MANUSCRIPT: Dream of Life notebook.
Manuscript Notebook
for Patti Smith's First Solo Album
and beyond
Smith, Patti. Manuscript Notebook. Ca. 1988.
8vo.; unprinted pages filled with pencil and ink text and drawings; orange boards backed with red leather; lightly worn at edges; ephemera loosely inserted.
A manuscript notebook kept by Patti Smith to record poetry and lyrics used in the creation of her first solo album Dream of Life (1988), and subsequent albums. Through Smiths lyrics, which include multiple versions of select songs, the viewer gains insight into the writing process of “punk rock’s poet laureate.”
The poetry found in Smith’s notebook sets the groundwork for many of her songs on Dream of Life including “Up There Down There,” “Where Duty Calls,” and “Going Under.” Several songs take up multiple pages, providing a valuable record of their evolution into finished songs. A few of these poems found their way into Smith’s later albums. Of note is “Persuasion,” which appears in various incarnations on at least ten pages, and was included on the 2000 release of Gung Ho. Also present is information pertaining to more practical aspects of Smith’s life, including schedules and financial data.
Dream of Life is the only record Smith made with her husband, Fred Smith of the MC5, who co-wrote and co-produced the songs and played the guitars. The album was made during Smith's full-time-mom years (she was pregnant with her daughter Jesse during the recording sessions), and the lyrics written in the notebook are the remnants of this introspective moment in her life. For every pause to reflect on loss or pray in gratitude – “Paths That Cross,” the title song, “Going Under” – there was the galloping energy of “Up There Down There” (which was recorded the night Andy Warhol died), the prescient firefight of “When Duty Calls” (with its references to Lebanon, Iran and jihad) and the high-speed desire of “Looking for You.”
Alternate versions of “People Have the Power” appear in stages throughout the notebook. Smith has called the song the anthem for Dream of Life. In preparing to write the lyrics, Smith spent weeks listening to speeches by the Reverend Jesse Jackson and going through Bible verses for inspiration. She combined these references with a dream of shepherds in Afghanistan calling a truce between their Russian invaders, and gave the finished lyrics to Fred for production.
In the 1970s, Patti Smith pioneered the underground New York City Punk scene with an ecstatic blend of free-form poetry and three-chord rock. The woman hailed as the “godmother of punk” credits her signature sound to lessons in free-verse defiance from 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud and 20th-century music legend Bob Dylan. Rimbaud believed a poet’s role was to jar the senses. As a teenager roaming the streets of Paris, he was one of the first to draw images from dreams and drug-induced states. Smith says she saw Dylan as a Rimbaud-like figure whose songs were rich in poetry, politics and substance. She began writing poetry of her own, and made a name for herself in Manhattan's underground arts scene before expanding her career to include music.
Rare documentation of an intensely creative period.
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