It was 1982. Six of us were crammed into a Honda Civic driving through the night time streets of Toronto, Ontario with Patti Smith’s “Rock and Roll Nigger” blasting. We had the windows open in spite of the fact it was the middle of a January deep freeze, letting the music spill out into the darkness and cold. It was a classic rock and roll moment if there ever was one. Where music, time, and place come together so all that exists in that moment is the song, its power, and the way its relentless beat reverberates through body and soul.
That wasn’t my first introduction to Smith, but it was the first time I’d fully experienced the power and intensity of her music. At that moment the song epitomized what rock and roll should be. It was a proclamation of independence and declaration of self delivered as an upraised middle finger to society. Yet perhaps its real appeal was how it perpetuated the romantic myth of the artist living on the edge: an outlaw who could see what others were blind to and had the nerve to speak those truths in public.
Over the years of listening to Smith’s music I came to realize this was her reality. She wrote and sang about things others either couldn’t see or weren’t able to put into words. Maybe her fascination with photography, freezing moments in time with her Polaroid Land camera, inspired her to work towards the same effect with verse that she accomplished with film. However, unlike a photograph which is forever frozen, her songs take on new life each time she performs them. This feeling was reinforced watching the recently released DVD, Live At Montreux 2005, from Eagle Rock Entertainment, as she performed songs from the breadth of her career.
While any performer worth his or her salt won’t play a song the exact same way over and over again for thirty years, only someone as gifted as Smith will allow her material to evolve to meet the challenges of changing times and circumstances. Always pushing the envelope lyrically, on this night she and her band allowed the spirit of the jazz greats who had previously graced the festival’s stage to imbue their music. As her long time stalwart and guitar player Lenny Kaye, commenting on the night’s performance in his liner notes for the DVD, puts it: “Patti once again defines our credo: there are no definitions but those we choose to create for ourselves.” This artist and her band will never be limited by labels or concern themselves with conforming to other’s expectations of what they should sound like.
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