Reading poems to an unruly Mercer Arts Center audience that was waiting to hear the headlining rock ’n’ roll act schooled Patti Smith in the art of crowd control and stage presence. “I read my poems, fielded insults, and sometimes sang songs accompanied by bits of music on my cassette player,” she recalled, and by the summer of 1973 she was hitting her stride. “I took to ending each performance with ‘Piss Factory,’ a prose poem I had improvised, framing my escape from a nonunion assembly line to the freedom of New York City.” Lenny Kaye described these early shows as being very loose; they were still not thinking in traditional rock band terms and instead just followed their instincts after he began playing with her again later in 1973. “You’re right next door to where the loft jazz scene is taking place, you’re in an area in which experimentalism is encouraged,” Kaye said. “That experimentalism was so far off the mainstream that you didn’t really worry about it—you didn’t think you’re going to suddenly have a hit record. You’re doing it for your peer group, essentially.”

From Chapter 27 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore