In Love Goes to the Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever (recommended reading for its deep dive into the New York music scene from 1973 to 1977, of which Bruce was a big part), Will Hermes calls Patti Smith’s “Ain’t It Strange” “an abstracted reggae groove that gradually accelerates as Smith howls and sputters, speaks in poetic tongues, scat-sings gibberish, spits phonemes like a free-jazzer, and reaches for a gold-ring epiphany just beyond her grasp.”
To that perfect description, I dare not add a thing.
Patti Smith released her standout track “Ain’t It Strange” on her poorly-received 1976 album, Radio Ethiopia.
If the studio track was transcendent, Patti’s live performances took “Ain’t It Strange” to another plane entirely.
“The song had become a shamanic ritual,” Hermes continues, “Smith spinning like a Sufi, Kaye engaging her in what he called a sort of ‘ballet’ during the song’s shape-shifting second half. At one of the November Bottom Line shows, Smith chased Kaye through the crowd during the song, walking across tables, knocking over drinks.”
Bruce Springsteen was at one of those Bottom Line shows in November 1976. Two of them, actually–he sat in with The Patti Smith Group for both shows on November 26th. He didn’t lend his vocals that evening (Patti was one of the only performers who could overpower and overshadow Bruce on stage), but he played a supporting role on guitar throughout Patti’s eleven-minute performance of “Ain’t It Strange.”
That’s one performance I dearly wish we had video for.
Patti’s stream-of-consciousness renditions of “Ain’t It Strange” continued to grow in power and length throughout the waning weeks of 1976 as her few inhibitions fell by the wayside. Just weeks after her performance with Bruce, Patti had become a veritable dervish, and during an uncontrolled on-stage spin in Tampa, she slipped, tripped, and fell fourteen feet from the stage onto the concrete floor, landing on her neck and breaking her face and several vertebrae.
“My doctor told me not to worry,” Patti told Circus Magazine, “It happens to everybody.”
But she did worry, and so did her doctors, who privately doubted Smith would ever perform again. She recuperated at home, her friends doing their best to lift her spirits. Bruce spent time with Patti at her home, listening to records and talking about music.
Smith wouldn’t release another album until 1978, but when she did it would include an unfinished song that Bruce had been working on but which felt out of place on his own upcoming album. Patti finished and recorded the song, and it became the most well-known and -loved track in her catalog.
But that’s a roll of the dice for another day.
Ain’t It Strange
First performed: November 26, 1976 (New York City, NY)
Last performed: November 26, 1976 (New York City, NY)
