NEW YORK'S godmother of punk Patti Smith is in overdrive, releasing her tribute CD for a 'magical' friend just as a documentary of her life premieres. Now 61, she talks to STEPHEN DALTON about life, death and Bob Dylan
YOU can feel Patti Smith's internal motor revving before she even opens her mouth. All sharp angles and wiry energy, there is something vaguely feral and Middle Earth about the queen of downtown New York's beatnik-punk bohemia. Beneath a wild haysta
ck of greying hair, Smith only needs to hear half a question and she is off, pinballing around her vivid inner world of Rimbaud and Dylan, Blake and Burroughs, pagan poetry and magical incantations.
"Rock 'n' roll belongs to the people," Smith says. "When I started playing rock 'n' roll I couldn't sing very well, I didn't know any instrument, I didn't know anything about technology, I'd never been in front of the microphone. But I did believe rock 'n' roll was mine. I was one of the people and it was my art."
These are prolific times for the 61-year-old singer. Smith has released five studio albums and several retrospectives since re-emerging in 1995 from a long period of hibernation. Three years ago, she curated London's prestigious Meltdown arts festival, before being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year. She claims to be a mousy bookworm offstage but her live shows remain heady, muscular, visceral affairs.
"When I get on stage and plug in my electric guitar, I am such an animal," Smith says. "It just brings out something so primitive, it still amazes me. When I came back I hadn't played electric guitar in 16 years. I plugged in for the first time in 1995 and within five minutes I was the same person, I didn't feel any different. I can still walk in the woods, look up at the sky and completely taste what it was like to be 10 or 11 years old. All I can say is we can still be in touch with all our ages."
The ghosts of the past certainly seem ever present in Smith's life. She makes constant reference to lost friends and lovers, especially ex-husband Fred Smith, who died of a heart attack in November 1994, aged just 45.
Next month she releases The Coral Sea, a musical setting of her 1996 poem paying homage to another former soul mate, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It was Mapplethorpe who took the iconic cover shot that adorned Smith's 1975 debut album, Horses. He later became notorious for his sexually explicit images before dying of Aids in 1989, aged just 42.
Recorded at two separate London shows, backed by My Bloody Valentine founder and former Primal Scream guitarist Kevin Shields, Smith's two readings of The Coral Sea are wildly different in style. One is cool and melancholy, the other strident and declamatory. After the album, she plans a further literary tribute to Mapplethorpe. "I'm writing a book about Robert," she says, "because I promised him I would, before he died. Many people have written about that period. But I can tell you, anything you read about that period of my life and Robert's – my main criticism, aside from all the lies and exaggerations, is that it's devoid of magic; that period had a special magic and no one has ever captured it."
The New York Times may have dubbed Smith the 'Godmother of Punk', but she began performing with her longtime guitarist Lenny Kaye in 1971, five years before punk rock was even born. All the same, Smith was a key catalyst behind the US punk boom, which emerged from legendary downtown Manhattan dives like CBGBs. Fittingly, she played a marathon set at the club on the night it closed for good, in October 2006. "We wanted to get rock 'n' roll back to the grass roots, back into the hands of the people," Smith says. "CBGBs gave us a place where we could play our own music and dress the way we wanted. None of us had any money, we just came and did our work, and it was a great outlet for us. The idea for me was that rock 'n' roll could start a universal people's movement. Then things flowered and evolved into punk rock."
Smith is currently writing songs for her next album. Meanwhile, a remarkable low-budget documentary about her life and work makes its UK debut at the Edinburgh International Film Festival later this month. Mostly shot in dreamy monochrome by director Steven Sebring, Dream Of Life is an impressionistic screen portrait of the singer, her music and her passions. The film picks up her story in 1995, when Smith was reeling from the untimely death of her husband Fred and brother Todd in quick succession. "We met in Detroit in 1995, on a photo shoot," Sebring says. "Michael Stipe brought me to Patti and there was an immediate spiritual connection."
"I'd lost my brother at the end of 1994, then Steven came," Smith says. "It only took me a few minutes to know that God had given me a new brother."
To help the newly widowed Smith overcome her grief, friends encouraged her to make music and play live again – friends such as Michael Stipe of REM, who recorded a duet with her, and Bob Dylan, who invited her out on tour. Dylan appears briefly in Dream Of Life, in a typically elusive background cameo.
"Bob's a very private man, he has many masks," Smith says. "But for me, I look at him as man. He was a great influence on me, I loved him as a teenager, he was almost like my secret boyfriend. I told him that and he just laughed. He's all the things that he seems to be – but he's also a man."
Other famous fans appear in the film, a testament to Smith's enduring influence on younger musicians. Stipe, Bono, Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers all pay homage to her inspirational music. Playwright Sam Shepard, a friend from way back, also drops by to strum a scratchy guitar duet.
"All of these people, I listen to them and I can't really hear any influence," Smith says. "If they say we gave them inspiration then I'm proud, but all these people have done great work. I know Bono well enough to put him in the movie. Michael Stipe and Flea are two of my best friends. They were all supportive when I had to come back into the public eye."
Smith credits her late husband with sharpening her political rage in later years. A fierce opponent of George Bush, she supported Green Party candidate Ralph Nader and Democrat John Kerry in recent US election campaigns. Her 2004 album Trampin' contained one of the first recorded protest songs against the Iraq war, 'Radio Baghdad'. More recently, she has written angry lyrics condemning Guantanamo Bay and Israeli air strikes on Lebanon.
"Artists have been very dull through the Bush administration," Smith says. "I'm disappointed, but a lot of it was out of fear after September 11. There has been a lot of fear and silence in my country. I don't think the Bush administration has been good for anything. It wasn't good for art, it wasn't good for music, and it certainly wasn't good for Iraq."
In person, Smith possesses the wiry, edgy, animalistic charisma of a female Keith Richards or Iggy Pop. But even after 30 years of musical fame, she resists restricting herself with the label of rock star.
"I don't have an image of myself when I'm walking down the street as a rock star," she says.
"I'm a human being and a friend and a mom and a writer and an artist. I play electric guitar and all that, but I'm just a person. I don't believe people playing rock 'n' roll should have crowns. We're not kings and queens. Rock 'n' roll belongs to the people." v
Patti Smith: Dream Of Life shows at Edinburgh International Film Festival, June 21, 6.45pm, and June 22, 5.15pm. The Coral Sea is released July 7 www.edfilmfest.org.uk www.pattismith.net