Dancing Barefoot: The Patti Smith Story by Dave Thompson

autograph in the progressive pages of rock & roll.”
    Another friend stepped forward.
    Three years earlier, Sandy Pearlman had been a writer for Crawdaddy when he had the idea of putting a band together to perform a series of musical poems he had written, Imaginos. Since that time, the band he created, Soft White Underbelly, had morphed into the Stalk-Forrest Group, but it was about to change its name again, to the Blue Öyster Cult, and set out on a career pioneering a seismic brand of militaristically mystical metal. Pearlman would remain their manager, and looking to expand his stable of clients, he was pushing Patti to delve deeper into rock ‘n’ roll as well.
    His dream of pairing her with a keyboard player and composer named Lee Crabtree collapsed when Crabtree committed suicide following a row with his parents over an inheritance from his grandfather. So Pearlman suggested Patti join the Blue Öyster Cult instead, as a behind-the-scenes writer if not a performer. Patti never took him up on the offer, but she did start dating the band’s keyboard and rhythm guitar player, Allen Lanier, igniting what would become the most permanent relationship she had ever known. She and Lanier would remain partners until 1978.
    Other opportunities arose. She talked with promoter Steve Paul about the possibility of putting together a band with another of his clients, guitarist Rick Derringer; they even took a few promo photos together. Patti stepped back from this project as well. She wanted to perform, but she wanted to do so completely on her own terms, with a musical collaborator whose own ambitions walked hand-in-hand with hers. Not a yes-man per se, but somebody who would allow her to lay down the law when she saw fit to do so, while at the same time putting forward ideas that she would wish she’d thought of herself.
    Steve Paul moved on to offer Iggy Pop a berth in Derringer’s band (he, too, turned it down). The Blue Öyster Cult moved on to sign with Columbia Records and become the most significant American metal merchants of the 1970s.
    And Patti moved on as well. In September 1971, she appeared for the first time before cameras being held by somebody who was not a close friend or associate. The BBC was in New York City, shooting a documentary about the Chelsea Hotel and interviewing its most familiar—or persistent—denizens.
    With her feathered hair, silver jewelry, and a beguilingly engaging smile, archetypal hippie chick Patti was among those who eased their way into shot, performing a short poem for the cameras that, to the surprise, perhaps, of everybody she told, made it into the final cut. Just six lines long, “my little prayer for New York” is performed by a clearly shy and obviously nervous young woman, batting her eyes at the camera and gazing upwards from beneath her bangs.
    New York is the thing that seduced me
New York is the thing that formed me
New York is the thing that deformed me
New York is the thing that perverted me
New York is the thing that converted me
And New York’s the thing I love, too.
    Compared to much of the rest of the documentary, her verse takes its significance only from the retrospective identity of its performer. But it is strangely affecting as well, an acknowledgement not only of the magnetism of New York City but also of the hold that the city has on so many imaginations. And it was that hold that Patti wanted to infiltrate for herself. Other performers became a part of New York City, but that was a one-way street. She wanted the traffic to run in both directions.
    September 1971 also saw the Detroit-based rock magazine Creem publish three of Patti’s poems, at the same time recruiting her as one of their occasional freelance contributors. “For Bob Neuwirth,” “Autobiography,” and “For Sam Shepard” (the last a slightly revised “Ballad of a Bad Boy”) all appeared in that issue, making this her first true step outside of New York City. The magazine’s