Patti Smith’s Third Memoir Gets Even More Personal
After the literary successes of Patti Smith’s 2010 Just Kids, and her 2015 M Train, her brand new third memoir, Bread Of Angels, is enthralling readers with its personalized anecdotes about growing up on the Jersey side of the Pennsylvania border in Gloucester County’s Deptford Township. The first book keyed in on one of the loves of her life, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe [1946-1989]. This third book gets even more personal. She was close to her siblings. She ran amok in New York City. She fused punk and poetry. She leaves rock stardom behind in 1980 to settle in Michigan with her husband, MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith. She gives birth to two children. Her husband dies. Her parents die. Her brother dies. Many of her friends die.
She’s a 47-year old widow, alone for the first time on Valentine’s Day, when a drunk Michael Stipe from R.E.M. reaches out to ask her to be his valentine. So does Bruce (who takes her son on a motorcycle ride). Her producer, Jimmy Iovine, pressures her to listen to a few Bruce songs to possibly cover but she had always resisted songs she didn’t write…until she heard “Because The Night.” She told Rolling Stone, “I wanted to write my own songs and I had this fucking hit staring me in the face.” So she took it to #13 in America and #5 in England.
At a recent New York City show celebrating the publication of the book, she admitted that she finds it hard to relate to the songs anymore on her 1975 breakthrough Horses debut. “I can still access the part of me who wrote those things,” she said from the stage, “but I can’t say that I want to stay there—because I’ve evolved…” Later she said, “at times I mourn the worlds I knew: the hopes of my generation, flowers in hair, dancing to the Dead, seeking a universal music, `the language of peace,’ as Jimi Hendrix would say.”