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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Patti Smith less punk in heart-winning memoir

Reviewed by: Debbie Patterson

Posted: 01/23/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

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Patti Smith performs at her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction in New York, in 2007. (AP PHOTO)

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Just Kids

By Patti Smith

HarperCollins, 280 pages, $27

Many performers have an onstage persona, a hidden part of themselves that they only discover and unleash under the pressure of performance.

Just Kids, the new memoir from the first lady of punk rock, sheds some light on the enigma that is Patti Smith.

With 10 albums, a dozen books of poetry, prose and visual art, as well as a handful of off-Broadway acting gigs to her credit, the American singer-songwriter appears to be a juggernaut of artistic output.

Just Kids traces Smith's development as an artist by recounting the passionate and complicated relationship she had with homosexual bad-boy photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Beginning with her New Jersey childhood, marked by poverty and illness, we witness the birth of her artistic temperament. An unplanned pregnancy in her 20s precipitated the end of her higher education and cemented her position as social outcast.

She gave up the child and, in 1967, without a plan, she bought a one-way bus ticket to New York: sleeping rough in Central Park, finding sustenance wherever she could, searching for a job. But suddenly, "a chance encounter changed the course of my life."

She met Mapplethorpe.

For five years they lived together, as lovers, as best friends, as sexually ambiguous misfits. Even after moving into separate households they ensured they were within blocks of each other. They were "irrevocably intertwined" by an "indefinable devotion."

As their relationships morphed, Patti struggled to overcome her sense of abandonment and understand Robert's homosexuality, in an era when homosexuality was rarely accepted and barely understood.

Smith's description of the world she and Mapplethorpe moved through in New York in the late '60s and early '70s is a fascinating read. Describing the well-known characters who lived in Chelsea, hung out at the Andy Warhol's Factory or ate at Max's Kansas City, this book is a snapshot of a moment of incredible artistic output, a sea-change in contemporary culture.

She had an affair with Sam Sheppard, consoled a heartbroken Janis Joplin, shared a quiet moment with Jimi Hendrix and was dissed by the transsexual Jackie Curtis (of Walk on the Wild Side fame).

While Mapplethorpe was concerned with fitting in to the society he wanted to be part of -- Warhol's Factory crowd or the moneyed world of arts patrons -- Patti was determined to stand out.

However, Smith's style of writing, especially in the first few chapters, is oddly disconcerting. Is this demure voice really that of a punk priestess?

Using language and syntax that is self-consciously and clumsily poetic, Smith adopts a lofty, romantic tone that just doesn't ring true.

This compulsion to present a façade rather than trust in her authentic self is a constant theme in this book. Smith talks about modelling herself on her idols, copying their walks, their styles of dressing; the superficial trappings of "the artiste." She is clearly far more focused on cultivating her persona rather than her skills, as an artist.

Yet her devotion to her idols, and there were many, brought about a look and a voice that is entirely her own. Her onstage persona, borrowing heavily from the sexually charged male rock stars she idolized in her youth, broke new ground for women in rock 'n' roll.

She had never seen a woman do what she wanted to do, so she simply pretended she was a man. Her unbridled expressions of sexual desire were unheard of in women.

Her first album, Horses, influenced a generation of musicians including Michael Stipe of REM, the Smiths and Sonic Youth. When it came out in 1975, Rolling Stone lauded her as "a genuine original, as original an original as they come."

In the end of Just Kids, as she describes Mapplethorpe dying of AIDS in the late '80s, Smith breaks through the façade and speaks with heartbreaking truth.

She visited him with her infant daughter and he expressed regret that they never had children together. Though he was terribly ill, he vowed to "take care of her" and her children if anything should happen to her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith, the MC5 guitarist who, in fact, died in 1994 of a heart attack.

Ultimately, it is the quiet, honest love between these two misfits, Patti Smith and Mapplethorpe, which rises above the posturing and pretending, wins our hearts and elevates this memoir to a great height.

Debbie Patterson is a Winnipeg theatre artist who once toured across Canada with a punk band.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 23, 2010 H9

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