Patti Smith in Michigan

[Bong-Man]

http://www.freep.com/article/20100214/ENT04/2140329/1035/ENT/Patti-Smith-in-Michigan

Posted: Feb. 14, 2010

Patti Smith's work explores the deep emotions of art, love and creativity

BY BEN EDMONDS

FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER

The long and lauded story of poet, singer and activist Patti Smith is always divided by historians into two thick chapters. In the first, she stormed out of early '70s New York on a passionate mission to marry poetry with rock 'n' roll as a means of re-energizing both, helping light a fuse that led to the punk rock revolution. She was an underground visionary of great influence who saw no contradiction in having the hit single "Because the Night," a collaboration with Bruce Springsteen.

This was a tough first act to follow, but if anything, the second part of her creative life has been richer, more inspired, and continues to be even more productive. Put them together and you're looking at a legacy that has led to membership in both the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of the highest cultural awards France can bestow, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Not a bad little marriage of poetry and rock.

Between the two chapters, of course, are the 16 years she spent in Michigan, married to former MC5 guitarist Fred (Sonic) Smith and raising their family in St. Clair Shores -- and outside the public eye. It was only after her husband's death in 1994 that she re-entered the professional arena in earnest. That makes her two local events this week -- a reading from her newly published memoir "Just Kids" at Borders bookstore in Ann Arbor on Thursday and a show with her band at St. Andrew's Hall in Detroit on Friday -- not only a chance to experience a many-faceted artist in two very different settings, but also an opportunity to reconnect with someone we still consider a hometown girl.

She attributes her current productivity, which shows no signs of abating, to a foundation built during the years she lived here. "The biggest misconception about me is that I did nothing creative while I was in Michigan," Smith, 63, says by phone from her New York writing studio. She has just returned from a round of book readings on the West Coast. The trip also included the performance of a song with Keith Richards for a documentary on the Rolling Stones guitarist, about which she's not sure how much information can be revealed. (Internet scuttlebutt says the film is being directed by Johnny Depp.)

"I feel that I really learned to be a writer in Michigan," she says. "I couldn't sit around smoking pot waiting for the muse to visit. I had to get up when Fred and the children were asleep. I'd write from 5 to 8, then get the kids up and ready for school. I had to choose my moments and use them well. That discipline, which wasn't so easy at first, became a point of pride after a while. I worked harder in that period than I ever had before. Fred and I wrote many, many songs that have yet to be recorded. Among all kinds of writing I did, there are four other books of prose that I imagine will eventually be published. So we were very prolific, just not publicly."

"Dream of Life" (1988), her only album released in this period and the only one she got to record with her husband, has become the fulcrum of her recording career. Two of its songs, "People Have the Power" and "Paths that Cross," have connected with people over the years as something far greater than traditional hits.

"I wrote the words to 'Paths that Cross' the night our friend Sam Wagstaff (Detroit Institute of Arts contemporary curator from 1968 to 1971) died from AIDS," she explains. "I received so many letters from strangers who said the song had provided comfort in the midst of their own losses. Some people have even inscribed it on the headstones of their lost loved ones.

"And I see how much and how well 'People Have the Power' has been used -- by Vote for Change, by Howard Zinn, by Ralph Nader. All kinds of people have quoted from it. It's been sung by Eddie Vedder, Bruce Springsteen and Michael Stipe. I watched Keith Richards playing it at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. This is really a tribute to Fred, because the concept of the song was his. One lesson I learned in my years with him is that within our humanistic collective no human being is unimportant. I had been living a sort of detached bohemian lifestyle, and Fred brought me back into the life of the citizen."

Finding a creative identity

The memoir "Just Kids" recounts her New Jersey childhood, her arrival in New York in the late '60s, and her pursuit of creative identity with her first boyfriend and lifelong true friend, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. In simple, beautifully calibrated prose she captures the intoxicating atmosphere of those times, when enduring art was seemingly conjured out of thin air every day at legendary locales like the Chelsea Hotel.

She gives us vivid snapshots of the people who offered the young artists encouragement and support, among them Janis Joplin, playwright Sam Shepard, Jimi Hendrix, poets Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg, and folklorist Harry Smith. Her tender and evenhanded evocation of two driven innocents searching for voices of their own offers a welcome counterbalance to more lurid and sensational portraits of the late Mapplethorpe found elsewhere.

As a meditation on becoming an artist, it reminds us that art is a dedicated journey of discovery, not a dash to some predetermined finish line. "Just Kids" is Smith's first extended work of prose, but this gently illuminating book earns a place alongside her best poems and songs.

Patti Smith promised Robert Mapplethorpe she'd write this book the day before he succumbed to AIDS in 1989. "I started writing it when Fred was still alive," she says. "But in having to face the loss of Fred, and then my brother Todd, and then having to provide for my family, it became difficult to continue working on it. It's taken me 20 years to keep my promise, but I have." She intends the event at Border's on Thursday to be more than a reading. "It's nice to read, and nice to be read to, but I try to open things up. I like to sing 'em a couple of songs, let 'em ask questions so we can have an actual exchange. It's like any show I do with my band: I'll feel the energy in the room and we'll improvise together from there."

The overwhelming response to "Just Kids" has extended her book responsibilities -- she does a reading tour of England next month -- pushing a full plate of projects onto the back burner. Chief among them is the completion of a new album recorded with her core band (guitarist Lenny Kaye, bassist Tony Shanahan and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty) and contributions from Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine), Tom Verlaine (Television), as well as her son Jackson and daughter Jesse, both accomplished musicians.

No doubt the band will share selections from this work-in-progress at St. Andrew's Hall, and they might even play something that's never existed before Friday night. No two Patti Smith shows are ever the same. Yet there are songs she will always be asked to revisit, and she gladly obliges.

"To me a performance is an adventure," she says, "and I'm as excited as anybody to see where it will go. Sometimes I'm asked, 'Aren't you sick of singing "Because the Night"?' No, I'm never sick of singing that song, because once we start it everybody seems so excited, and their excitement is catching. You can feel it spread. So I'm happy to sing it. Besides, I writ my part of it to Fred, and that makes me even happier to sing it."

Contact freelance writer BEN EDMONDS at bedmonds5131@comcast.net

[Walesdad]

http://www.freep.com/article/20100214/ENT04/2140329/1035/ENT/Patti-Smith-in-Michigan

Posted: Feb. 14, 2010

Patti Smith's work explores the deep emotions of art, love and creativity

BY BEN EDMONDS

FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER

The long and lauded story of poet, singer and activist Patti Smith is always divided by historians into two thick chapters. In the first, she stormed out of early '70s New York on a passionate mission to marry poetry with rock 'n' roll as a means of re-energizing both, helping light a fuse that led to the punk rock revolution. She was an underground visionary of great influence who saw no contradiction in having the hit single "Because the Night," a collaboration with Bruce Springsteen.

This was a tough first act to follow, but if anything, the second part of her creative life has been richer, more inspired, and continues to be even more productive. Put them together and you're looking at a legacy that has led to membership in both the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of the highest cultural awards France can bestow, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Not a bad little marriage of poetry and rock.

Between the two chapters, of course, are the 16 years she spent in Michigan, married to former MC5 guitarist Fred (Sonic) Smith and raising their family in St. Clair Shores -- and outside the public eye. It was only after her husband's death in 1994 that she re-entered the professional arena in earnest. That makes her two local events this week -- a reading from her newly published memoir "Just Kids" at Borders bookstore in Ann Arbor on Thursday and a show with her band at St. Andrew's Hall in Detroit on Friday -- not only a chance to experience a many-faceted artist in two very different settings, but also an opportunity to reconnect with someone we still consider a hometown girl.

She attributes her current productivity, which shows no signs of abating, to a foundation built during the years she lived here. "The biggest misconception about me is that I did nothing creative while I was in Michigan," Smith, 63, says by phone from her New York writing studio. She has just returned from a round of book readings on the West Coast. The trip also included the performance of a song with Keith Richards for a documentary on the Rolling Stones guitarist, about which she's not sure how much information can be revealed. (Internet scuttlebutt says the film is being directed by Johnny Depp.)

"I feel that I really learned to be a writer in Michigan," she says. "I couldn't sit around smoking pot waiting for the muse to visit. I had to get up when Fred and the children were asleep. I'd write from 5 to 8, then get the kids up and ready for school. I had to choose my moments and use them well. That discipline, which wasn't so easy at first, became a point of pride after a while. I worked harder in that period than I ever had before. Fred and I wrote many, many songs that have yet to be recorded. Among all kinds of writing I did, there are four other books of prose that I imagine will eventually be published. So we were very prolific, just not publicly."

"Dream of Life" (1988), her only album released in this period and the only one she got to record with her husband, has become the fulcrum of her recording career. Two of its songs, "People Have the Power" and "Paths that Cross," have connected with people over the years as something far greater than traditional hits.

"I wrote the words to 'Paths that Cross' the night our friend Sam Wagstaff (Detroit Institute of Arts contemporary curator from 1968 to 1971) died from AIDS," she explains. "I received so many letters from strangers who said the song had provided comfort in the midst of their own losses. Some people have even inscribed it on the headstones of their lost loved ones.

"And I see how much and how well 'People Have the Power' has been used -- by Vote for Change, by Howard Zinn, by Ralph Nader. All kinds of people have quoted from it. It's been sung by Eddie Vedder, Bruce Springsteen and Michael Stipe. I watched Keith Richards playing it at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. This is really a tribute to Fred, because the concept of the song was his. One lesson I learned in my years with him is that within our humanistic collective no human being is unimportant. I had been living a sort of detached bohemian lifestyle, and Fred brought me back into the life of the citizen."

Finding a creative identity

The memoir "Just Kids" recounts her New Jersey childhood, her arrival in New York in the late '60s, and her pursuit of creative identity with her first boyfriend and lifelong true friend, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. In simple, beautifully calibrated prose she captures the intoxicating atmosphere of those times, when enduring art was seemingly conjured out of thin air every day at legendary locales like the Chelsea Hotel.

She gives us vivid snapshots of the people who offered the young artists encouragement and support, among them Janis Joplin, playwright Sam Shepard, Jimi Hendrix, poets Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg, and folklorist Harry Smith. Her tender and evenhanded evocation of two driven innocents searching for voices of their own offers a welcome counterbalance to more lurid and sensational portraits of the late Mapplethorpe found elsewhere.

As a meditation on becoming an artist, it reminds us that art is a dedicated journey of discovery, not a dash to some predetermined finish line. "Just Kids" is Smith's first extended work of prose, but this gently illuminating book earns a place alongside her best poems and songs.

Patti Smith promised Robert Mapplethorpe she'd write this book the day before he succumbed to AIDS in 1989. "I started writing it when Fred was still alive," she says. "But in having to face the loss of Fred, and then my brother Todd, and then having to provide for my family, it became difficult to continue working on it. It's taken me 20 years to keep my promise, but I have." She intends the event at Border's on Thursday to be more than a reading. "It's nice to read, and nice to be read to, but I try to open things up. I like to sing 'em a couple of songs, let 'em ask questions so we can have an actual exchange. It's like any show I do with my band: I'll feel the energy in the room and we'll improvise together from there."

The overwhelming response to "Just Kids" has extended her book responsibilities -- she does a reading tour of England next month -- pushing a full plate of projects onto the back burner. Chief among them is the completion of a new album recorded with her core band (guitarist Lenny Kaye, bassist Tony Shanahan and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty) and contributions from Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine), Tom Verlaine (Television), as well as her son Jackson and daughter Jesse, both accomplished musicians.

No doubt the band will share selections from this work-in-progress at St. Andrew's Hall, and they might even play something that's never existed before Friday night. No two Patti Smith shows are ever the same. Yet there are songs she will always be asked to revisit, and she gladly obliges.

"To me a performance is an adventure," she says, "and I'm as excited as anybody to see where it will go. Sometimes I'm asked, 'Aren't you sick of singing "Because the Night"?' No, I'm never sick of singing that song, because once we start it everybody seems so excited, and their excitement is catching. You can feel it spread. So I'm happy to sing it. Besides, I writ my part of it to Fred, and that makes me even happier to sing it."

Contact freelance writer BEN EDMONDS at bedmonds5131@comcast.net

Thanks for posting this Bong Man,it's always good to read something about this beautiful woman.I've been a fan of Patti Smith ever since 'Horses',its probably,if push came to shove,by favourite album by any artist,and I'm looking forward to reading 'Just Kids'.Cheers.