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  • donahue

  • in paris mid-forties stakes are never small

  • for more than three decades he's been writing and singing about love and death

  • politics in transcendence mori piece in the bubble freedom

  • a lot of her songs have been manifestos to remember people have the power

  • rock-and-roll nor

  • dancing barefoot

  • because the night

  • and others have been a tiffany's of the power of the word back by three chords

  • patty was born in chicago and raises the jersey girl

  • and

  • media press review class clown high school and depth of your jersey

  • yep i did when class clown but my also

  • more important ones barton of the year

  • have one of the actually one of the things in my life that i'm most proud of

  • what it what is going to be here

  • actually i still to this date don't know why i got it

  • it was the most coveted

  • uh... awards you can get my high school and uh...

  • you know i realized to get in trouble a lot i daydream di was sick a lot it

  • wasn't like the genius um... i'd love school then

  • i love do you know

  • get not been doing my book reports telling people about moby dick but

  • you know i wasn't quite i didn't have any specific great gift

  • and i used to think bns pardon of the year would be the coolest thing one

  • could ever be

  • because

  • you know it exemplified

  • independence still weakness

  • of good heart

  • and um...

  • and i got it

  • acai you'd still to this day

  • can't believe i got it

  • i mean and that was fast

  • picked up to nineteen sixty four and i still sometimes like i still think

  • how you forget that spartan appeared at that time

  • rather low octane things part of the year

  • everything well

  • i'd that's part of the year actually mystifies me more in america

  • via until his arrest his speech but it was um diam

  • but you can't in new york ny in sixty seven yes um... and i was curious i've

  • always been curious about how people sort of

  • get their nose in the door

  • weekend in the organ made friends with robert mapplethorpe sam sheppard

  • uh...

  • how did you do this in jersey girl like yourself

  • well i mean i came to new york city looking for a job

  • in nineteen sixty seven

  • um...

  • i lit lived in new york for about a month

  • like a lot of kids you know i lived in the streets i slept in the subway

  • i am

  • slept in central park

  • and i just kept

  • looking for a job in my family got a job in a bookstore

  • and uh...

  • built my life you know the wasn't easy

  • but i was so

  • taking with new york city and it was so freakin tress the way you wanted nobody

  • but yet

  • um... it was uh... just before the architecture the museums

  • at was so exciting to me to be in new york city that i

  • really didn't mind the strength

  • and i met robert

  • accidentally and

  • he was just a boy i mean we were both twenty he was

  • he was a kid i'm going to pratt

  • and uh...

  • we fell in love and he was my boyfriend in

  • i met sam sheppard

  • actually in six uh...

  • nineteen seventy ed

  • in the child when i was looking at the chelsea hotel so that was

  • and the next here of late

  • sixty-seven me and robert were

  • you know we were kids

  • so used to student he wasn't robert mapplethorpe

  • well he was proper mapplethorpe notice video is always robert mapplethorpe

  • until he was a kid tennis

  • he was a student

  • danny and uh...

  • how did you do when he came was he was he also in that

  • not buying that lenny kaye by sending him in uh...

  • the family other or make i don't remember if i

  • well i would bet there with a book came out

  • account number it but it had of

  • some really great pieces of uh... rock journalism in like around nineteen

  • seventy

  • uh... rock journalists were like scholars i mean they opened they were

  • serious they weren't uh...

  • nearly writing criticism they were inventing

  • um... uh... away to discuss rock-and-roll in a scholarly way

  • and this particular book had that pieces by um...

  • uh... one of the greatest at pieces of writing of rock-and-roll about

  • rock-and-roll

  • by sandeep perlman

  • i think was called the history of l_a_ uh... things by richard meltzer

  • uh... jon landau

  • and one of the pieces that was then there was called uh... well of us are

  • not the pala music

  • and being from south jersey acapella music was very important uh...

  • in my growing process

  • and it was

  • than most

  • tend to rest

  • him in

  • intelligent

  • and insightful piece of writing

  • completely selfless

  • and beautiful and i thought whoever wrote this is a really good person

  • so i saw them out

  • you know that

  • tell 'em what a great piece in

  • he told me he worked at uh... bleecker bob's he was selling that people do you

  • say bleecker bob's in said to come and stop in cm so

  • i did in we became friends wow

  • notice kazan

  • back before the internet we if you want to hear and all the you had to get the

  • physical desk now yet to go down with his stories high and we you knowing

  • by couldn't you know they were expensive some of them and

  • now like there was a song i was looking at looking for called bacon fat and all

  • that on the record it was like eight dollars and i was only making sixty five

  • dollars a week at scribners

  • so uh...

  • when he would let me hear them

  • for nothing you know we would

  • i mean you couldn't tape them erred

  • do anything but you can go in and see what the record look like him

  • might dance around to it and stuff so

  • students

  • in nineteen seventy one u

  • room with fewer detroit that was the most of the project

  • uh... bruno we just

  • you you you and i needed the first

  • performance the first poetry with well apparently

  • i was a irreverent body and separatist sapan you know it's a marks base to go

  • there with gregory corso and gregory hated all the poets

  • and i was so glad because i have like the neither and that

  • and is just

  • poetry tended to be a little boring

  • then i got a chance to uh...

  • open short maligned uh...

  • and as per our talk rex birthday

  • at the time i was uh... cn sam sheppard

  • and i talk to sam about this and i said and wanna do something

  • blood into poetry and what sound i wanted to be sonic

  • any civil while gypsum

  • the car in it to you know any guitar players

  • and i said that

  • kid at the record store place a little bit parts

  • so i went to a ripley kebabs and i said the lenny

  • you play a little bit torrents of or a little

  • and i said can you make like a

  • car crash

  • you know like

  • a car crash sounds you know would like some kind of

  • feedback to me those

  • so we did our weeded out had our first poetry dgn opening charred maligned

  • death

  • and it was the first time an electric guitar had been played in saint mark's

  • church

  • and um...

  • sacrilege

  • yet it got some people a-level set

  • so um...

  • but it was a great night it was very exciting and uh...

  • you know to this day

  • i mean we didn't ruffle some feathers but uh...

  • gerard was game you shot in saint mark's church came you shot so

  • you know grateful for that

  • you know when you said to somebody like a poetry has

  • yeah i was a snot nose you know actually i wrote letters to all the heads of

  • saint marks and told them

  • to watch out i was coming

  • are is really obnoxious

  • carefully

  • and and frankly can waldman loop around saint marks

  • she was so sweet and uh...

  • she let me some of the letters that i the center because i am working on a

  • little memoir and i read these letters and i i couldn't even look at them

  • baby arrogance and provide of coming from these little slips of paper was

  • just

  • struck him

  • i don't know where i got

  • back tag it's our guests it was that's

  • spartan of the year energy there

  • yes

  • as this invoice is illegal

  • uh... today and and

  • using doing now it's like

  • is like you approach a readings turning into songs that you can just see it sort

  • of

  • flowing toward

  • ali alone courses is really

  • the culmination

  • the are uilyas sta

  • well from like my saint mark's reading because

  • the first line of forces

  • uh... jesus died for somebody sense but not mine i wrote when i was twenty

  • and i performed as a poem

  • in nineteen seventy one so

  • all almost everything on horses came from

  • k richard soul and i

  • the other band members came in at the end we had already formed

  • through improvising poetry

  • and three chords together almost the whole scape of uh...

  • of forces

  • so you're free style in

  • well i didn't know anything i don't know how really do write a song i know a

  • little bit about writing songs like appalachian style songs

  • i wrote songs for sam shepard's plays in my room

  • very simple little songs

  • but i didn't really know much about writing the song so for me

  • it was

  • improvisation

  • lenny in richard would set up a chord structure and i just improvise over it

  • by still write songs like that

  • now i know more about it like to use it in bright lyrics but most of the time

  • heidi listen to the band jamming her

  • so few musicians jamming and i'm weight

  • till i feel a certain kinship with the music and just

  • getting from the microphone in improvise

  • and uh...

  • that's how i right

  • do you keep

  • you keep improvisation and you can go back and chip away at it and and it

  • didn't go crazy

  • now and it's always more thing

  • you know sometimes there's no

  • tape recorder stopped my just forget it

  • it's a process him

  • but in the new units comming soon some songwriters just three battle it out

  • and then you take it back into their land

  • teeth this were to move this phrase around

  • using using organic

  • well some songs are more ganic and some songs are very traditionally

  • put together elect i'd never strayed

  • in tiredness from the original

  • lyrics of because the night you know

  • uh... bruce and i wrote the lyrics and i a always sing the same lyrics because

  • you know it's a popular song people like it there's no reason to change them

  • but a song like random thousand dances

  • johnny is gone through hundreds of different always for gas

  • naked

  • hughes got it from every and prevented it

  • please do you just heard you had the feeling that did you know this was gonna

  • change the world in the dizzy or you look back i managed to such a

  • concentration of

  • created

  • but a bit itself was just a dump on the boundary

  • well cd gee bees came in it

  • perfect

  • time

  • seventy four

  • um...

  • early seventy four when i was working with richard song lenny

  • k there was hardly wasn't anywhere play

  • for people like us

  • their you know we we we'd get uh...

  • because i was involved in politics

  • we were able to get

  • excuse me uh... a lot of folk singers

  • like deluxe usta lettuce open for him it max is

  • had do step it galleries weeded performances in bookstores record stores

  • we at the leak the most idiosyncratic jobs

  • sometimes in cabarets

  • hoping opening up late transvestite exercising

  • at weeding quite have our niche

  • we were developed and you know of pollen of like minds you know people that

  • liked what we like

  • but there was no place for us to go

  • there literally was no place

  • and uh... if you have anything original

  • and um...

  • television independently

  • in all still in the same bind

  • and uh...

  • it was tomra lane in

  • and uh... richard hal

  • who one night went by

  • uh... cv g bs

  • and it was just this

  • uh... country-western bar that had about three drunk guys and it

  • and they talked ellie intellect in them

  • played there

  • and uh...

  • unite met richard helen he asked me to come in see his band so

  • mian lenny went like

  • easter of nineteen seventy four

  • and there were like nine people there

  • and uh...

  • and two of them were mainline so he could not

  • i think danny fields was there and

  • and uh... went into this place is little shit hole and

  • belt people plan poland talk n

  • few people milling around and i watched television

  • and uh...

  • first of all tom feelings just the cutest guy unlike that is so cute

  • and um...

  • uh...

  • anyway

  • i thought television

  • i'd account and you know

  • here where people who were doing

  • you know what the solar thing to us six f

  • well they drums and everything but

  • you know uh... merging poetry

  • improvisation

  • rock-and-roll

  • and you know we were all sort of raggedy kids

  • it was like

  • finding you know of long-lost brother or something

  • and uh...

  • lenny richard naive

  • from plane max is quite a bit

  • and from plano alive

  • i mean

  • it sounds conceded but it's just true we had like a following

  • of about three hundred people

  • but we had nowhere to

  • ncb gee bees was about three hundred

  • by just said the time you know

  • why don't we do some jobs here together you have you have the venue we have two

  • people

  • so

  • we played together and uh... one thing i can say that my banded me lang richard

  • we were the first band to fill c_b_ gps so um...

  • they came face all television and then they never left

  • i mean once those three hundred people came then there was always somebody

  • there

  • and uh...

  • it was for us

  • i mean we didn't have any uh... you know they didn't have the term punk rock

  • and uh...

  • we didn't have any specific goals in that way

  • tom in television

  • richard hell and tom they had their own goals they wanted to pursue

  • the expansion of poetry into explore rock-and-roll and their way

  • and uh... what i really wanted was

  • that rock-and-roll become

  • get back into the hands of people

  • because it was a really to me

  • creepy time

  • and rock-and-roll

  • we have lost jim morrison jimi hendrix and we lost janis joplin and

  • bob dylan had his motorcycle accident

  • you know the rolling stones that change do you know any cotton-like stadium

  • bandhan

  • and then all this lake

  • david bowie and all the stuff in case and all these bands

  • i don't really like

  • and uh... doesn't mean they didn't do good stuff it's just that

  • medians a snotty spartan of the year didn't really like any interest

  • itis felt the rock-and-roll was becoming

  • instead of like the people's

  • uh... forum

  • and our cultural police wear

  • politics and barton poetry insects and all of these things and dance

  • uh... that belong to the people it was

  • moving in this weird direction of like these mega rock stars

  • with these lake disgusting you know lifestyles

  • and uh...

  • like they were all in in rock-and-roll intimate

  • bagane

  • own rock-and-roll we he owned rock-and-roll excuse me

  • so it remains

  • play the

  • flexi teaching these represented to me

  • uh...

  • that concept

  • starting to uh... become flesh

  • the important thing to me

  • cbj educe per se

  • and united the finest perceiving tvs

  • but after a time

  • around up going on the road and around the world

  • what i'll always wanted was that no the kids around the world whether they were

  • in denmark griffin lynn or wherever they were

  • not to run manaus icb gps just

  • think of it

  • is it's attn it means possibility

  • at anybody can have c_d_ t_v_ sets a state of mind it just represents

  • that proper role get back into the hands of the people

  • and freedom

  • all represents

donahue

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