POP MUSIC : Patti Smith Is Back--With New Priorities

Patti Smith made her reputation a decade ago with volcanic performances that, remarkably, turned her often dark and downbeat songs about loneliness, despair and death into life-affirming anthems.

This radical presence made her even more important than Janis Joplin in demonstrating that women could truly r-o-c-k. Few singers--male or female--have exhibited such intensity and desire on stage.

But on this afternoon, the high priestess of the punk/new wave generation was tiptoeing down the hall of the comfortable mid-town hotel.

The rock-poet, now 41, has just re-entered the pop world after a dramatic nine-year break during which she moved to Detroit to begin raising a family, but she has set strict career boundaries. The woman who was once enthralled with rock ‘n’ roll now also prizes her role as wife and mother.

She already had interrupted an interview to check on Frederick, 5, and Jesse, 1, and now she wanted to make sure she didn’t wake them--as she headed outdoors with a photographer.

Though Smith misses New York, she also plans to continue living in Detroit with her husband and collaborator, musician Fred Smith, and the kids. She’ll write books and make more albums--but she won’t tour.

No tour?

Is this the same woman who then was so eager to perform again after breaking two vertebrae during a 1977 fall from a stage in Tampa that she had friends carry her on stage at CBGB’s in the Village, where she did most of the show sitting in a chair?

Is this the same woman who, reflecting on the accident in Tampa, said: “I just couldn’t hold back. . . . There was a moment (on stage) when I split in two, where one part of me was completely aware of the danger and the other part just pushed me over”?

Asked about the differences between this Patti Smith and the other Patti Smith, she explains now, “When you are young and single and a rock ‘n’ roll star, you have the luxury of being romantic about life and death, and you can be a bit frivolous. . . .

“When you have children, you have the responsibility of tending to yourself. You have to be together. You have to focus. You have little ones dependent on you for everything. You can’t be daydreaming about exploding like a ball of light on stage. You have new priorities.”

‘Is It Really You?’

Pop personalities often feel uncomfortable on the street with a photographer--and Smith has a distinctive appearance that is hard to mistake: The wiry build (she’s 5-foot-7, 110 pounds) and angular face, with animated eyes, that makes her look like a lost, female twin of Mick Jagger--or is it Keith Richards?

Yet Smith was relaxed as she walked along Central Park South on a recent afternoon. She was mobbed by admirers and photographers a few times in Europe, where her fame was greater than America, but she said fans in New York usually just offer a polite, “Hi, Patti.”

As if on cue, a man in his late 20s on a park bench looked up as Smith walked by.

“Patti?” he asked hesitantly--as if to say, is it really you ?

“Yeah, how ya doin’?” she returned, effortlessly. She took the pen and paper that the man held out to her and scribbled an autograph.

She then resumed her walk--enjoying the chance to be back in this town, where she was toasted in the ‘70s as genuine triple-threat artist. Besides her music, she enjoyed success as a writer and painter.

“You know you asked before about if I missed anything these last few years,” she said. “One thing was New York City itself. I don’t drive and when I lived in South Jersey, you had to walk miles to get anywhere.

“So, coming to New York (in the ‘60s) was just so great. It was so easy to get around. I’ve been treated really great and my closest friends lived here. So I never thought about never having applause again, but I did miss the subway.”

Changing Diapers

Smith is the latest celebrated pop star to take a sabbatical. Among the others: Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Brian Wilson and Pete Townshend. (See box on next page.)

Some of the breaks from the fast lane were the result of legal or physical problems, but the tendency in recent years is toward a voluntary respite--and the trend is likely to gain momentum as veteran artists see the time away from the pop wars as both a means of revitalizing their art.

About her own decision to step away from the pop world, Smith said: “When you are on tour all the time, your life becomes this big swirl. You don’t have time to step back and put everything in perspective.”

Back in the hotel room, the children tucked safely away, Smith smiles at the suggestion that she just sat around the house in Detroit, changing diapers and watching TV the last nine years.

Smith is a spontaneous conversationalist and she seems to get a kick out of the idea of being this once avant-garde artist--who once spouted such lyrics as “Outside of society/Is where I want to be”--confiding that she did something as ordinary as watch old shows, like “Route 66,” which she missed the first time around.

She also watched a lot of old martial-arts movies--the old, ceremonial ones from Japan, not the modern-era ones popularized by Bruce Lee.

And yes--of course--she changed plenty of diapers. No nanny for this couple, she added--almost surprised that the question was even asked.

“I didn’t even think of (hiring someone),” she continued. “I wasn’t raised with a nanny--not that there’s anything wrong with it, it’s just our nature. My mom had to raise us (four children) and work as a waitress. She had millions of tasks and she never had any help, so (a nanny) is not in my upbringing.”

Smith, however, still found time for travel (to French Guiana and Suriname before the baby was born) and to study art history, Mexican mural painting and Japanese literature. She wrote five books, including a couple of novels and a travelogue (one of her next goals is to put the manuscripts--now scattered around the house in “piles and peach baskets”--into some type of order.)

She and her husband also worked steadily on music--though there was no thought about making an album until late in 1986.

“It was a very fruitful time,” she said. “I did more writing during this period than I ever had in my whole life, quality writing.

“The main difference after the baby was born was that I had to learn new creative (routines). I couldn’t stay up all night and write anymore. I had to work around his routine. But once I learned the baby wakes up at 6 in the morning and that he is going to be up a few hours, I began getting up at 6 and writing then--rather than from midnight to dawn.”

Slowing the Pace

Sabbaticals like Smith’s are a sign of the maturing of rock that would have been unthinkable in the ‘50s and early ‘60s.

Recording artists in those days were under tremendous pressure to keep turning out new singles and keep touring because rock music was considered a fad. The game plan was to get all you could while it lasted.

The Beatles’ released four albums--including “Rubber Soul,” “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper” in an 18-month period in the ‘60s, while Dylan released the landmark “Bringing It All Back Home,” “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Blonde on Blonde” in even a shorter period.

It was an inhuman pace, which quite possibility contributed to some of the rock casualties of the era.

But things are different now.

By the ‘70s, rock had become a more confident, multibillion-dollar-a-year institution. More important in some cases than the record companies themselves, groups--notably the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac--began telling labels when to expect new releases rather than delivering them on a company timetable.

Artists began to think in terms of long careers. They began looking for ways to prolong or renew their creativity. The thought of taking time off no longer seemed out of the question. In some cases, it makes good sense.

Smith’s case is especially interesting because her break--more than any of the others--was the most open-ended. She walked away from the pop world without any promise to return.

Her conclusion: Her new life style--raising the family and working on other projects--was more attractive to her than a full-scale return to pop.

Other artists may come away from extended breaks with different answers, but it’s a process that is likely to become increasingly common in pop.

About the sabbatical concept, Smith said: “I can’t speak for other people, but I think that unless you are just churning out product, you have to go through some kind of renewal process or relearning process or building process.

“Artists have a tendency to restate themselves continually anyway and if you are not growing, you are going to be restating stagnation. When you are going from the studio to tours, your life becomes a swirl and it’s hard to get perspective. It’s important to step back. I feel in some ways I am still pursuing a lot of the themes I was pursuing as a teen-ager. It’s just that I am developing more ideas about them and adding to those themes.”

Clive Davis, president of Artista Records and former head of CBS Records, agreed sabbaticals can be helpful for some record-makers.

“For most artists, there is merit to maintaining a regular flow--not necessarily an album a year, but a steady pattern. However, there is a special group--Lennon, Dylan, Paul Simon--who have achieved almost literary status as well as rock status and should even be compared to playwrights. Nobody expected Eugene O’Neill to write a play a year. Critics and the public look for something really special from them, so it is better to have them just give us an album when they are ready than to have an arbitrary release schedule.”

Hurricane Patti

Smith had come to New York to meet with Arista Records officials about promotional materials for the new album, and to give a couple of interviews.

Even though she was on a fast schedule, she seemed more at ease than in conversations in the mid-’70s, when she talked about the power of rock music to inspire with much the same nervous energy that she exhibited on stage--an energy that made it easy to think of her in the pre-punk ‘70s as Hurricane Patti.

Rock ‘n’ roll had gone from the passion and commentary of the ‘60s to a slick profession alism--music of anonymous bands who rarely challenged or provoked.

Chicago-born Smith, raised on ‘60s rock, burst on the scene with the missionary zeal of someone who had been commissioned by the rock ‘n’ roll gods to bring back the passion.

She had grown up in a low-income section of New Jersey, where she felt out of place as a child and turned to music as an ally and an escape. But rock was only one interest for Smith, who worked at various odd jobs and briefly attended a state teacher’s college. She was also fascinated by other arts.

Most of all, she seemed driven by a need for attention and accomplishment. In a 1975 Crawdaddy magazine article about growing up, Smith wrote: “When I was a kid, I had an absolute swagger about the future. . . . I wasn’t born to be a spectator.”

The remark makes all the more arresting the lines from a song that she wrote around that time about the frustrations of working on an assembly line in Philadelphia before moving to New York: I’m going to get out of here/ I’m going on a bus/ Go across the river/ Go to New York City/ Gonna be so big/ Gonna be so big. Gonna be a star/ Watch me now.

Moving to New York in 1969, she experimented with acting, art, play-writing (collaborating with Sam Shepard on a play) and poetry. (She had two volumes published before she ever stepped on a rock stage.) Eventually, Smith merged her poetry and rock.

Signed by Arista, she released “Horses,” a 1975 album that was so rich in originality and passion that it outpolled Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” in a Village Voice survey of U.S. pop critics.

Some of the music--including “Redondo Beach,” a stark tale about a woman’s suicide--was a bit too arty and dark for mainstream tastes, but she eventually scored a Top 20 single with the accessible ballad, “Because the Night,” co-written with Springsteen.

Sample lines from the love song:

Desire is the hunger

Is the fire I breathe

Love is a banquet

On which we feed ...

Love is an angel

Disguised as lust ...

More important than sales was her influence on an emerging generation of musicians--musicians who, like her, craved for the passion and identity. Janis Joplin had been a fiery and intense singer, but she was a belter in the post-blues tradition and she didn’t write most of her own songs.

Smith, by contrast, was a contemporary artist, who blended her surrealistic poetry with an intoxicating energy that made aspiring musicians--male and female--think of rock in new and immediate terms.

On stage, Smith pranced around the microphone like a young stallion, jabbing the air in the style of a shadow boxer. Because she took chances, her music and performances were uneven, but on her best nights she was an intoxicating presence.

So, how could Smith just walk away from all that in 1979?

“It wasn’t hard at all,” Smith replied, her hair still long and jet black. “It was like I decided Monday and did it Tuesday. I was at a point in my life where I found a relationship I really believed in and I wanted to devote myself to that relationship.

“In anything I have done, I always tried to devote myself to . . . whether it was having a relationship you really believe in and a group you really believe in. I couldn’t platoon myself. I really felt that just being away from my person was wrenching. I really couldn’t concentrate. So, I said, ‘I’ve got to go.’ ”

Arista’s Clive Davis--in a separate interview--chuckled when asked about his reaction when Smith told him she was going to take a few years off.

“Told me?” replied Davis, who had signed her to the label and been a big booster. “She just disappeared. . . . I’d say there was a four-year period where I did not hear from her. She did appear at Arista’s 10th anniversary party in 1985. We spoke and she said she did plan to make another record and that she’d call me when she was ready. I told her: ‘Fine.’ ”

The Artistic Fear

If Smith had been a trailblazer in the ‘70s, she again is dealing with relatively virgin territory in rock. Other musicians, as they move into their 30s and 40s, must, too, wonder about taking time off and may look to Smith’s experience for some answers. But what about missing the applause? What about the fear of fans forgetting about them?

“One thing you must understand is I didn’t run away from what I was doing,” she said. “I’m not trying to reject (the past). It was great When I really was into it, it was wonderful, very exciting.

“I remember how I would love nothing better than to be world-weary in the back of a limousine, going to the next radio station because it was just like being in ‘Don’t Look Back’ (with Bob Dylan).

“I also remember being on a huge stage with tons of lights and all kinds of excitement and roadies running back and forth and thinking I was in a Rolling Stones’ movie or something, ya know? I got to live out all my fantasies.”

Smith shook her head when asked about missing the applause--as if to say it’s a false issue.

“It never crossed my mind,” she said, matter of factly. “I missed the camaraderie of a tour more than the applause . . . things like my brother walking across the stage, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, (taking down) the equipment after a show. I never missed anything in terms of myself. I think I’ve had enough adulation. . . .”

But what about the final fear--will the public remain loyal?

She again shook her head, the way a pitcher does when he disagrees with the catcher’s signs.

“You can’t worry about things like that,” Smith said. “I think the only worry a true artist has is that their muse may permanently split and they might have to do like (poet Arthur) Rimbaud did and become a coffee trader or something. That’s the biggest fear.”

Poetic Imagination

Busy with her writing and studying, Smith may not have made a new album at all except for the encouragement of her husband, a member of the revolutionary ‘60s hard-rock band, MC5. He helped keep her exposed to new music and was the catalyst for joint songwriting sessions.

There was no dramatic moment when they decided to make the album (he co-wrote the songs and co-produced, with Jimmy Iovine, who had worked with Smith on the acclaimed “Easter” LP). They just decided last year that the time was right.

The only complication was she found out she was pregnant just before going into the studio. She was so weak from morning sickness at times that she had to make sure she got the vocal right in a few takes.

The early reviews of “Dream of Life” have been mostly positive. Some critics have hailed it, but others have complained about an absence of of the old Smith fire.

In the collection, Smith does set aside some of her early abandon for gentler and more reflective tones, but she hasn’t sacrificed her poetic imagination. Several of the songs--including “Paths That Cross” and “The Jackson Song”--are gently philosophical statements about life and death.

The most jarring note is “Where Duty Calls,” a reflection on a Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon. Sample lyrics:

Voice of the Swarm

We follow we fall

Some kneel for priests

Some wail at walls

Flag on a match head

God or the law

And they’ll all go together

Where duty calls.

Aside from that disheartening tale, most of the album--especially “People Have the Power,” which has been released as a single--offers an optimistic tone. The album’s recurring theme is faith in the ability of good will to affect change.

When asked how she relates now to lines like “Outside of society/Is where I want to be,” she said, “It’s not that I’m so desirous to be in society now, but I am more concerned with caring for society. I feel a lot more socially aware. ‘It’s just that I was more insular when I was younger. . . .’ ”

She paused, then added: “One thing that hasn’t changed is faith in the power of music,” she added. “But I also believe in the power of a lot of things . . . the power of prayer . . . and a million other powers that people have within their grasp.

“People sometimes feel helpless, but we shouldn’t forget how resilient we are. We are built to be strong . . . thousands of years of all kinds of terrible things that have happened to us . . . plagues, wars, and we keep on. We shouldn’t forget that we stopped the Vietnam War.”

The Regrets?

The only question that unsettled Smith on this afternoon--as her two children slept nearby--was one about the child she had in the late ‘60s and put up for adoption. Though the matter was mentioned early articles on Smith, she refused to comment.

“I don’t want to discuss it,” Smith said, uncompromisingly. “I don’t see any reason to pursue it.”

But she did respond a few minutes later to a question about regrets.

“I think really most of the time my heart was in the right place so I don’t feel too disappointed in my young self,” she said, gently. “A lot of the things you go through in life are necessary in order to get to the point you are now--and I feel very good about where I am . . . very lucky. I made the million percent right choice because I am healthier and I think stronger. I feel I have more to say--and more than anything we have two great kids.”

Smith stopped for a moment, seeming to look for a summary statement.

“I came into rock ‘n’ roll quite by accident. I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d be singing or making records. My goals were always to write the great novel or do a great painting. It was just a series of circumstances, really, that brought me into the (rock) battlefield.

“We didn’t start our project to take over the world and be the biggest rock stars in the world. We just wanted to encourage young kids to have the courage to start at the simple roots again. We’d go to England and all these young kids would come up to us and say we wish we could do it and we’d say, ‘You can.’ We said, ‘Don’t even go to our concerts, save your money and buy guitar strings.’ We must have said it a million times. That was our real message.”