April 24, 2007

Watch exclusive video: Patti Smith on "Pastime Paradise"

My first mission was to do a Jimi Hendrix song, because he encompasses all the things that I love about rock 'n' roll," says Patti Smith. "He was a great performer, beautiful, intense, a great lyricist, even a great dresser. So I chose the song that I felt in the past I was not qualified to do -- when I would ask myself, 'Are you experienced?,' the answer was always, 'No, I'm not.' And at this time in my life, I felt like I knew enough and had been through enough to tackle the song."

Smith's version of "Are You Experienced?" opens her new album, "Twelve." It's a collection of covers, with selections ranging from the monumental ("Smells Like Teen Spirit," "White Rabbit") to the unexpected (Tears for Fears's "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise"). Smith, who was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, says she's thought about such a project since the 1970s but only now believes that her voice is up to the challenge.

"I have endless lists of songs," she says, sitting calm and still on a sofa in a Sony Music conference room. "The list has changed and morphed, and it changed even while I was doing the record. I think out of the original 12, I did six, and six other songs just found their place in it as if I had no say in the matter. The record evolved organically, a combination of design and fate."

Each of the song choices on "Twelve" has its own story. "One day in the midst of doing this record, I was deeply contemplating and mourning our present global state," says Smith. "I was at a café, trying to figure out what's wrong with our world, and this song came on, 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World.' I don't even know Tears for Fears, but I thought, yeah, that's it, that's the answer. I just felt that as a pop lyric it was a reflection of our condition -- and it's also really fun to sing."

The album's biggest surprise, says Smith, was a song that emerged spontaneously in the studio one night. "Flea and Tom Verlaine and my core band were cutting 'White Rabbit,'" she says. "We'd spent all day on that, and everybody still had some adrenaline and wanted to do another song. We decided, let's do something we all know, because we couldn't practice and we only had about 45 minutes and my voice was shot. We thought, let's do a Rolling Stones song -- everybody knows the Rolling Stones -- and I said, I think I know the words to 'Gimme Shelter.'

"I didn't even think of putting it on the record -- we were doing it for fun, which is half the equation of the Rolling Stones. But the other half is a strong awareness of the times. I didn't really understand the full power of that song, because I spent a lot of my youth dancing to it. In singing it, I became reacquainted with these lyrics, and they lay it out very simply: 'War, children, it's just a shot away/Love, it's just a kiss away.' It's like these two possibilities in life, and they're equally attainable, and we have to decide what we're gonna do with our life and with our world."

Smith, 60, was known early in her career for using rock songs such as "Gloria," "My Generation" and "Land of a Thousand Dances" as the starting point for lengthy, free-form improvisational poems. She says she stayed away from that approach on "Twelve" because of the potential headaches involved. "I've gotten into legal trouble by expanding songs, even by putting a Bible verse on a Prince song," she says. "A lot of artists don't want their music expanded, and so if you do it, they can stop your record. I decided I didn't want to get involved in a lot of heartbreaking legal entanglements. Live, I'll just do what I want -- I look at the record as a springboard for a live show where we'll really be exploring these songs."

Some of the songs that didn't make the final cut for "Twelve" come from bands that might seem closer to Patti Smith's usual territory: the Velvet Underground's "Perfect Day," R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts," the Dead Boys' "Sonic Reducer." More surprisingly, she tried the Decemberists' song "Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect," about which Smith says, "I love the lyrics. I think they're great, but just because I think they're great doesn't mean I can sing them great."

And though Southern rock might seem the very antithesis of punk's high priestess, Smith says that the most personal choice on "Twelve" is "Midnight Rider" by the Allman Brothers. "I just think that song is the perfect small poem," she says. "The simplicity of the lyrics is so beautiful: 'I don't own the clothes I'm wearing/And the road goes on forever/And I got one more silver dollar.'

"I just saw myself in it. Someone who wasn't spectacular -- just a survivor -- who stayed just a step ahead. I even like to ride horses. If I was a character in a movie, that would be my character."

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Alan Light is the former editor-in-chief of Spin, Vibe and Tracks magazines and a former senior writer at Rolling Stone. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, GQ and Entertainment Weekly. His book "The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys" was published in 2006. Alan is a two-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music writing.