CHECKING IN WITH . . . PATTI SMITH : Rock Dropout Tunes Back In

It’s fitting that Patti Smith is wearing a “lifeguard” T-shirt as she sits backstage at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, moments before her first Southern California concert appearance in 17 years.

Before dropping out of the pop world in 1979 to raise a family in Detroit, Smith frequently wrote about loneliness, despair and death, but the poet-songwriter infused her songs with such a sense of the resilience of the human spirit that they served as life-affirming anthems.

Though Smith remained out of the pop spotlight except for a 1988 album, her music has continued to have impact. Indeed, Smith, 48, has been adopted as a sort of patron saint by many of the young musicians who have defined the troubled, searching rock music of the ‘90s--a list that has included the late Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder, Courtney Love and Polly Jean Harvey.

Smith and her husband, musician Fred (Sonic) Smith, were writing songs for a new album when he died in November of heart failure. To help accelerate the grieving process, Smith--whose brother, Todd, also died in recent months--has slowly returned to her work. Her new album will be released in February, and the Belly Up stop was one of a brief series of West Coast appearances featuring acoustic music and poetry.

Before going onstage, Smith--who lives in Detroit with son Jackson, 13, and daughter Jesse, 8--reflected on her music and the deep chord it has struck in so much of today’s rock generation.

Question: Did you have any sense in the ‘70s that your music was going to have such a strong, lasting impact?

Answer: Not at all. My goal was just stir things up. It was the same when I started doing poetry in 1971. I thought the format of reading poetry was getting really dead, and I still believed it could be a viable force, a great communication outlet. My motivation was to try to put the blood back into the form--to get it away from being so boring. It was the same thing later with rock ‘n’ roll.

I really felt like rock in the mid-’70s was getting totally convoluted--all that glitter rock and stuff. There wasn’t much heart to it, and I was worried because rock had meant too much to me. I loved Dylan and the Stones, the Beatles and Hendrix, all those people from the ‘60s. I was genuinely afraid it was going to die.

Q: What do mean?

A: I meant just that. When I was a kid, my mother used to tell me how she thought swing music was going to live forever. She loved Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw and those swing guys when she was younger and she just thought it would go and on and on--and then it went out of favor and disappeared.

I used to think maybe rock ‘n’ roll was going to disappear like swing music, and I was just trying to shake things up. I didn’t think I was going to be the one [to help revive the music]. I was just trying to encourage others to do it. I used to stay around after the shows to talk to fans, especially in Europe, where a lot more people at the time seemed to care what we were talking about or doing.

In London, I remember sitting on the edge of the stage after the show and hearing all these young boys say they wished they could be in a band, and I’d tell them, “You can do it. Forget about us. Save your money and buy a guitar and make your own music.” And some of those kids did it. One of them, I later learned, became the bass player in the Clash [Paul Simonon]. We did the same thing at a church in Dublin, and one of those kids went on to be the drummer in U2 [Larry Mullen Jr.]. He reminded me of it when I met him later.

Q: Why did you make these solo appearances and not wait until you had a band together?

A: I wanted to be able to prove to myself that I could be independent, that I could always make a living if I had to, just by reading my poetry and having a guitar or two. That might seem like a funny kind of preoccupation for an artist, but when you have children, you think of things a lot differently.

Q: Do you plan to eventually tour with a band?

A: Well, I’ll certainly do some performing, but I can’t do too much, because I just can’t be away from my kids too often.

Q: You’ve written a song, “About a Boy,” for Cobain. Were you moved by his music?

A: I thought Nirvana was great. The song doesn’t romanticize the situation. I mean I think it is terrible what he did, considering the gifts that God gave him. He didn’t have the right to do something like that, especially after setting himself up as a model for young people. But I still felt sorrow for him. I felt the loss.

Q: Lots of adults--including longtime rock fans--have trouble identifying with the music of a lot of young bands these days. They can’t understand why there is so much anger and depression in the music. Why do you think that is?

A: I think one of the reasons adults don’t have more understanding of the music today is symptomatic of what is happening in America today. I think a lot of the older generation--my generation included--isn’t really doing their job when it comes to young people. It is a sacrifice to have children, and I think a lot of people take it too lightly. A lot of kids grow up without any real supervision or love. They aren’t given much spiritual guidance or a real foundation to take with them into the world. That’s one reason the music of a band like Nirvana speaks so strongly to them. They need to feel someone understands.

Q: Was there a lot of suffering or confusion in your life during your teen years?

A: I think all young people suffer, whether you suffer because of an illness or because of abuse or because you got into trouble or whether you are lonely. I was brought up in the ‘50s, where we all thought the bomb was going to fall. It didn’t matter how well you did or what a good person you were, somebody was going to drop the bomb on you anyway.

I think my generation was one of the first generations to come into the world thinking things were useless, which is odd because we came out during such an optimistic time. Our parents had won the war. They had their little houses, and they thought that life was going to get better.

I think some of that hopelessness of my generation got passed on to later generations--the sense of uselessness. The kids today may not be worried about the bomb, but there is a sense that things aren’t right. I can’t say I suffered any more or less than any other young person. I just know that young people suffer, and I also know music is one of the things that help you get through--music and friends.