Exclusive Q&A: The Final Word From Patti Smith on CBGB

Shortly after 1 A.M. on October 16th, Patti Smith sang the last notes of her final song, "Elegie," in a three-and-a-half-hour show marking the end of music at New York's CBGB. A few hours later, she was out looking for a cup of coffee and a copy of the New York Times, to see if the Mets had won while she was on stage. "I didn't have my glasses on," she recalled yesterday, "and I'm looking at the front page, going 'Where is the fucking baseball picture? What is this picture?' I squinted and thought, 'Is that me?' "

Smith had made the front page of the Times, in a photo shot outside the club, surrounded by fans and mourners, as she went in to play that night. "I was so full of nerves," she said of the show the next day, then went on to describe what she felt that night and talk about her memories of CBGB in an exclusive interview with Rolling Stone.

DAVID FRICKE: A big part of your show was covers by bands who made the club famous, like the Dead Boys and the Ramones. I walked in just as you told the story about seeing Television at CBGB for the first time, in 1974. Then you performed "Marquee Moon" -- as a poem, with Richard Lloyd on guitar. How did you create your set list for the evening? What did you want to say?

PATTI SMITH: It was an honor to be the last group, and I really thought about what that meant, what kind of responsibility that was. I thought about all the people that played there and that we lost -- about Hilly [Kristal, the owner] and the whole history. I just wanted to do a night like any other night, sort of like the nights at the beginning but without being nostalgic. And I tried to choose material that was specifically CBGB's. Tom [Verlaine] and I wrote "We Three." "We Three" was actually written about CBGB. The intro is "Every Sunday I would go/Down to the bar/Where he played guitar." That's about seeing Tom [and Television].

I tried to pick songs that my band did back then. "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game" [by the Marvelettes] was the first song we ever did there. "Pale Blue Eyes" [by the Velvet Underground] -- we did that too. And I wanted to build up to the last piece of the first set, which was "Birdland." That was a song that started as a poem, and through several months at CBGB, went from one place to another, morphed and grew. To me, "Birdland" is the quintessential CBGB song.

DF: One thing you said of the club, in the show, was "It's not a fucking temple -- it is what it is." You said anyone could start a club like this anywhere.

PS: It fulfilled a need. There wasn't any place for people to try new ideas and new things, to go out on a limb and make mistakes. But when our band went to London and Brussels and Denmark, kids even then were so intimidated about CBGB. I said, "Screw CBGB. It's nothing. What makes it is the people and their collective energy. The people make CBGB. You can all start your own." That was always part of our philosophy.

DF: Do you remember your first performance at CBGB, on the bill with Television, in 1974?

PS: Yeah. The sense of self and new energy was instantaneous. The confidence it inspired was strong, and the sense of community was immediate. William S. Burroughs lived down the street. He came all the time. We gave him a little table and a chair, and he'd sit there. All of our friends came -- Robert Mapplethorpe, Jim Carroll. CBGB was the neighborhood -- the artists and poets and musicians -- and we all inspired each other.

CBGB validated our mission. I didn't just want to revolutionize rock & roll, or merge poetry and rock & roll. The real thing was to keep rock & roll in the hands of the people, keep it as a grass-roots and cultural voice, not something that was big and glamorous and materialistic. The real heart of rock & roll is its revolutionary cultural voice.