Patti Smith, godmother of punk, releases new memoir M Train
Artist acclaimed for music, writing, visual art over 40-year career
Patti Smith, the "godmother of punk," delves into her daily rituals of life and shares the many losses she has experienced in her new memoir M Train.
With a career that has spanned more than four decades, Smith is a rare artist who has won acclaim as a musician, performer, writer and visual artist.
Her 1978 song Because the Night, co-written with Bruce Springsteen, reached #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and has been widely covered by other artists. Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Three years later, she won the National Book Award for her earlier memoir Just Kids, about her relationship with provocative photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1989.
An exhibition of her photography, titled Camera Solo, toured to the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2013.
With her seminal debut album Horses now 40 years old, she's currently touring to celebrate that milestone – in between dates promoting her new book.
But Smith, now age 68, is not just a nostalgia act. She wrote and performed the song Capital Letter on the Hunger Games: Catching Fire movie soundtrack, which introduced her to a whole new generation of younger fans. Still, she's never had a problem connecting with the kids: Smith told CBC News that recent concert tours in Europe had many young fans in attendance.
"It's fantastic because their energy is so great, but also their enthusiasm, their idealism, their questioning, their desire for communication," she said.
"It's always gratifying for me when younger generations are interested in my work"
Writing of loss, loves and art
In M Train, she details other losses in her life, including her husband Fred "Sonic" Smith, who played in the Detroit rock band MC5 and died of heart failure in 1994.
"We're always going through a certain amount of loss," Smith said.
"Whether we lose our favourite scarf or someone that we love. It's just a natural process of life."
Smith also writes of her favourite cafe where she used to go every day to write, and of her love of coffee and detective shows, as well as her devotion to artists she admires, including Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, poet Sylvia Plath, and French writers Jean Genet and Arthur Rimbaud. She describes pilgrimages she made to their former homes and graves where she takes her trademark polaroid pictures.
Despite her acclaim and the success of Just Kids (for which she has planned a sequel), Smith said she set no expectations for the new book.
"My first concern is that I do whatever it is – whether it's an album or a book or a photograph or a drawing – as best as I can and then we'll see."
"Really for this book, I had no agenda at all, I just wanted to be free, I just wrote. That's why it's called M Train. It's sort of a trinity of memory and also the mind. It's like a mental train and I just wrote what I felt like writing."
As for the continuing fascination with Smith's music – her last album Banga was released in 2012 – the singer-songwriter is nothing if not humble.
"I don't walk around thinking of myself as a rock star or a musician," she said.
"I just think that, you know, I have a band and I go out and I serve the people, but in my daily life I write, I read, feed my cats, roam around the world and drink coffee."