âYouâre not Dylan Thomas,â Swift sings on the title track. âIâm not Patti Smith. This ainât the Chelsea Hotel. Weâre modern idiots.â Thomas, a poet and playwright, was one of many artists and musicians drawn to Manhattanâs Hotel Chelsea, which had a stunning redbrick façade but was crumbling and decaying inside during its heyday in the 1960s and â70s. It was there that he died in 1953 after a stroke, at just 39 years of age. Before that, he raised his children in a cliff-set home known as The Boathouse, where at least some of his famous play Under Milk Wood was written. AD took a look at the poetâs last family home (now a museum) in a 1993 print feature.
Patti Smith: âAggressively Seedyâ town houses and a French poetâs home
One of the most significant punk rock musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries, Smith is one of the Hotel Chelseaâs most famous residents. She praised its âshabby elegance, and the history it held so possessively.â Smith lived in room 1017, the smallest in the hotel, with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, paying just $55 per night at the time. They were in a romantic relationship, despite the fact that Mapplethorpe was gay, and Smith immortalized their bondâincluding their time at the Hotel Chelseaâin her memoir Just Kids. She spoke up in defense of Swift in 2019, saying, âIâm sure that sheâs trying to do something good.â It must have stuck with Swift, because Smith also gets another shout out in the track âlomlâ with the lyric âWe were just kids, babe.â She and Mapplethorpe also lived in an âaggressively seedyâ New York town house before his death. Now an established (if never Establishment) musician and artist, Smith purchased the home of French poet Arthur Rimbaud in 2017.