archives

Patti Smith asks fans to keep their cell phones off
Spinner: "A lot of people spend a lot of time taping, taking pictures, talking on the phone and sometimes, for me as a performer, I'd like us all to be more engaged in the moment," she told Spinner at the ASCAP Pop Music Awards on Wednesday night. "Usually that happens along the line."

"My number one job is to communicate and whether there's 20 people or 20,000 people, I try to get a sense of each person as an individual and of the collective energy," she said. "It's not necessarily to be perfect or to please every minute, but to feel that we're all living in the moment. We're just an old-fashioned rock 'n' roll band and it's a collective exchange. It's like alchemy."

Patti Smith Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from ASCAP
Crawdaddy: "Just yesterday, Patti Smith received a lifetime achievement award from the songwriting royalties groups ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers), a group that collects royalties on behalf of its member songwriters and copyright holders from public performances like radio, TV, in bars, restaurants, and concert halls. Songwriters especially benefit if others cover their songs. During her acceptance speech in Hollywood, Smith talked about how ASCAP checks helped her out of some really hard times, especially after the death of her husband, punk rocker Fred “Sonic” Smith, who left her a widowed mother of two. Which goes to show that not every musician, even iconic ones, are rolling in the dough. “I was actually down on my luck,” Smith said. “And what helped bail me out and helped me get back on my feet were the ASCAP checks that I got for ‘Because the Night.’”

Patti Smith: A Donation to NOMA
Press release by NOMA: "On Thursday, April 22nd, the night before JazzFest opens in New Orleans , artist and musician Patti Smith will present a talk at NOMA entitled "On Photography" at 6:00 pm in the Museum's Stern Auditorium. Her talk will accompany the opening of an exhibition of forty-five photographs by Smith, donated by the artist to the museum in 2009 and 2010. After receiving these two major gifts to NOMA's permanent collection, I invited Smith to come to NOMA to publicly address her relationship to photography, both in terms of her own photographic work and the history of the medium itself. "Patti Smith: A Donation to NOMA," consists of forty-five silver prints made from negatives produced by the artist's antique Polaroid Land 250 camera. These prints will be augmented by a few original, but unique, Polaroid photographs, which are also part of Smith's generous donation to our museum.".

Just Kids is getting great reviews
One of them by The Sunday Times: "They first met in 1967: she, an awkward Catholic girl from New Jersey, he an awkward Catholic boy from Queens. Both were 20. Smith, tall, thin and dreamy, had just recovered from an unwanted pregnancy, in which the nurses had been “very cruel and uncaring…[they] left me on a table for several hours, ridiculed me for my beatnik appearance and immoral behaviour, calling me ‘Dracula’s daughter’  ”. Giving the child up for adoption and jacking in her job at a text-book factory, she arrived in New York on a stolen fare with a raincoat, a suitcase and a copy of Baudelaire. Sleeping rough in parks and graveyards among junkies and hustlers, she finally secured a job; a series of chance encounters brought her together with Mapplethorpe, then a student at the Pratt Institute. Within days, they became inseparable, two downtown urchins “irrevocably intertwined, like Paul and Elisabeth, the sister and brother in Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles”."

"By day she scraped a living at Scribner’s, the bookstore, by night she painted, drew and wrote poetry with Mapplethorpe. To supplement their income, she stole half-eaten lobster claws from the restaurant next door for him to spray and sell as jewellery; he, in turn, took to, er, hustling “to make money for us”, she says, admitting a few pages later that he sometimes failed to take payment."

The 36th annual New Year's Day Poetry Reading features Patti Smith, Philip Glass
The Independent: "For the 36th year of the event, the 2010 New Year's Day Marathon Poetry Reading will occur at St. Mark's in New York City's East Village. More than 140 writers, poets and performers will read and perform, including Patti Smith, composer Philip Glass, and singer-songwriter Steve Earle. The event draws over 1,000 through the day, beginning at 2 pm on January 1, 2010."

Objects of Life
An exhibition by Patti Smith and Steven Sebring in Robert Miller Gallery, New York City: January 6th - February 6th 2010.

"Objects of Life is a fascinating exhibition of photographs, objects and video inspired by Steven Sebring's time with Patti Smith during the filming of their extraordinary documentary Dream of Life. During the 11 years of filming, Sebring became increasingly interested in the history and mythology behind the possessions and personal treasures that Smith shared in the film's most intimate moments. It resulted in the desire to return to his roots as photographer and to recontextualise the sacred and the commonplace through his camera lens. Objects of Life consists of 14 large-scale photographs taken by Sebring. This collection ranges from Smith's childhood dress to an ancient urn containing the remains of Smith's close friend and collaborator Robert Mapplethorpe, to black leather boots that have stomped around the world and a video installation of Smith in the course of creating an art piece. The exhibition also includes a rare oil painting by Smith, her largest and most recent work to date. Also featured is a private collection of personal belongings from both artists whose collaboration is grounded by their relationship to the film and to their individual personal experiences."

Who Shot Rock and Roll
A photographic exhibition at Brooklyn Museum until January 31st 2010.

"The New York City rock and roll scene figures prominently, featuring photos of bands from the Talking Heads and the Ramones, to Patti Smith and the Velvet Underground. "Very important what we were doing. For me, photographing in the streets, the Ramones being photographed on the streets, Talking Heads writing about Psycho Killer, everything was very of the moment and of New York and we were working to transform New York into an art form," said photographer Godlis. The exhibit shows the importance of photography to a musical movement as a silent window into the world of sound."

The New York City 400
"In celebration of New York's 400th birthday, the Museum of the City of New York recently compiled a list of the 400 most influential New Yorkers from the last four centuries. Of these great figures, one of them was Patti Smith, and along with this honorable title, she was also awarded a lifetime membership to the museum."

Pratt Institute honors Patti Smith
Interiordesign.net: "For her part, Smith accepted her award with recollections of her time spent living near the school. "Even though I never attended Pratt, I was touched by the world of Pratt, by the campus, by the students, by the professors, and I'm very happy to be part of a night that builds resources for scholarships."

"Smith wrapped the ceremony up with a four-song performance that included her classic "Because the Night," which she dedicated to Robert Mapplethorpe. "

Patti Smith – Simply a concert
An Italian photographic book of Patti Smith performing has been published.

"Patti Smith fans storm Mapplethorpe opening"
Artinfo (October 14th 2009): "The Alison Jacques Gallery could have found no better way to drum up interest for its exhibition of photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe than to host a performance by Patti Smith: songstress, poet, onetime Mapplethorpe muse, and all-around cultural icon. The problem was, the event last night generated a little too much interest. By 5:45, 15 minutes before Smith was to go on, a line of her fans stretched a full block from the gallery’s Berners Street address, and no sooner had the gallery thrown open its doors than more of them arrived, and streamed in, until the two rooms were packed and stifling, becoming an inadvertent play on the exhibition’s Rimbaud-derived title, “A Season in Hell.” One gallery-goer was seen fleeing, tossing over her shoulder the remark, “If you want to get hot, definitely go in there.”

Patti Smith performs 'Because The Night' at the opening (Youtube)

In Perfect Harmony: Music Legends and their Animals
A calendar, whose proceeds benefit Rational Animal, a nonprofit organization specializing in awareness for at-risk animals, includes Patti Smith: "Photographer Frank Stefanko’s portrait of Patti Smith and her kitty, titled “The Lookout,” successfully smashes the stereotype of the unhip “cat lady.”

Remembering Jim Carroll
Los Angeles Times: "A guardian angel for Jim then was Patti Smith, who worked at Scribner's bookshop on Fifth Avenue. One day I was there when Jim OD'd. Patti kept him awake, walking him around until he came to. "

Sam Shepard and Patti Smith in January 2010
Event information: "Sam Shepard and Patti Smith have been close friends since the early 1970s, when they co-wrote and co-starred in the play Cowboy Mouth. Upon the publication of their new books—Shepard's Day Out of Days, a collection of stories; and Smith's memoir Just Kids—they read together at the Poetry Center for the first time."

PLOT & Messages in a Bottle
"PLOT is a new public art quadrennial, produced and presented by Creative Time. This World & Nearer Ones is the first edition of PLOT, and will be held this summer on Governors Island. 19 artworks by international contemporary artists will be presented. The exhibition is free and open to the public Friday-Sunday. "

"Patti and Jesse Smith's spoken word poetry and musical composition Messages in a Bottle takes the form of an elegiac meditation upon the history, present, and future of Governors Island. Experienced intimately through headphones, it provides companionship, a whisper and melody in the ear as one wanders the island. Artist and musician Patti Smith collaborated with her daughter Jesse, an accomplished pianist, to make this audio work-Jesse created a soundscape to accompany the words and thoughts of her mother. An alternative to the typical didactic tour, this work offers a poetic approach to the consideration of history, drawing upon a very personal perspective. "

Download Messages in a Bottle from the project website

Patti Smith at Meltdown Festival 2009
The Telegraph about her apperance: "Coleman, who was also billed for a contribution, appeared merely to give a hushed verbal blessing before an exploratory encore of P***ing in a River. Thereafter, Smith was exhausted. “What can I say?” she gasped, “It’s been heaven and hell.” Within a few minutes, she was skipping through the aisles, leading the crowd through the refrain to Ghost Dance: “We shall live again”. It had been a challenging, thought-provoking night, a rare privilege, which ended with glorious transcendence."

Another review by the Guardian (five stars)

A video on YouTube: Patti Smith & Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra

Another video clip on YouTube, and another

Patti Smith about Ornette Coleman
The Guardian: "I've been obsessed with Ornette ever since my friends and I formed a jazz club at school in the 1960s to play our records to each other. Listening to him taught me a lot about improvisation, about music as a form of spiritual commune. I carry his work everywhere, in particular his soundtrack to The Naked Lunch. This is music that conjures up words, poetry, portals to another dimension. A couple of years back, I met him for the first time in Bologna in Italy, in a pizzeria. He was playing at an opera house and invited me along. In the middle of his set, I was beckoned on to the stage. I went up and improvised a poem. There was no fear: he opens the door and he's completely compassionate. As you enter his world, you feel his confidence, enthusiasm and sense of wonder. Ornette is like a genius - and a child - in the way he approaches music. Part of his appeal to people in the world of rock and punk is that he doesn't require you to be a complex musician. He just requires that you listen, communicate and play with feeling."

Meg White marries boyfriend Jackson Smith
May 2009: "It wasn’t a traditional wedding by any means but no one really wanted that. “It was a great day with lots of friends and happiness.”

New York in the '70s
A book and exhibition (The Not Fade Away Gallery, 12 E. 20th St., NYC, through June 25th) of Allan Tannenbaum's great photographs includes images of Patti Smith.

View images of Patti Smith and the band in the 70s at Tannenbaum's website

Patti date a coup for Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight County Press: "Patti Smith’s visit will be on Thursday, June 11, when she will perform a solo show of poetry and music at the Farringford Hotel. The date was chosen by Patti, as it is the date of pioneering Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron’s birthday. The day before, an exhibition of her photographs will open at Dimbola Lodge, Freshwater, which is particularly apt as Patti’s work was influenced by Julia Margaret Cameron, whose home it was. Patti will be performing at Farringford in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s bi-centennial year."

Punk icon Patti Smith waxes poetic at Robert Miller Gallery
The New York Observer: "The fans who filled the Robert Miller Gallery in Chelsea on Thursday night, April 2, to hear punk icon Patti Smith perform songs and original poetry inspired by the 19th century French writer Arthur Rimbaud bowed their heads as Ms. Smith intoned the literary rebel's last words: ''I am completely paralyzed, and so I wish to embark in good time."

Patti Smith performs at EXIT Festival (Serbia)
She will perform on the festival Main Stage on July 11th 2009, according to Blic Online.

Two tales recall long bygone era of East Village edge
Downtown Express: "The East Village had edge then — so it’s not surprising that two new documentaries, set to world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, take on the punk subculture of the late 70s/early 80s East Village arts scene. The era had a mythic allure for two filmmakers who were in diapers at the time. “Burning Down the House: The Story of CBGB,” directed by 34-year-old Mandy Stein, follows of the history of the club that launched the careers of Blondie, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, and Patti Smith. “Blank City,” directed by 30-year-old Celine Danhier, looks at the underground moviemakers of the period such as Jim Jarmusch, John Waters, Amos Poe, and Eric Mitchell (as well as the performers in their milieu)."

A new exhibition: Patti Smith - Veil
Robert Miller Gallery, New York City: March 19th - April 18th 2009

A free screening of Patti Smith: Dream Of Life in Los Angeles
Amoeba Music: Amoeba will be holding free screenings of music-related films every Monday in the Month of March. The next screening takes place March 16th at 8 pm, in the courtyard of Space15Twenty, just up the street from Amoeba at 1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd, Los Angeles, CA.

Patti Smith on BBC Radio 2 on March 2nd
Info from Gordon Comstock: "Patti Smith - BBC Radio 2 (UK) - Radcliffe and Maconie Show on Monday 2nd March 2009 at 20:00. The show is streamed and usually there's a 7 day listen-again feature."

Patti Smith: Legacy, death and how to survive it
Northwestern (Feb. 2009): "Mortality is hard to ignore for a woman who has lost so many near her. During the post-screening discussion she mentions that she’s been working from 12 hours a day on a memoir chronicling her and Mapplethorpe’s early years. He’d asked her 20 years ago to write it shortly before he died."

Patti Smith to pay tribute to Buddy Holly at Tibet House Benefit
Rolling Stone: "Fifty years ago, the day the music died, I was a kid living in Brooklyn,” said Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye, before launching into an energetic medley of of the Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace,” Holly’s “Words of Love” and Valens’ “Come On, Let’s Go.” “Now we’re here to celebrate that music.”

"Patti Smith vs Jeff Koons"
The Independent (Feb. 2009): "Speaking in next month's edition of 'The Art Newspaper', she branded him "litter upon the earth", adding: "I find Koons' work especially vile... I look at his stuff and I'm appalled." She also revealed that her artistic sensibility as a young girl from a home of modest means was initially inspired by glossy magazines dug out of people's waste-bins. "I can really trace my affinity with visual arts from finding discarded fashion magazines as a young girl, not my mother's, because those magazines were too expensive for her. I was looking through other people's trash for things to cut out, and coming across issues of 'Harper's Bazaar' and 'Vogue' from the 1950s. I started digging them out of the trash every month."

The Rock-It Science Festival
Brooklyn Vegan: "The Rock-It Science Festival will bring together eight outstanding--and noted--scientists and academics who share a second career as musicians, along with six additional performers with international exposure and a great appreciation for science."

"The Rock-It Science Festival will start rockin' at 6:30 p.m. on March 3 at the Highline Ballroom, 431 W. 16th Street in New York. Rufus Wainwright will highlight an evening that will also include musician, writer and record producer Lenny Kaye, who is the long-time collaborator of poet-rocker Patti Smith."

Patti Smith Speaks from the Soul
The Santa Barbara Independent: Q: "Your name comes up as a point of reference and inspiration for so many artists. Is that recognition a blessing or a burden for you? That I’m an inspiration?"

Patti Smith: "Oh! That’s a real compliment. I mean, I have spent my whole life citing the people who have inspired me—from Bob Dylan to Maria Callas—so if people are inspired by my band or the work we do, or inspired by anything I am involved with, that’s a good thing. I have always tried to do good work, or never tried to steer people into a bad place. So if I can be of some avail, I’m very happy."

Legends Perform Ginsberg Tribute
Daily Nexus: "Just as with her singing, Smith spoke from her gut, and she even managed to speak with a wavering vibrato at times, breathing life into the words. Poetry recitation is an art form in its own right, and unlike lesser readers, Smith never resorts to yelling to get the point across. Her performance of “Footnote to Howl,” was especially charged due to her reading skills and to the rhythmic intensity of the prose itself (“The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!”). But none of the Ginsberg readings could be accurately described as entertaining. Each set demanded intense concentration from the listener. "

Another review by Los Angeles Times: "This tribute was inspired from a few appearances together by Glass and Smith, beginning at a Ginsberg memorial in New York a year after he died. The performers put it together in London two years ago, and repeated a version of it in Australia last year. There are no further plans for performances from two busy artists."

The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church on January 1st
Poets and performers include Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye.

"Overview of Artist Patti Smith's Creative Complexity on View at Artium"
Artdaily.org: "One of the main features of the 2008 art programme of ARTIUM, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art, includes an exhibition dedicated to North American artist Patti Smith, with a presentation illustrative of her work in the fields of art, literature and music." The exhibition opened on December 4th 2008.