Splicetoday

Pop Culture
May 20, 2015, 10:06AM

I Am Done Yelling

A 1996 BOMB magazine interview with musician/author Patti Smith vs a 2015 Slate interview with veteran journalist Seymour Hersh.

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Patti Smith: Are we lost?

Seymour Hersh: Are you kidding me?

Smith: Well, I spotted you. I don’t know.

Hersh: [Laughs] You’re not as old as I am.

***

Smith: It was a really cool picture. Mick Jagger looked very nervous.

Hersh: We have a lot of disagreements and there are times when he will call me and I will not answer the call. 

Smith: His voice was like a motorcycle through a cornfield.

Hersh: He is not cowed by me.

Smith: At dinner I sat across from him but I couldn't say anything, I just waved and smiled.

Hersh: Hold on, I just walked out of a two-room suite and the fucking movie crew. 

Smith: It was purple and had a little curly-q tail. [Laughter] I saved my money, but when I went back to get it it was gone.

***
Hersh: Yeah. Yeah. You could argue anything.

Smith: Some of the stuff pawned off as freedom of expression, let alone art, is just trash, just jerking off, with no real duty attached.

Hersh: I don’t find that so shocking.

Smith: You had to be 18, so these people helped me get dressed up, trying to look older.

Hersh: I don’t want to hear what the upshot is. I am done yelling.

Smith: To counterbalance that destruction was this civilization of monks living high in the Himalayas who were continuously praying for us, for the planet and for all of nature. Everybody thought we sold out.

Hersh: Let me say something to you.

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