Michael Stipe - Two Times Intro: Patti Smith

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Published by Akashic Books

All Michael Stipe words and photographs 1998, 2011 by Michael Stipe

photographs 1998 by Oliver Ray. Used by permission.

All other writers in this book individually maintain 1998 on their written pieces. Used by permission.

Originally published in 1998 by Ray Gun Press/Little, Brown & Company.

Editor: Mark Blackwell

Design and typography: Chris Ashworth/Roy Gun

Design assistance: Amanda Sissons/Ray Gun

Design assistance for Akashic Books reprint: David Belisle and Aaron Petrovich

Photograph layout: Michael Stipe, Mark Blackwell, and Chris Ashworth

ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-023-6
eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-070-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011923104
First Akashic Books printing

Akashic Books
PO Box 1456
New York, NY 10009
info@akashicbooks.com
www.akashicbooks.com

Contents

Patti Smith is not only a great performer, she is a shaman mat is. someone in touch with other levels of reality.

Her effect on the audience is electric, comparable to voodoo or umbanda rituals, where the audience members become participants, and are literally lifted out of themselves. In many cases, however, they are destined to return to ordinary consciousness to be once again the single mother of three small children, or to follow the animei goals of the street hustler but the shaman has, at least, provided a respite.

William S. Burroughs
July 4. 1997.

BY PATTI SMITH

When I open this book I see in my mind two men whose images do not appear inside. The first is my late husband, Fred Sonic Smith. In 1979 I withdrew from the public eye to devote my life to him, our children, and our work. But his early death in November of 1994 obliged me to leave Detroit and return to New York City. The second invisible man is Bob Dylan. He learned of my plight and invited me to tour with him. He encouraged me, assuring that the people would embrace my return. Bob Dylan, as was Fred, is a very private man and although he was often in our presence, Michael never took his picture.

I met Michael Stipe in Michigan in 1995. He had called me on February 14 from Barcelona, Spain. I did not know him, but aware of the passing of my love, and anticipating my loneliness, he called to wish me a Happy Valentines Day. That was the first time we spoke, and the last time he would be a stranger.

Sometime later, in answer to Bob, I gathered the friends who had helped me write, record, and produce Gone Again, an album in homage to Fred. Our ragtag band included Lenny Kaye, Jay Dee Daugherty, Tony Shanahan, Oliver Ray, and Tom Verlaine. Joining us were my children and Michael, our friend and champion. We set out along the East Coast for our tour. Michael made us quesadillas on the bus in a microwave, and eased my trepidations about performing again.

Some of the things that I remember of that time include breaking in a new pair of Doc Martens. An Oscar Mayer Wiener truck that miraculously appeared in the Holland Tunnel. Oliver Rays poems and Polaroids. The saffron-colored dress Michael bought me, hanging on a hook in the locker room of a Connecticut gymnasium. All of us spending the day looking at Brancusi sculptures in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and being yelled at for touching them. I remember the warm camaraderie of the band. I remember Bob stopping on his way to the stage to speak with my son and daughter. And I remember performing Dark Eyes with him, singing so close that a rosary of sweat, dripping from our foreheads, merged as we sang.

I am grateful to have these pictures that resonate such an innocent and bittersweet time. After sixteen years of absence, Michael documented my first steps back and thus my second introduction into public life.

Patti Smith
April 2011

BY MICHAEL STIPE

This book and the small stories it touches upon mark a very important time in my life. It is, for me, funny and odd to look at it some thirteen years later, and to realize how much has, and has not, changed. People have moved on, some in life and some in death, and others have come in, or been born. Friendships and kinships have deepened and become profound and irreplaceable. Experience and art and music and inspiration have continued their march. The century is a new one and is already peopled with a generation offering insight, new opinion, and life-altering change.

Patti has gone on to produce some of the best music of her life, songs that capture her spirit and energy and love of life and history. It has been a pleasure and extraordinary thrill to see her grow back into this from the modest but exhilarating return to music and live performance that this book chronicles. The need to create is something that many of us share; to be able to watch her create, from this perspective, is blessed. To pull songs out of oneself, stories, narratives, to relay histories learned and lived, to do so with such humor, insight, and detail, is a true gift.

Patti carries in her work and actions a deep intelligence and profound love of life, all infused with levity, humility, chaos, and fine order; and her gift to us is sharing that in all its raw humanity, its curiosity, and ultimately, its grace.

With the worldwide success of Just Kids, the book of her and Robert Mapplethorpes beginnings in New York City, Patti details the innocence of a distinctly important moment in time, and in a voice that no one has managed to sound before. She has brought us again to a new understanding of ourselves, which is the highest calling of an artist: to speak of their times and to do so in a manner that illuminates and alters the course of the present.

I am thrilled and humbled by the attention Two Times Intro has received, and I thank everyone involved in its being reprinted today. Special thanks are due to Anthony Arnove, Susan Bodine, David Belisle, and Oliver Ray, and to Johnny Temple and Akashic Books for their interest in publishing this book.

Michael Stipe
April 2011