Tag Archives: Patti Smith

How Jack Kerouac Influenced Bob Dylan & More

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Cover of the upcoming “Kerouac On Record.”

In a 12,000 word essay, “Bob Dylan’s Beat Visions (Sonic Poetry),” that appears in the upcoming book, “Kerouac On Record: A Literary Soundtrack,” I explore how Bob Dylan was profoundly influenced by the Beat writers, and especially Jack Kerouac.

The book is being published by Bloomsbury and will reach book stores online and off on March 8, 2018. Rock’s Back Pages will be publishing an excerpt from my essay, and the April issue of Mojo magazine (see full review below) includes a rave review that says in part: “Among the strongest in a strong lot are Michael Goldberg’s examination of Dylan’s lit roots and Kerouac’s own musicological piece — ‘The Beginning Of Bop’ – that attempts to capture jazz in words – and succeeds.”

Nice to be mentioned in the same sentence as Kerouac!

In addition my Dylan piece, I also have an interview with writer (and one time rock critic) Richard Meltzer in which he talks at length about Kerouac.

The book also contains essays on the influence of Kerouac on a number of musicians including Tom Waits, the Grateful Dead, Jim Morrison, Van Morrison, Patti Smith and others. And there are excellent pieces about the influence of jazz on Kerouac’s writing style.

As we get closer to the publication date I’ll share more about this fascinating book.

Here’s the Mojo review in full:

Review in the April issue of Mojo.
  • A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post –

Audio/Video: Patti Smith does Bob Dylan – ‘Changing of the Guards,’ ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’ + Smith/Dylan do ‘Dark Eyes’

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Photo via Ken Regan’s website. Photo by Ken Regan.

Bob Dylan has long been one of Patti Smith idols. Today I thought I’d feature some of her covers of Bob Dylan songs, plus a duet she did with Dylan in 1995.

I’ve also included versions of the songs by Dylan>

Patti Smith, “Changing of the Guards,” 2007:

Bob Dylan, “Changing of the Guards,” live version 1978 (sound starts ten seconds in):

Bob Dylan, “Changing of the Guards,” off Street-Legal, 1978:

Changing of the Guards by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

Patti Smith, “Boots of Spanish Leather,” 2011:

Bob Dylan, “Boots of Spanish Leather,” 1964:

Boots of Spanish Leather by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

Patti Smith, “Drifter’s Escape,” 2012:

Bob Dylan, “Drifter’s Escape,” 1967:

Drifter's Escape by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

Patti Smith & Bob Dylan, “Dark Eyes,” Boston, Dec. 10, 1995:

1995-12-10-Boston-Dark Eyes by Bob Dylan & Patti Smith on Grooveshark

Patti Smith & Bob Dylan, “Dark Eyes,” New York, Dec. 11, 1995:

1995-12-11-New York City-Dark Eyes by Bob Dylan & Patti Smith on Grooveshark

Patti Smith & Bob Dylan, “Dark Eyes,” New York, Dec. 14, 1995:

Patti Smith & Bob Dylan, “Dark Eyes,” Philadelphia, Dec. 15, 1995

1995-12-15-Philadelphia-Dark Eyes by Bob Dylan & Patti Smith on Grooveshark

Patti Smith & Bob Dylan, “Dark Eyes,” Philadelphia, Dec. 17, 1995

1995-12-17-Philadelphia-Dark Eyes by Bob Dylan & Patti Smith on Grooveshark

Bob Dylan, “Dark Eyes,” Empire Burlesque, 1985:

Dark Eyes by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.

Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.

–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Video: Patti Smith & Band, Brussels Summer Festival – Aug. 8, 2014 – ‘Dancing Barefoot,’ ‘Because The Night, ‘ ‘Gloria,’ & More

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A few nights ago Patti Smith performed at the Brussels Summer Festival Place des Palais, Bruxelles.

Below are video clips of many of the songs.

Patti Smith, “Ain’t It Strange,” Brussels Summer Festival Place des Palais, Bruxelles August 8, 2014:

“Dancing Barefoot”:

“Redondo Beach”

“April Fool”

“Pissing in a River,” excerpt:

“My Blakean Year”:

“Beneath the Southern Cross”:

“Ain’t It Strange

Because the Night”:

“People Have the Power”

“Banga”

“Gloria” & “Rock N Roll Nigger”:

Plus:

Patti Smith, “Ghost Dance” at the Burg Herzberg Festival, Alsfeld, Germany, August 1, 2014:

And Patti Smith, “Perfect Day” at the Haldern Pop Festival, Haldern, Germany, August 7, 2014:

[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.

Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.

Of just buy the damn thing:

–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Books: Patti Smith Reviews (Loves) New Haruki Murakami Novel

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This is a first for Patti Smith.

After rave reviews of her memoir, Just Kids, she’s now on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Book Review with an essay about the new Haruki Murakami novel, “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.”

Smith is an excellent writer, she knows Murakami inside and out, and her review is a joy to read.

Here’s the first few graphs”

A devotional anticipation is generated by the announcement of a new Haruki Murakami book. Readers wait for his work the way past generations lined up at record stores for new albums by the Beatles or Bob Dylan. There is a happily frenzied collective expectancy — the effect of cultural voice, the Murakami effect. Within seven days of its midnight release, “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage” sold over one million copies in Japan. I envision readers queuing up at midnight outside Tokyo bookstores: the alienated, the athletic, the disenchanted and the buoyant. I can’t help wondering what effect the book had on them, and what they were hoping for: the surreal, intra-dimensional side of Murakami or his more minimalist, realist side?

I had a vague premonition this book would be rooted in common human experience, less up my alley than the alien textures woven throughout “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.” Yet I also sensed strange notes forming, coiling within a small wound that would not heal. Whichever aspect of himself Murakami drew from in order to create “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage,” it lies somewhere among the stones of his mystical labors.

He sits at his desk and makes this story: a young man’s traumatic entrance into adulthood and the shadowy passages he must subsequently negotiate. His protagonist’s name, Tsukuru, means “to make,” a metaphor for the writer’s process. He is 36 years old and builds and refurbishes train stations, continuously observing how to improve them. He has the touching habit of sitting in them for hours, watching trains arrive and depart and the symphonic flow of people. His love of railway stations connects him with each stage of his life — from toys, to study, to action. It is the one bright spot in an existence he imagines is pallid.

In a sense, Tsukuru is colorless by default. As a young man he belonged to a rare and harmonious group of friends wherein all but he had a family name corresponding to a color: Miss White, Miss Black, Mr. Red, Mr. Blue. He privately mourned this, sometimes feeling like a fifth leaf in a four-leaf clover. Yet they were as necessary to one another as the five fingers of a hand. As a sophomore in college, without explanation, he is suddenly and irrevocably banished from the group, cut off and left to drop into a murky abyss. Belonging nowhere, he becomes nothing.

Read the entire review here.

[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.

Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.

Of just buy the damn thing:

–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Video: Historic 1974 Early Footage of Patti Smith – ‘Paint It Black,’ ‘Piss Factory’ & More

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Patti Smith, 1974, Max’s Kansas City.

In 1974 Patti Smith performed at Max’s Kansas City backed by Lenny Kaye and Richard Sohl.

These videos find Smith performing songs that she soon dropped from her set, including “Picture Hanging Blues” and “We Three.”

The video was shot by photogrpaher Bob Gruen.

Although the quality is crude, this is amazing and if you dig Patti Smith you’ve got to see it.

“Paint It Black”:

“Land”:

“Hey Joe”:

“I’m Wild About That Thing”:

“Picture Hanging Blues”:

“Piss Factory”:

“The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game”:

“We Three”:

“We’re Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together”:

[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]

– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Video: Patti Smith Performs ‘Gloria,’ ‘Because the Night’ in Switzerland, April 4, 2014

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Patti Smith Performed at Les Docks in Lausanne, Switzerland last night, April 4, 2014.

Two songs from her set.

“Gloria”:

“Because the Night”:

-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –

Audio: Patti Smith Live in Detroit, Dec. 12, 1976 – complete show

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Photo via Patti Smith’s Facebook page.

Here Patti Smith performing at the Masonic Temple in Detroit, Michigan, December 12, 1976.

Set list:

1. We’re Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together – 00:50
2. Kimberly – 03:37
3. Redondo Beach – 08:07
4. Free Money – 13:31
5. Poppies – 17:50
6. Ask The Angels – 25:20
7. Pissing In A River – 29:00
8. Pumping (My Heart) – 35:02
9. Ain’t It Strange – 39:02
10. Band Of Gold – 48:26
11. Radio Ethiopia – 51:46
12. Rock ‘n’ Roll Nigger – 59:55
13. Gloria – 01:09:42
14. My Generation (special guest: Rob Tyner)- 01:16:17

-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –

Audio: Bjork, Patti Smith, Lykke Li Perform at ‘Let’s Protect the Park’ Benefit Concert in Iceland

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Patti Smith and Darren Aronofsky at screening of “Noah.”

On March 18, 2014 at at Harpa in Reykjavík, Iceland, a benefit concert, Let’s Protect the Park, was held featuring Bjork, Patti Smith, Lykke Li and others.

Over $300,000 was raised for Icelandic environmental organizations.

Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah,” which was filmed in Iceland, was screened that night.

Listen to over an hour of the concert, including a beautiful set by Patti Smith.

Plus a fan-shot video of all the artists performing the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage.”

– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post –

Audio: Patti Smith Talks About Singing With Bob Dylan – ‘like drinking the purest water’

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Bob Dylan and Patti Smith at the Beacon Theater, 1995.

I’ve been going through old interviews recently, putting together a collection of my music journalism, and I came across an interview that Jaan Uhelszki and I did with Patti Smith.

In August of 1996, two months after the release of her first album in eight years, Patti Smith sat down for an interview with us for my online magazine, Addicted To Noise.

Patti had a history with both myself and Jaan. She’d known Jaan when Jaan worked at Creem, and I’d interviewed Patti in 1975, before the release of her debut album, Horses.

We had a long conversation with Patti. I’ve pulled out the part where she talks about Bob Dylan. She had gone out on the road with Dylan at the end of 1995. At one point during the interview she said that she felt Bob Dylan was a big reason for why she became an artist.

Patti Smith: I’ve always felt that if there wasn’t a Bob Dylan I don’t know if… I think you have to give back what you’re given. I’ve been inspired and influenced by a lot of great people and I think it’s important, if you have any gifts at all, you have–if you’re given a gift, you have to give of it. One can’t hoard it. I think that is one thing Fred [‘Sonic’ Smith] and I were really talking about after being pretty reclusive for so long, that we did have a certain responsibility and I often, I deeply encouraged Fred, who was one of the most gifted people I ever knew to share his gifts with others and it’s regrettable it didn’t happen.

Some people are very comfortable with their gifts, somebody like Robert Mapplethorpe was very comfortable with them and used them daily. Worked daily. Other people are plagued by their gifts and I feel myself I have a little more of a better balance of comfortable plagued-ness, I have a little bit of plagued, I often feel dogged yet most of the time I feel blessed.

Jaan Uhelszki: The Dylan tour. How did it come about and did you stay in touch with him after you first met him at the Bottom Line in the seventies?

Patti Smith: No I hadn’t talked to him in some time. Really as I gleaned from Bob himself, he really felt that it would be good for me to come back out. He thought that I should come back out, and he said really nice things from onstage. I think that he feels I was a strong influence on things, and he thinks I should be out here–out in the front. He was very encouraging to me. I wasn’t really ready to work then, I really didn’t have a band. We’d been recording but I wasn’t really prepared to do anything. But I was so happy that he asked, that we decided to do it and you know we were a little rusty and rag tag but the people seemed happy and he was happy. My main mission on that small tour–it was only ten dates–was to crack all the energy, to crack all the atmosphere and get the stage ready for him. So we had our time before him and that was my prime directive was to get the night as magic as possible, so when he hit the stage, ’cause he hits a lot of them, that maybe it would feel a little more special than normal. And I think we did a pretty good job and I know that he was happy.

— continued —

Use this link or the one below below to get to the rest of this post.

-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

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Audio: Patti Smith Shares New Collaboration with Kronos Quartet, ‘ ‘Mercy Is’

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A new Patti Smith song, “Mercy Is,” was debuted yesterday on Mary-Anne Hobbs’ BBC 6 radio show, the NME reports.

The track is featured at the 2:55:00 mark. You can easily advance to hear it if you don’t want to listen to the entire three-hour show.

Smith wrote the song specifically for the film “Noah,” directed by Darren Aronofsky, starring Russell Crowe in the title role and shot in Iceland. She recorded it with the Kronos Quartet.

The soundtrack is scored by Clint Mansell.

“My orchestrator Matt Dunkley and I arranged the music which we roughly laid out alongside Patti’s demo,” Mansell told Hobbs, “and then we had Kronos and Patti play together in the studio, so it was all done in quite an old school way. This process allowed Patti and Kronos to really express themselves and really find their performance.”

You can listen to it here.

– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post –