The Rolling Stone interviews

by edited by Jann S. Wenner

  People also like partnerships because they can identify with the drama of two people in partnership. They can feed off a partnership, and that keeps people entertained. Besides, if you have a successful partnership, it’s self-sustaining.

  You have maybe the longest-running songwriting-performing partnership in our times. Why do you think you and Keith survived, unlike John Lennon and Paul McCartney?

  That’s hard to make even a stab at, because I don’t know John and Paul well enough. I know them slightly, same as you, probably, and maybe you knew John better at the end. I can hazard a guess that they were both rather strong personalities, and both felt they were totally independent. They seemed to be very competitive over leadership of the band. The thing in leadership is, you can have times when one person is more at the center than the other, but there can’t be too much arguing about it all the time. Because if you’re always at loggerheads, you just have to go, “Okay, if I can’t have a say in this and this, then fuck it. What am I doing here?” So you sort of agree what your roles are. Whereas John and Paul felt they were too strong and they wanted to be in charge. If there are ten things, they both wanted to be in charge of nine of them. You’re not gonna make a relationship like that work, are you?

  Why do you and Keith keep the joint-songwriting partnership?

  We just agreed to do that, and that seemed the easiest way to do it. I think in the end it all balances out.

  How was it when Keith was taking heroin all the time? How did you handle that?

  I don’t find it easy to talk about other people’s drug problems. If he wants to talk about it, fine, he can talk about it all he wants. Elton John talks about his bulimia on television. But I don’t want to talk about his bulimia, and I don’t want to talk about Keith’s drug problems.

  How did I handle it? Oh, with difficulty. It’s never easy. I don’t find it easy dealing with people with drug problems. It helps if you’re all taking drugs, all the same drugs. But anyone taking heroin is thinking about taking heroin more than they’re thinking about anything else. That’s the general rule about most drugs. If you’re really on some heavily addictive drug, you think about the drug and everything else is secondary. You try and make everything work, but the drug comes first.

  How did his drug use affect the band?

  I think that people taking drugs occasionally are great. I think there’s nothing wrong with it. But if you do it the whole time, you don’t produce as good things as you could. It sounds like a puritanical statement, but it’s based on experience. You can produce many good things, but they take an awfully long time.

  You obviously developed a certain relationship based on him as a drug addict, part of which was you running the band. So when he cleaned up, how did that affect the band? Drug addicts are basically incompetent to run anything.

  Yeah, it’s all they can do to turn up. And people have different personalities when they’re drunk or take heroin, or whatever drugs. When Keith was taking heroin, it was very difficult to work. He still was creative, but it took a long time. And everyone else was taking drugs and drinking a tremendous amount, too. And it affected everyone in certain ways. But I’ve never really talked to Keith about this stuff. So I have no idea what he feels.

  You never talked about the drug stuff with him?

  No. So I’m always second-guessing. I tell you something, I probably read it in Rolling Stone.

  What’s your relationship with him now?

  We have a very good relationship at the moment. But it’s a different relationship to what we had when we were five and different to what we had when we were twenty and a different relationship than when we were thirty. We see each other every day, talk to each other every day, play every day. But it’s not the same as when we were twenty and shared rooms.

  Charlie says, “Mick is better with Keith Richards than he is with any other guitar players. I mean even a technically better guitar player—he’s better with Keith.” Do you feel that?

  Well, yeah, up to a certain point. I do enjoy working with other kinds of guitar players, because Keith is a very definite kind of guitar player. He’s obviously very rhythmic and so on, and that works very well with Charlie and myself. Though I do like performing or working with guitar players that also work around lead lines a lot—like Eric [Clapton] or Mick Taylor or Joe Satriani. Whether it’s better or not, it’s completely different working with them. We made records with just Mick Taylor, which are very good and everyone loves, where Keith wasn’t there for whatever reasons.

  Which ones?

  People don’t know that Keith wasn’t there making it. All the stuff like “Moonlight Mile,” “Sway.” These tracks are a bit obscure, but they are liked by people that like the Rolling Stones. It’s me and [Mick] playing off each other—another feeling completely, because he’s following my vocal lines and then extemporizing on them during the solos. That’s something Jeff Beck, to a certain extent, can do: a guitar player that just plays very careful lead lines and listens to what his vocalist is doing.

  In the mid-Eighties, when the Stones were not working together, did you and Keith talk?

  Hardly at all.

  A little while ago, Keith described your relationship like this to me: “We can’t even get divorced. I wanted to kill him.” Did you feel you were trapped in this marriage?

  No. You’re not trapped. We were friends before we were in a band, so it’s more complicated, but I don’t see it as a marriage. They’re quite different, a band and a marriage.

  How did you patch it up?

  What actually happened was, we had a meeting to plan the tour, and as far as I was concerned, it was very easy. At the time [1989], everyone was asking [whispers], “Wow, what was it like? What happened? How did it all work?” It was a nonevent. What could have been a lot of name-calling, wasn’t. I think everyone just decided that we’d done all that. Of course, we had to work out what the modus vivendi was for everybody, because we were planning a very different kind of tour. Everyone had to realize that they were in a new kind of world. We had to invent new rules. It was bigger business, more efficient than previous tours, than the Seventies drug tours. We were all gonna be on time at the shows. Everyone realized they had to pull their weight, and everyone had a role to play, and they were all up for doing it.

  Can you describe the time you spent in Barbados with Keith, deciding if you could put this together?

  Keith and I and [financial adviser] Rupert [Lowenstein] had a small meeting first and talked about business. We were in a hotel with the sea crashing outside and the sun shining and drinks, talking about all the money we’re gonna get and how great it was gonna be, and then we bring everyone else in and talk about it.

  So that was your reconciliation with Keith? Was there any talk of putting your heads together and airing issues?

  No, and I’m glad we didn’t do that, because it could have gone on for weeks. It was better that we just get on with the job. Of course, we had to revisit things afterward.

  Charlie said to me, “I don’t think you can come between Mick and Keith—they’re family. You can only go so far, and then you hit an invisible wall. They don’t want anyone in there.”

  Well, it sounds like one of the wives talking, doesn’t it? I remember Bianca [Jagger] saying a very similar thing. But if that’s what he thinks, that’s what he thinks. It’s funny he thinks that. I don’t know why he should say that. I think people are afraid to express their opinions half the time.

  In front of you and Keith?

  Or just in front of me. They think they’re gonna go back to a period where people would jump down their throats for having an opinion. Drug use makes you snappy, and you get very bad-tempered and have terrible hangovers.

  One more quote. Keith says, “Mick clams up all the time. He keeps a lot inside. It was the way he was brought up. Just being Mick Jagger at eighteen or nineteen, a star, gives him reason to protect what space is left.”

  I think it’s very impo
rtant that you have at least some sort of inner thing you don’t talk about. That’s why I find it distasteful when all these pop stars talk about their habits. But if that’s what they need to do to get rid of them, fine. But I always found it boring. For some people it’s real therapy to talk to journalists about their private lives and inner thoughts. But I would rather keep something to myself.

  It’s wearing. You’re on all the time. As much as I love talking to you today, I’d rather be having one day where I don’t have to think about me. With all this attention, you become a child. It’s awful to be at the center of attention. You can’t talk about anything apart from your own experience, your own dopey life. I’d rather do something that can get me out of the center of attention. It’s very dangerous. But there’s no way, really, to avoid that.

  PATTI SMITH

  by David Fricke

  July 11, 1996

  How did you meet [your husband] Fred?

  It was March 9th, 1976. The band was in Detroit for the first time. Arista Records had a little party for us at one of those hot-dog places. I’m not one much for parties, so I wanted to get out of there. I was going out the back door—there was a white radiator, I remember. I was standing there with Lenny [Kaye, Patti Smith Group guitarist]; I happened to look up, and this guy is standing there as I was leaving. Lenny introduced me to him: “This is Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, the legendary guitar player for the MC5,” and that was it. Changed my life.

  As far as your fans and the music business were concerned, you literally disappeared during the 1980s. How did you and Fred spend those missing years?

  That was a great period for me. Until [her son] Jackson had to go to school, Fred and I spent a lot of time traveling through America, living in cheap motels by the sea. We’d get a little motel with a kitchenette, get a monthly rate. Fred would find a little airport and get pilot lessons. He studied aviation; I’d write and take care of Jackson. I had a typewriter and a couple of books. It was a simple, nomadic, sparse life.

  Was there a period of adjustment for you, going from rock & roll stardom to almost complete anonymity?

  Only in terms of missing the camaraderie of my band. And I certainly missed New York City. I missed the bookstores; I missed the warmth of the city. I’ve always found New York City extremely warm and loving.

  But I was actually living a beautiful life. I often spent my days with my notebooks, watching Jackson gather shells or make a sand castle. Then we’d come back to the motel. Jackson would be asleep, and Fred and I would talk about how things went with his piloting and what I was working on.

  Because people don’t see you or see what you’re doing doesn’t mean you don’t exist. When [photographer] Robert [Mapplethorpe] and I spent the end of the Sixties in Brooklyn working on our art and poetry, no one knew who we were. Nobody knew our names. But we worked like demons. And no one really cared about Fred and I during the Eighties. But our self-concept had to come from the work we were doing, from our communication, not from outside sources.

  What did you live on financially?

  We had some money, some royalties. We experienced difficult times. Sometimes we’d have windfalls—Bruce Springsteen recorded “Because the Night” [on Live, 1975–1985]. I might complain about that song because I get sick of it [laughs], but I’ve been really grateful for it. That song has bailed us out a few times. [The MC5’s] “Kick Out the Jams” bailed us out, too.

  But we learned to live really frugally. And when we could no longer live like that, we did Dream of Life. That’s why we were getting ready to record the summer before Fred died—it was time to finance our next few years.

  How far along were the two of you in planning the new album before he died?

  He had the title, Gone Again. That was going to be the title cut, although he had a different concept for the lyric. And he wanted it to be a rock album. He was competitive—for me. He actually seemed to have more ambition for me than I had for myself.

  What was his original concept for the song “Gone Again”?

  He wanted it to have an American Indian spirit, because that was part of his heritage. I was to be the woman of the tribe who lived in the mountains, and in times of hardship, when things got really rough—they had a heavy snow, crops failed, warriors died—she would come down and recount the history of the tribe. There was famine and drought, and then the rains came and the corn grew high. The warriors died, but then a baby was born. It was a song of renewal. And that was the last music he wrote.

  I hadn’t written the lyrics yet. It was the last song I recorded, and when I was finally ready, it took a different turn. Instead, I paid homage to the warrior—the warrior who fell.

  You also pay tribute to Kurt Cobain in “About a Boy.” What was it about his life and music that touched you?

  When Nirvana came out, I was really excited. Not so much for myself—my time had passed for putting so much passion into music and pinning my faith on a band. I’d had the Rolling Stones. I was happy for the kids to have [Nirvana]. I didn’t know anything about his torments or personal life. I saw the work and the energy, and I was excited by that.

  So it was a tremendous shock—quite a blow to me—when he died. I remember being upstairs taking care of the kids. I came down, and Fred told me to sit down at the table. When he did it a certain way, I knew it was serious. He sat me down and said, “Your boy is dead.” And when he told me how . . .

  That day, we went to a record store for something, some Beethoven thing Fred wanted. And I remember kids were outside crying. They didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves. I felt a little like Captain Picard: I couldn’t mess with the Prime Directive. It was not my place to say anything. These kids didn’t know anything about me. But I really wanted to comfort them, tell them it was all right, that his choice was a very rare choice. I started writing “About a Boy” right after that.

  What did you want to say in the song about his choice?

  He had the song “About a Girl,” and I got the title from that. Initially I had two parallel things I wanted to express in the double meaning of the chorus [“About a boy/Beyond it all”]. When I was a kid, the ones who were beyond it all were the ones who felt they were beyond responsibility. But I was also shifting it to mean beyond it all in terms of earthly things—and hopefully beyond all earthly pain, to some better place. Nirvana. [Smiles]

  But I have to admit, originally it was written with a little more frustration and anger. In 1988–89, I watched my best friend die—slowly. Robert Mapplethorpe, in that time period, did every single thing he could to hold on to his life force. He let himself be a guinea pig for every type of drug. He met with mystics; he met with priests. Any scientist he could find. He was fighting to live even in his last hours. He was in a coma, but his breathing was so hard the room reverberated.

  When you watch someone you care for fight so hard to hold on to their life, then see another person just throw their life away, I guess I had less patience for that. You want to take a person by the scruff of the neck and say, “Okay. You’re suffering? This is suffering. Check it out.”

  I don’t say any of these things with any kind of judgment. It’s just frustration, concern for how something like that affects young people. I am aware that I am somewhat estranged and out of touch, maybe even a little out of time. But I’m not so out of time that I can’t see that young people feel even worse than I ever did. I remember the early Fifties and fallout shelters. But still, life in general seemed pretty safe. Now kids must look around—there are viral conditions, pollution, still the threat of nuclear war, AIDS. Drugs are so plentiful and scary.

  How hard has it been for you as a mother to navigate your own children through that minefield?

  I was lucky because they had a father who was continually involved in their growth process. We were never separated from our children—ever. They knew what our philosophies were, and I know they felt protected.

  What was also important was to tell them about God, t
o say prayers with them. I never promoted any religion to them because I don’t believe in that. But the concept of God, or a Creator, has always been alive in our household. My mother taught me to pray when I was a little girl, and I’ll always be grateful to her. Because in that way I never felt completely alone.

  I know that Jackson perceives the world around him as completely mad. He studies CNN and the Weather Channel to check the state of the world. And I can see the admonishment in his eyes: “What have all you people done?” I see him walking around shaking his head. I’m glad he has Stevie Ray Vaughn to guide him right now [laughs]. He can find some abstract joy or guidance in music—music being an inspiring and somewhat safe haven.