Patti Smith is a poet and a goddess, I would never be so obtuse to claim that I knew exactly what she means in any of her song and can only say what they mean to me. I got Gone Again in 1996 when I was 15 and this song was my favorite on the album. The images I got listening to it were like something from a Flannery O'Connor story. I pictured in my mind a radical southern-style tent revival compleate with snakes, speaking in tongues, full-on charasmatic pentecostal imagry and the singer was a sinner or a lost soul who wandered in not knowing what to expect but being overtaken by fear at the sight and finally giving in to the madness. It is likely that my upbringing in the Bible belt had something to do with it. No matter what the song is actually about, or if it was Patti or Sonic's vision, it is an amazing song thats brilliance is overlooked.
Patti Smith is a poet and a goddess, I would never be so obtuse to claim that I knew exactly what she means in any of her song and can only say what they mean to me. I got Gone Again in 1996 when I was 15 and this song was my favorite on the album. The images I got listening to it were like something from a Flannery O'Connor story. I pictured in my mind a radical southern-style tent revival compleate with snakes, speaking in tongues, full-on charasmatic pentecostal imagry and the singer was a sinner or a lost soul who wandered in not knowing what to expect but being overtaken by fear at the sight and finally giving in to the madness. It is likely that my upbringing in the Bible belt had something to do with it. No matter what the song is actually about, or if it was Patti or Sonic's vision, it is an amazing song thats brilliance is overlooked.