Nick Johnstone - Patti Smith: The Biography

Copyright 1997 Omnibus Press
This edition 2017 Omnibus Press
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ISBN: 978-1-78038-358-3

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Patti Smith has always measured her own life against the lives of those who have influenced her. One of her lifelong heroes has been the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. At a time when Patti was discovering her own identity and writing poetry, and hadnt even considered being in a rock band, she was struck one day by a possible direction: she would write a book about the life and work of Arthur Rimbaud, a man who had inspired her and to whom she wanted to pay tribute by writing a book that took her closer to his myth. The idea passed, but his influence remained in her life.

My idea to write a book about Patti Smith came from a similarly pure motive. I hoped that Patti Smith would be able to collaborate with me on this project but, after a long period of deliberation, her management in New York explained that she would have to decline to participate with the writing of this book.

Close associates explained that the reasons were twofold. Firstly, she had collaborated with Patricia Morrisroes Mapplethorpe biography and publicly voiced her disapproval of the finished product and was now generally anti-biographers. Secondly, she didnt want to see a definitive text appear that attempted to categorise her work. Unfortunately, when she declined to assist me in the writing of this book, she also declined on behalf of John Cale, Tom Verlaine, Jay Dee Daugherty, Lenny Kaye and many others in her immediate circle.

I would, on the other hand, like to extend my gratitude to all those who helped me with the research for this book and to all those (whether quoted or not) who offered their insight into a remarkable story. Special thanks are due to the following people, who spared valuable time to help me: Andreas Brown, D.D. Faye, David Fricke, Gold Mountain, Thurston Moore, Fred Patterson and Lee Ranaldo. I would also like to thank Chris Charlesworth and Omnibus Press for backing this book from the very beginning.

I T s freezing cold. The wall is about 15 feet high. Dozens of tiny crosses wave over the top of it. I stand at the entrance to Pre-Lachaise cemetery on Rue du Repos in Paris. Patti Smith comes to this cemetery whenever she visits Paris. I follow in her footsteps and walk through the gates and up the Avenue Principale. This is the place where Patti Smith realised that she was an artist.

She had first visited the cemetery in 1969, to pay homage to those she admired. When she returned in summer 1972 she stood over the grave of Jim Morrison, who had died the previous summer, and waited for inspiration to wash over her. Morrison, like Patti, had been obsessed with the French poet Arthur Rimbaud and, in his bid to emulate Rimbauds romantic myth, had worn out his body and died.

After her trip to Paris in 1969, Patti had returned to New York and continued writing and drawing, beginning to feel that her own work was more valuable than the art of those she hero-worshipped and had fantasised about. Three years later, standing over Jim Morrisons grave, she suddenly realised that she no longer needed to be inspired by him because she now considered herself to be inspired from within. At this point she knew herself and was free to become a poet. This experience in Paris inspired the song Break It Up on her debut album, Horses, in 1975.

It is hard to think of a better place for Patti Smith to have discovered herself. The tombs and graves in Pre-Lachaise cemetery date back to 1804: some are crumbling, some disintegrating. Statues of angels and saints are worn and stained by the rain. If you find a good vantage point, it sprawls like an ancient village. The Avenue Principale leads to the Monument aux Morts, an imposing mass of stone, surrounded by greenery. The paths to each side twist between seas of graves and names and crypts, with trees and bushes hanging overhead. Hundreds of cats dart about in between the slabs of stone. Patti would have also visited the graves of celebrated writers such as Honor de Balzac, Guillaume Apollinaire, Colette, Paul luard, Marcel Proust and Oscar Wilde. She would have visited the twin grave of artist Amedeo Modigliani and his tragic mistress Jeanne Hbuterne, paying homage to a man whose paintings taught her to celebrate her unusual looks, rather than feel self-conscious. These are some of the artists who encouraged a young Patti to break from the life she saw ahead of her, who showed her how to live, who made her feel that she wasnt an alien. She devoured biographies of these artists, teaching herself and preparing for the life of an artist.

Patti Smith walked offstage from a Patti Smith Group concert to 70,000 people in Florence, Italy on September 10, 1979. Her record Wave was the bands most commercially successful album to date. Her four-album career had seen her rise from being a cult writer and poet on the New York art and music scene to become one of the most influential singers in rocknroll. She had succeeded in re-defining all the music industry formulas that restricted female artists, setting new precedents for rock literacy. She had found herself revered as a punk poet, a rebel rocker, a feminist icon and a visionary. But a critical backlash had coincided with the release of Wave and the tepid reviews reflected Pattis own feeling that the passion had gone. She was tired of the media attention, she was suffering health problems from the pressures of fame and from touring, and she had met the love of her life.

Patti Smith left her rocknroll career in September 1979 for an altogether different challenge: in March 1980, she married Fred Sonic Smith, musician and former member of MC5, Ascension and his own Sonics Rendezvous Band. The pair set up home in the Detroit suburb of St Clair Shores, Michigan, and effectively retired from music. Women who had projected a powerful feminist image onto her were baffled by Pattis exchange of artistic fame for domesticity and motherhood in the suburbs. But actually Patti Smith had found what she had always wanted: a partner who loved and understood her. She never claimed to be a feminist and her working-class upbringing in rural New Jersey was a source of traditionalist values. Patti was always searching for answers and in this love she had found one of the most important.