Patti Smith's renewed faith in people power

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A Dream of Life for Patti Smith

Age has not tamed the fiery Patti Smith. But she’s happier than ever



Patti Smith sinks into the armchair of a Berlin bar, all sharp angles and scarecrow intensity. Even at 61, the veteran poet-rocker still exudes an ageless and androgynous beauty. For such an iconic figure, she also seems strangely pagan and untamed, like the world’s most bohemian bag lady.

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At 61, Smith’s vagabond existence glimpsed in Dream of Life is one of ramshackle apartments, crumbling houses and spartan rooms strewn with arty clutter. Smith may be international rock royalty, but the material world seems almost immaterial to her.

“The things that come with celebrity, whether it’s a magazine cover or adulation or money, do not tell me who I am,” she shrugs. “It didn’t help when I had to cook dinner or scrub floors or take care of my children. It didn’t make any difference when I lost my husband and my brother and had to start my life again. The gods of celebrity don’t care. And no amount of fame or prosperity can replace the value of great work.”

As Dream of Life demonstrates, Smith has also become a much more political animal in recent years than during her 1970s punk-poet days. A passionate critic of the Bush Administration, the singer’s 2004 album Trampin’ contained one of the first recorded protest songs against the Iraq war, Radio Baghdad.

More recently, Smith has written songs condemning Israel’s airstrike on the Lebanese town of Qana and the incarceration of the Guantánamo Bay prisoner Murat Kurnaz. Earlier this year she wrote a short preface to Kurnaz’s prison memoir, Five Years of My Life.

“When I was young I was so depressed about Vietnam; now it seems almost a luxury that that was all I had to be depressed about,” Smith sighs. “There is so much injustice and corruption, it just seems endless. But one has to do one’s work, to live one’s life and do the best one can.”

Barack Obama’s victory, at least, appears to have renewed Smith’s faith in people power and American optimism. “My country is in big trouble right now,” she says. “But we are a young country and we are very tough. Better times will come.”


read more: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article5279100.ece

[ryanmuegge]

1. Only the rich and famous can afford to be so idiotically optimistic in this economy.

Who cares what these people think about politics? And her albums suck too.

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2. we really can't afford to be idiotically cynical either

[H2O Man]

3. darn her!

[democraticinsurgent]

4. Patti Smith is one of the greats

Sorry you don't like her music, but I think she's responsible for some of the finest rock moments in history.

Also, by nearly all accounts I've seen, she is a wonderful human being who actually gives a shit.

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5. oh hell yes

she's one of the greats . . . and she does give a shit.

It doesn't take much to see that.

[ryanmuegge]

6. Music is subjective. I think she's vastly overrated.

There were bands from that NYC (and also the British punk scene, especially) scene that were a lot more exciting and much less pretentious.

[democraticinsurgent]

7. of course it's subjective

...but i took exception to your gratuitous swipe at her, not your musical taste. Painting her with the "famous people" brush isn't fair, especially when she's stood up for democracy, human rights and other good things for her entire career.