Mick Hartley

After seeing that orgone accumulator earlier in the week, I checked out the Wiki entry. They list the uses of "orgone" in popular culture: the usual suspects like Burroughs and Kerouac, and then - Kate Bush, with her Cloudbusting song about Wilhelm Reich, inspired by his son Peter's extraordinary Book of Dreams. And I thought, hang on, there's another earlier much much better song inspired by the same book that they're not mentioning here: Patti Smith's Birdland, from the 1975 Horses album.

So I remembered what an extraordinary record that was, and how I saw her live at the Rainbow in 1978, supported by reggae man Tapper Zukie, and what an exceptional, brilliant concert it turned out to be. [The Rainbow is now home to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, but that's another story.] And then I found this: a brief interview, and then, live from The Old Grey Whistle Test, 1976….

Back then she was out on her own. There was no one else to touch her. 

She dropped out of the music business in 1980, before making her comeback in 1995. I haven't really followed her career since, but she seems kind of annoying nowadays – right up to that somewhat embarrassing Nobel Prize performance on behalf of Dylan. Couldn't she have just left us with the memories? But yes, I'm being unfair.