Bread of Angels by Patti Smith

Author:Patti Smith [Smith, Patti]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2025-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

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I was on a stationary bike at Nautilus, the tension was set much higher than usual and I nearly vomited from the effort. I was aware that my strength was being tested and successfully kept going. It was August 16th and the song on the radio was interrupted by the announcement that Elvis Presley had died. I can’t say why but I felt an irrational rage at the core of my sorrow. He was only forty-two and despite his great fame was much maligned and misunderstood. I felt an all-consuming urgency to break out and get back into action. I bid a grateful farewell to Mike O’Shay my patient trainer and left the Sports Institute. The weather was good. Advised to take long walks I tread two and a half miles to the East Village. I stopped to visit the French artist Lizzy Mercier, a wild little thing who loved Rimbaud. Without hesitation I removed the neck brace and let it drop to the floor. Lizzy provided the lighter and I set it on fire.

The band continued to play locally. Through months of Nautilus training, I had grown physically stronger, yet I had become somewhat guarded onstage. At summer’s end Richard, Andi, and I took the subway to Coney Island. Richard persuaded me to brave the roller coaster with him, hoping to melt away my last vestiges of physical trepidation. It was a harrowing though exhilarating experience, a giant step toward proceeding without fear.

I was still not cleared for lengthy travel, so we prepared to make another record. When we last recorded at the Record Plant, I befriended a scrappy Italian kid named Jimmy Iovine who engineered for Bruce Springsteen. I admired his focus and tireless work ethic and called upon him to produce our album. The choice of an unknown with no production credit was not well received by Arista but I believed he was exactly the right person. I still felt somewhat vulnerable and sensed I could depend on him, as producer and protector. Toddy and Jimmy had immediate chemistry and worked perfectly as a technical team.

After months of inaction, we had little material and constructed our album song by song. Pages of unfinished lyrics, poems, and manifestos against censorship covered the floor of our practice room, touching on spiritual alchemy, the transformation of waste, redemption, and the redefining of words. Lenny’s rousing Till Victory served as an announcement that we were back. We wrote Ghost Dance in memory of the Hopi tribe’s resurrection dance. I had written We Three as a slow dance recalling the earliest nights at CBGB. Ivan’s incendiary 25th Floor revisited my first romantic encounter with Fred at the top of the Renaissance hotel in Detroit, opening an electrifying path for layers of feedback and cascading imagery.

Mid-recording Richard became ill, and it was advised that he take a long break. I was distressed to lose him but reassured him that he could return as soon as he was ready. Ivan brought the musician Bruce Brody into the fold.

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