The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [161]
It’s wearing. You’re on all the time. As much as I love talking to you today, I’d rather be having one day where I don’t have to think about me. With all this attention, you become a child. It’s awful to be at the center of attention. You can’t talk about anything apart from your own experience, your own dopey life. I’d rather do something that can get me out of the center of attention. It’s very dangerous. But there’s no way, really, to avoid that.
PATTI SMITH
by David Fricke
July 11, 1996
How did you meet [your husband] Fred?
It was March 9th, 1976. The band was in Detroit for the first time. Arista Records had a little party for us at one of those hot-dog places. I’m not one much for parties, so I wanted to get out of there. I was going out the back door—there was a white radiator, I remember. I was standing there with Lenny [Kaye, Patti Smith Group guitarist]; I happened to look up, and this guy is standing there as I was leaving. Lenny introduced me to him: “This is Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, the legendary guitar player for the MC5,” and that was it. Changed my life.
As far as your fans and the music business were concerned, you literally disappeared during the 1980s. How did you and Fred spend those missing years?
That was a great period for me. Until [her son] Jackson had to go to school, Fred and I spent a lot of time traveling through America, living in cheap motels by the sea. We’d get a little motel with a kitchenette, get a monthly rate. Fred would find a little airport and get pilot lessons. He studied aviation; I’d write and take care of Jackson. I had a typewriter and a couple of books. It was a simple, nomadic, sparse life.
Was there a period of adjustment for you, going from rock & roll stardom to almost complete anonymity?
Only in terms of missing the camaraderie of my band. And I certainly missed New York City. I missed the bookstores; I missed the warmth of the city. I’ve always found New York City extremely warm and loving.
But I was actually living a beautiful life. I often spent my days with my notebooks, watching Jackson gather shells or make a sand castle. Then we’d come back to the motel. Jackson would be asleep, and Fred and I would talk about how things went with his piloting and what I was working on.
Because people don’t see you or see what you’re doing doesn’t mean you don’t exist. When [photographer] Robert [Mapplethorpe] and I spent the end of the Sixties in Brooklyn working on our art and poetry, no one knew who we were. Nobody knew our names. But we worked like demons. And no one really cared about Fred and I during the Eighties. But our self-concept had to come from the work we were doing, from our communication, not from outside sources.
What did you live on financially?
We had some money, some royalties. We experienced difficult times. Sometimes we’d have windfalls—Bruce Springsteen recorded “Because the Night” [on Live, 1975–1985]. I might complain about that song because I get sick of it [laughs], but I’ve been really grateful for it. That song has bailed us out a few times. [The MC5’s] “Kick Out the Jams” bailed us out, too.
But we learned to live really frugally. And when we could no longer live like that, we did Dream of Life. That’s why we were getting ready to record the summer before Fred died—it was time to finance our next few years.
How far along were the two of you in planning the new album before he died?
He had the title, Gone Again. That was going to be the title cut, although he had a different concept for the lyric. And he wanted it to be a rock album. He was competitive—for me. He actually seemed to have more ambition for me than I had for myself.
What was his original concept for the song “Gone Again”?
He wanted it to have an American Indian spirit, because that was part of his heritage. I was to be the woman of the tribe who lived in the mountains, and in times of hardship, when