Credit: Far Out / Alamy
Patti Smith needed rock and roll to mean something again when she first began writing her tunes.
The biggest names in music to her felt more like prophets with the way that they shared their art, and she wanted the opportunity to speak her truth whenever she recited her poetry in her salad days in New York City. But even though rock and roll was still reigning supreme, Smith felt that there were a lot more bands that were making the genre sound a lot more cheap than it really was.
Because as much as people liked the idea of playing rock and roll, there was a lot more to it than being one of the greatest musicians in the world. Smith’s favourite bands like The Velvet Underground didn’t really need to be the best musicians to have an effect on people, and when listening to what someone like Bob Dylan was doing, Smith figured that the greatest rock bands were the ones who were able to express themselves better than anyone else when they had a microphone in their hands.
But that’s not really where everyone’s collective minds were at during that time. The biggest names in music right before Horses came out were bands like Led Zeppelin, and while Jimmy Page could make a great riff on every one of their records, rock began looking a bit more pompous by the late 1970s. Punk hadn’t yet come in, so the corporate side of rock seemed to have a firm grip over the charts half the time.
There were still glimmers of hope on the charts from time to time, but aside from bands that were a bit rough around the edges, like New York Dolls, no one in Smith’s circles wanted to hear what someone like Peter Frampton had to say. 1976 was the year for him to conquer with Frampton Comes Alive, but just a few years later, Smith was pointing him out as everything that was wrong with rock and roll at the time.
While Frampton was still a fine guitar player, Smith felt that what he was doing wasn’t going to have any impact on rock and roll going forward, saying, “People have become very wary, and it’s almost like the Fifties again when an artist like Peter Frampton can sell five million records and not do one f****** thing to raise the consciousness of America, nothing. In the sixties, you didn’t just sell records, you had something to say. There are so many people who need our help.”
That might sound pompous if you look at it up close, but it’s not like Smith didn’t have some good points here. Rock and roll had started to be looked at like a classical form of music, and even though it felt possible to make some riffs to compete with the likes of Zeppelin and Deep Purple, they seemed too much like gods for any kid who was looking to make their own masterpieces.
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And by stripping everything down, Smith gave everyone hope that true art still had a place in culture. Her records didn’t exactly sell in droves like Frampton Comes Alive, but her voice was much more powerful than any of Frampton’s solos, especially when you look at all of the people that she inspired, whether that’s Michael Stipe, Morrissey, Courtney Love, or even Billie Joe Armstrong.
Frampton Comes Alive is still a fantastic live record from the time that will forever be associated with guitar-based rock and roll, but when you look at the artists of today, not many of them are looking at that record the same way they look at Smith. Frampton was a guitar hero in the 1970s that can still do amazing things on the guitar, but Smith is the kind of artist who made everyone believe that it was possible for anyone to make great art onstage.
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