Smith was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Her mother, Beverly, was a jazz singer, and father, Grant, worked at the Honeywell plant. She spent her entire childhood in Deptford, New Jersey. Raised the daughter of a Jehovah's Witness mother, she claims she had a strong religious, Bible-based education but left organized religion as a teenager because she felt it was too confining. (She later wrote the opening line of her cover version of Them's Gloria in response to this experience.) After graduating from Deptford Township High School in 1964, Smith went to work in a factory.
In 1967 she left Glassboro State Teachers College (now Rowan University) and moved to New York City. She met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe there while working at a book store with friend, poet Janet Hamill. Mapplethorpe's photographs of her became the covers for the Patti Smith Group LPs, and they remained friends until Mapplethorpe's death in 1989. In 1969 she went to Paris with her sister and started busking and doing performance art. When Smith returned to New York City, she lived in the Hotel Chelsea with Mapplethorpe. The two frequented the fashionable Max's Kansas City and CBGB nightclubs. The same year Smith appeared with Wayne County in Jackie Curtis's play "Femme Fatale". As a member of the St. Mark's Poetry Project, she spent the early '70s painting, writing, and performing. In 1971 she performed – for one night only – in Sam Shepard's "Cowboy Mouth". (The published play's notes call for "a man who looks like a coyote and a woman who looks like a crow".) She collaborated with Allen Lanier of Blue Öyster Cult, who recorded several of the songs to which Smith had contributed, including Debbie Denise (after her poem "In Remembrance of Debbie Denise"), Career of Evil, Fire of Unknown Origin, The Revenge of Vera Gemini, and Shooting Shark. During these years, Smith also wrote rock journalism, some of which was published in Creem magazine.
By 1974 Patti Smith was performing rock music herself, initially with guitarist and rock archivist Lenny Kaye, and later with a full band comprising Kaye, Ivan Kral on bass, Jay Dee Daugherty on drums and Richard Sohl, on piano. Financed by Robert Mapplethorpe, the band recorded a first single, "Hey Joe/Piss Factory", in 1974. The A-side was a version of the rock standard with the addition of a spoken word piece about fugitive heiress Patty Hearst ("Patty Hearst, you're standing there in front of the Symbionese Liberation Army flag with your legs spread, I was wondering were you gettin' it every night from a black revolutionary man and his women..."). The B-side describes the helpless anger Smith had felt while working on a factory assembly line and the salvation she discovered in the form of a shoplifted book, the 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud's Illuminations.
Patti Smith Group was signed by Clive Davis of Arista Records, and 1975 saw the release of Smith's first album, Horses, produced by John Cale amidst some tension. The album fused punk rock and spoken poetry and begins with a cover of Van Morrison's Gloria, and Smith's opening words: "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine."
As Patti Smith Group toured the United States and Europe, punk's popularity grew. The rawer sound of the group's second album, Radio Ethiopia, reflected this development. Considerably less accessible than Horses, Radio Ethiopia received poor reviews. However, several of its songs have stood the test of time, and Smith still performs them regularly in concert. On January 23, 1977, while touring in support of the record, Smith accidentally danced off a high stage in Tampa, Florida and fell 15 feet into a concrete orchestra pit, breaking several neck vertebrae. The injury required a period of rest and an intensive round of physical therapy, during which time she was able to reassess, re-energize and reorganize her life. Patti Smith Group produced two further albums before the end of the 1970s. Easter (1978) was her most commercially successful record, containing single Because the Night co-written with Bruce Springsteen. Wave (1979) was less successful, although songs Frederick and Dancing Barefoot both received commercial airplay.
Before the release of Wave, Smith, now separated from long-time partner Allen Lanier, met Fred Sonic Smith, former guitar player for Detroit rock band MC5 and his own Sonic's Rendezvous Band, who adored poetry as much as she did. ("Wave"'s "Dancing Barefoot" and "Frederick" were both dedicated to him.) The running joke at the time was that she only married Fred because she would not have to change her name. Patti and Fred had a son, Jackson, and later a daughter, Jesse. Through most of the 1980s Patti was in semi-retirement from music, living with her family north of Detroit in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. On June 1988 she released Dream Of Life, which included song People Have the Power. Fred Smith died on November 4, 1994. Shortly afterward, Patti faced the unexpected death of her brother, Todd, and original keyboard player, Richard Sohl. When her son Jackson turned 21, Smith decided to move back to New York. After the impact of these deaths, her friends Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and Allen Ginsberg (whom she had known since her early years in New York) urged her to go back out on the road. She toured briefly with Bob Dylan in December 1995 (chronicled in a book of photographs by Stipe).
In 1996, Smith worked with her long-time colleagues to record the haunting Gone Again, featuring About a Boy, a tribute to Kurt Cobain. Smith was a fan of Cobain, but was more angered than saddened by his suicide. That same year she collaborated with Stipe on E-Bow the Letter, a song on R.E.M.'s New Adventures in Hi-Fi, which she has also performed live with the band. After release of "Gone Again", Patti Smith has recorded two new albums: Peace and Noise in 1997 (with the single 1959, about the invasion of Tibet) and Gung Ho in 2000 (with songs about Ho Chi Minh and Smith's late father). A box set of her work up to that time, "The Patti Smith Masters", came out in 1996, and 2002 saw the release of "Land (1975–2002)", a two-CD compilation that includes a memorable cover of Prince's When Doves Cry. Smith's solo art exhibition, "Strange Messenger" was hosted at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh on September 28, 2002.
On April 27, 2004 Patti Smith released Trampin' which included several songs about motherhood, partly in tribute to Smith's mother who died two years before. Smith curated the Meltdown festival in London on June 25, 2005, the penultimate event being the first live performance of "Horses" in its entirety. Guitarist Tom Verlaine took Oliver Ray's place. This live performance was released later in the year as "Horses/Horses". In August 2005 Smith gave a literary lecture about the poems of Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake. On July 10, 2005, Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. In addition to her influence on rock music, Minister also noted Smith's appreciation of Arthur Rimbaud. On October 15, 2006, Patti Smith performed at CBGB nightclub, with a 3½-hour tour de force to close out Manhattan's music venue. She took the stage at 9:30 p.m. (EDT) and closed for the night (and forever for the venue) at a few minutes after 1:00 a.m., performing her song Elegie, and finally reading a list of punk rock musicians and advocates who had died in the previous years.
Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame March 12, 2007. She dedicated her award to the memory of her late husband, Fred, and gave a performance of The Rolling Stones classic, Gimme Shelter. As the closing number of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, Smith's "People Have the Power" was used for the big celebrity jam that always ends the program.
From March 28 to June 22, 2008 the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris hosted a major exhibition of the visual work of Patti Smith, "Land 250", drawn from pieces created between 1967 and 2007. At the 2008 Rowan Commencement ceremony, Smith received an honorary doctorate degree for her contributions to popular culture. Smith is the subject of a 2008 documentary film, "Patti Smith: Dream of Life". http://www.dreamoflifethemovie.com/
In June 2012, Smith released her 11th studio album, "Banga." In an interview on CBS News Sunday Morning on April 1, 2012, Smith explained the album's title: "for those who are curious, you can find what Banga is if you read The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov." In The Master and Margarita, Banga is Pontius Pilate's dog who Pilate could freely complain about the hemicrania that tortured him. Other songs on the album were also inspired by literature, particularly "April Fool," inspired by Nikolai Gogol.
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Changing of the Guards
Patti Smith Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Sixteen banners united over the field
Where the good shepherd grieves
Desperate men, desperate women divided
Spreading their wings 'neath falling leaves.
Fortune calls
I stepped forth from the shadows to the marketplace
She's smelling sweet like the meadows where she was born
On midsummer's eve near the tower.
The cold-blooded moon
The captain waits above the celebration
Sending his thoughts to a beloved maid
Whose ebony face is beyond communication
The captain is down but still believing that his love will be repaid.
They shaved her head
She was torn between Jupiter and Apollo
A messenger arrived with a black nightingale
I seen her on the stairs and I couldn't help but follow
Follow her down past the fountain where they lifted her veil.
I stumbled to my feet
I rode past destruction in the ditches
With the stitches still mending beneath a heart-shaped tattoo
Renegade priests and treacherous young witches
Were handing out the flowers that I'd given to you.
The palace of mirrors
Where dog soldiers are reflected
The endless road and the wailing of chimes
The empty rooms where her memory is protected
Where the angel's voices whisper to the souls of previous times.
She wakes him up
Forty-eight hours later the sun is breaking
Near broken chains, mountain laurel and rolling rocks
She's begging to know what measures he now will be taking
He's pulling her down and she's clutching on to his long golden locks.
Gentlemen, he said I don't need your organization, I've shined your shoes
I've moved your mountains and marked your cards
But Eden is burning either brace yourself for elimination
Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards.
Peace will come
With tranquillity and splendor on the wheels of fire
But will bring us no reward when her false idols fall
And cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating
Between the King and the Queen of Swords.
Patti Smith's song Changing of the Guards is a poetic and enigmatic piece. The lyrics seem to be a poignant reflection on a tumultuous time in history, with references to war and shifting power dynamics. The opening lines paint a picture of a battlefield where desperate men and women are united under banners, while the good shepherd grieves in the background. The lyrics then shift to a marketplace where merchants and thieves hunger for power, and the singer has just made a bad deal. There is an allusion to a woman the singer is attracted to, who smells sweet like the meadows on Midsummer's Eve. The imagery of the "cold-blooded moon" sets a somber tone as the captain of the opposing army sends his thoughts to his beloved, whose "ebony face is beyond communication." The captain is down, but he remains hopeful that his love will be repaid, even though there is a sense of finality indicated with the mention of "the changing of the guards."
The lyrics continue with a bizarre turn of events, with a woman torn between Jupiter and Apollo being shaved and lifted of her veil. The singer follows her down to the palace of mirrors, where they encounter "dog soldiers." The scene appears to be one of reflection, with "empty rooms where her memory is protected" and "angel's voices whispering to the souls of previous times." The final verses of the song bring us full-circle, as the singer and the woman from the marketplace are reunited. The sun is breaking as chains are broken, and they are begging to know what measures they will be taking. The singer proclaims that he doesn't need the organization of the gentlemen, and that the changing of the guards is upon them. The song ends with a sense of peace and tranquillity, but also a warning that cruel death will surrender, "Between the King and the Queen of Swords."
Line by Line Meaning
Sixteen years
It's been sixteen years since something significant happened.
Sixteen banners united over the field
There's an unification or agreement among the group.
Where the good shepherd grieves
It's a place of sorrow and sadness.
Desperate men, desperate women divided
Both men and women are desperate, but they are not united.
Spreading their wings 'neath falling leaves.
People are trying to fly, to succeed, but everything around them is falling apart.
Fortune calls
Opportunity has presented itself.
I stepped forth from the shadows to the marketplace
The person has moved out of the darkness and into the world.
Merchants and thieves, hungry for power, my last deal gone down
The world is full of people looking to gain power, and the artist has lost their last agreement or negotiation.
She's smelling sweet like the meadows where she was born
Describing a woman's sweet smell, perhaps reminiscent of a simpler time.
On midsummer's eve near the tower.
A specific time and place where something has occurred.
The cold-blooded moon
The moon is chilling or foreboding.
The captain waits above the celebration
Someone is waiting above a celebration, perhaps watching from afar.
Sending his thoughts to a beloved maid
Someone is sending their thoughts to a woman they love.
Whose ebony face is beyond communication
Her face, perhaps due to its color, represents something beyond the singer's understanding or communication.
The captain is down but still believing that his love will be repaid.
Despite challenges, the captain still believes that their love will be returned.
They shaved her head
Someone's head has been shaved.
She was torn between Jupiter and Apollo
She was caught between two difficult choices or conflicting ideas.
A messenger arrived with a black nightingale
A message, possibly a dark one, has been delivered with a black bird.
I seen her on the stairs and I couldn't help but follow
The singer saw her, and felt a strong urge to follow her.
Follow her down past the fountain where they lifted her veil.
The artist followed the woman around a fountain, where someone lifted her veil.
I stumbled to my feet
The artist was stumbling, perhaps physically, mentally or emotionally.
I rode past destruction in the ditches
The artist witnessed or passed by ruined things along the way.
With the stitches still mending beneath a heart-shaped tattoo
The singer has a heart-shaped tattoo, a wound or hurt which is still being mended.
Renegade priests and treacherous young witches
The artist encountered unlikely or strange characters, possibly shady individuals.
Were handing out the flowers that I'd given to you.
The singer saw someone else passing out flowers that they had given to another person.
The palace of mirrors
A location characterized by reflections, mirroring or illusion.
Where dog soldiers are reflected
A place where the soldiers are depicted as canines.
The endless road and the wailing of chimes
There's a never-ending journey and a mournful sound in the background.
The empty rooms where her memory is protected
There are empty rooms reserved just for the memories of a specific person.
Where the angel's voices whisper to the souls of previous times.
Angelic voices are speaking softly to the souls of those before them.
She wakes him up
Someone is waking up another person.
Forty-eight hours later the sun is breaking
The sun is rising two days later after the previous event.
Near broken chains, mountain laurel and rolling rocks
Describing the surroundings, possibly after a difficult journey.
She's begging to know what measures he now will be taking
Someone is pleading or anxious to know what someone else's next steps will be.
He's pulling her down and she's clutching on to his long golden locks.
A man is pulling a woman down and she is holding onto his hair.
Gentlemen, he said I don't need your organization, I've shined your shoes
A man is speaking to a group of polite, wealthy or powerful individuals, possibly out of defiance.
I've moved your mountains and marked your cards
The man has achieved great things for these individuals, but still rejects their authority over him.
But Eden is burning either brace yourself for elimination
A warning that things will get much worse before they get better for the people involved.
Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards.
The people involved must be brave during this time of change and possibly conflict.
Peace will come
Eventually, there will be peace.
With tranquillity and splendor on the wheels of fire
Describing how peace may be reached, through calmness and glory, perhaps with conflict involved.
But will bring us no reward when her false idols fall
Even though things will change, there may be no reward for it, especially if based on false beliefs.
And cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating
A personification of death itself, the pale ghost of death, is described as surrendering or retreating.
Between the King and the Queen of Swords.
The conflict is between two powerful figures, each bearing a sword, perhaps representing the power or idea they represent.
Contributed by Mackenzie G. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
tsomer07
I heard the original on a juke box this week, and it was as fresh as when I first heard it. Once again, I'm obsessed with it. Dylan treats it as if its prophesy, Patti Smith treats it as dream. Dylan shouts, Smith breathes it. I suppose Dylan's rendition is authoritative--his song afterall, but Smith's version is illuminating. I can't imagine one without the other.
loris cuñado
Dylan doesn't shout it on Street Legal
Philippe Boissonnat
Top of the top.. I love.
john tallanger
Uh huh. Talk about hoop jumping
Hybride77
Just extraordinary, touch the soul, only patty smith can sing this song...
[aˈtoːm] [aːl] [ˈa(ː)tonaːl]
and she ZERO tried to sugarcoat it or show off. thats what she has in common with dylan imo.
Noe Berengena
Love this song. Every time Patti gets to "in the ditches with the stitches... still mending" I marvel at Dylan's canonical wordsmithing throughout. He marries lyric and music in a way that only he could. And I must add that Patti brings the whole thing to another level of artistry.
Stephen Farley
I love Patti Smith. She does this Bob Dylan song so good. She's written so many great songs. Great books and poetry.
danny4481
This song,both versions,chills my skin and tears my eyes. One of Bobby's best.
Sandro Moran
I feel the same, buddy.