission. Todd Rundgren’s production is a little ‘fusspot’, but don’t let that put you off this fine album. Available: 180 gram vinyl reissue BANGA (2012) Most 65-year olds aren’t this explorative, unstable, uneven, or inspired. No resting on laurels here: she’s set fire to them. Strings, spoken word, Amy Winehouse tributes and more. A revelation: don’t let this late-breaking career gem fly under your radar. Available: CD

album, it’s Horses . Some might say,’ if you only ever own one record at all ‘ – it must be Horses . Produced by ex-Velvet Underground bassist John Cale, Horses is remarkable: a song cycle of enraptured, cyclonic poems of the soul, married to maximum rock'n'roll; simplicity and complexity pulled apart, eschewing all around it in 1975, but sounding nothing like the punk rock that erupted in its wake. It is an unapologetic art record of complex, extended, caterwauling song-poems created by a young girl with an old soul, a poet who

second album', but more a clarion howl to live now, love freely and blast away at life's mediocrity – of which there was plenty, if you'd come of age in the post-Nixon, post- Vietnam malaise of mid-'70s America. The poetic stream- of-consciousness of Horses had given way to the warrior howl of Ain't it Strange and the uncompromised abstraction of the title track. Radio Ethiopia was created by a band – the now fully- fledged-and-in combat Patti Smith Group – with NY punk now unleashed, and crackling the air around it. Available: 180 gram vinyl reissue EASTER (1978) Don’t tell anyone, but for some, Smith’s mature, assured, third album just sneaks past Horses . It does not waste a moment: from the anthemic Springsteen co-write Because the Night , to the utterly coruscating, burning, feverish 25th Floor , as a rock album Easter handily eclipsed the rest of 1978.

also loved Chuck Berry and The Who. The opener – a reworking of Them’s Gloria – intones that “Jesus died for somebody’s sin/ But not mine.” Rarely has an album’s opening line confronted an audience so incisively. Don’t be without it. Available: CD, Legacy Edition (CD), vinyl reissue PATTI'S PLATTERS THAT MATTER

Soundwalk Collective: Mummer Love (2019) Smith and her daughter Jesse’s third collaboration with sound collage artists Soundwalk Collective, this one charting Arthur Rimbaud’s journey to North Africa. Available: CD, vinyl Twelve (2007) Covers project exploring The Beatles, Nirvana, Paul Simon, Hendrix, Dylan, The Stones, The Doors and (um …) Tears for Fears. Available: CD Outside Society (2011) An 18-track Best Of, available on vinyl only.

ALSO INSTORE

DECEMBER 2019

jbhifi.com.au

14