Interview of Patti Smith (1978)

Tom Snyder, 1978: Horses behind her, Easter on the air

Tom Snyder’s 1978 conversation with Patti Smith catches her after Horses had already changed the New York rock scene and in the year of Easter, when Because the Night put her on the radio. She treats the late-night chair as another stage, not a trap. She puts mischief and doctrine in the same sentences: fame as apprenticeship, instinct as method, and a flat refusal to turn poetry into polite chat. Watch the hands as much as the lines. She does not lower the intensity for the camera.