Patti Smith, Mistress of Mystique

Patti Smith, Mistress of Mystique by Roxanne McDonald

Despite my disappointment in the geography included in the lyrics on Smith’s first album, I was and remain the opposite of disappointed in her songs.

Patti Smith was the catalyst for my first exposure to Punk. The purist kind of Punk, that which comes with dignity of surviving the dregs, not the actual head-banging and mosh-slopping kind, that is… In fact, not only was my first Punk exposure by way of Patti Smith, my first Punk concert was headed by the doyenne of dirty Rock—at a theatre that was closing after many years of fame if memory holds, I think it was Winterland?).

Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself…and will likely do so, be all over the place, here, as I am still utterly smitten by the genius and mystique that is Smith.

I was at college in New Hampshire, was listening to popular, mainstream stuff—Frampton, for one—and a boy who was way ahead of his time and mine would turn me onto really brilliant works of artists, writers, poets, and musicians—Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen…. He gave me hot off the vinyl presses Horses. And as a writer, lover of lyrics and language, I listened non-stop for weeks.

One song that stuck me, struck me sideways was “Redondo Beach.” “I went lookin’ for you…you were gone gone.”

Well, up in those winter woods, I imagined what Redondo Beach must have held for Smith. I thought of how she would approach the “sweet young thing…humpin’ on the parkin meter, leanin on the parkin meter” (though these words were in “Gloria”). I tried to envision the water’s edge and the women all gawking. And tried not to understand the suicide….

Though I had in no way planned it, I ended up a year later in California, and hitchhiked down the coast. I had to see Redondo Beach the way years later my professor had to follow the path of Frederick Henry in A Farewell to Arms by trekking the course of the novel in Europe, the way years later still my student had to follow Kerouac’s On the Road characters by driving across the country using the very same route. I had to walk to that water’s edge on Redondo Beach, maybe look for evidence of Smith—a black hair, a black tie, a tear. (Well, you get the idea.)

When I arrived in a friendly local’s car at the top of a very humble hill, I could see the horizon, then the water, then the beach. Redondo Beach. But less sand than cement, the place immediately depressed me. Maybe it was meant to be dreary and dismal, commercial and crass. Maybe it was meant to disillusion me out of dreaming what I wanted to dream for the stars who are as real as you and me. Or maybe the context is reflected by the text…of great lyricists and poets like Smith.

About ten years ago, I took from my now healthy collection of Smith works, and stood forever (willingly) in a line waiting for Smith to finish performaning and come down below the theatre to sign our stuff. I had a well-read copy of Babel in tow, but also a motive beyond that. As she signed my book, I asked her to join us that night for an artists’ salon—resuscitated gatherings that champion the talented and entertain the not so much.

She declined, but in a lovely, soft (and even tickled, humored) way.

Now this might seem to be no big deal. But in 1979, I think it was, when I was yet to be let down by the dumpy Redondo reality, I had attended that Patti Smith concert as a groupie, a follower, a fanatical freak for Patti! On the second balcony, someone was spitting down on us standing below. Others were slam-dancing (doing that short-lived trend that ended when brains a bashing around inside skulls couldn’t really take that shit anymore). And someone else was tossing roses onstage. Patti Smith stopped. Midsong. And shcreamed at the mosh, “Don’t be fukkin’ throwin shit up here! Thank you.” Then she continued her song, calling out to her love, “Are you gone gone?” as if nothing had halted her at all.

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