You might as well know straight up that I haven't actually read Patti Smith's memoir
Just Kids yet because Amazon is taking forever to send it to me. So needless to say, when I tried to write a review of the book, I was at a slight disadvantage.
But luckily, not having read it didn't stop me from
FEELING like I had read it! There have been enough extracts printed in
Rolling Stone and the
New York Times, among other places, that I've been able to use to cobble together this EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with the woman herself. How brilliant, struggling and bohemian is that?! Well, I did learn everything I know from Patti Smith.
So Patti, when you first moved to New York what did you and your boyfriend Robert Mapplethorpe do all day?
We gathered our coloured pencils and sheets of paper and drew like
wild, feral children into the night, until, exhausted, we fell into bed.
So you just sat around all day?
One cannot imagine the mutual happiness we felt when we sat and drew together. We would get lost for hours.
What did you do for dinner?
I would boil water and make some Nescafé.
Really? That's it?
We lived on day-old bread and Dinty Moore beef stew.
But you loved the French Romantic poets, Patti! Didn't they save you from starvation?
Romanticism could not quench my need for food. Even Baudelaire had to eat.
I guess you're right. Now, I've always imagined New York in the late sixties to be straight out of that Frank Sinatra musical, On the Town. Was it?
The city was a real city, shifty and sexual. I was lightly jostled by small herds of flushed young sailors looking for action on Forty-second street, with its rows of X-rated movie houses, brassy women, glittering souvenir shops, and hot dog vendors.
Sounds amazing. So, you eventually got a job in a bookstore, and I wanted to ask you: Is it true that New York bookshop employees in the sixties were forced to dress like they were in a Godard film?
My uniform for Scribner's was taken from Anna Karina in
Bande à part: dark sweater, plaid skirt, black tights and flats.
But what if it was raining?
Black ballet flats, pink shantung capris, my Kelly green silk raincoat, and a violet parasol.
That sounds very pretty and reminiscent of another French film. Anyway, this might sound random, but I've always wanted to ask you if you have any twenty-first birthday party
ideas. I'm just after something low-key though, nothing too crazy or specific.
For my 21st birthday, Robert made
me a tambourine, tattooing the goatskin with astrological signs and
tying multicolored ribbons to its base. He put on Tim Buckley singing
'Phantasmagoria in Two,' then he knelt down and handed me a small book
on the tarot that he had rebound in black silk. Inside it he inscribed
a few lines of poetry, portraying us as the gypsy and the fool, one
creating silence, one listening closely to the silence.
Right. Okay, well Patti, my boyfriend is always stressed and worried about money and so I'm always telling him to go out and get a job then, the lazy bum. How did you deal with your unemployed, artist boyfriend?
Robert fretted over not being able to provide for us. I told him not to worry, that committing to great art is its own reward.
I see. Hence the starvation I guess. Anyhoo, I've been wondering what you thought to yourself when your son Jackson brought home Meg White from The White Stripes and said to you, 'Hey Mum, meet your new daughter-in-law'?
She was pretty and intelligent with an offbeat sense of humour, like a young
Ida Lupino.
I think you might have her mixed up with someone else, but never mind. What were your first impressions of Jim Morrison back in the day?
He exuded a mixture of beauty and self-loathing, and mystic pain, like a West Coast Saint Sebastian.
Did you ever feel like The Doors were a bit overrated?
I had a strange reaction watching Jim Morrison. Everyone around me seemed transfixed, but I observed his every move in a state of cold hyperawareness. I felt, watching Jim Morrison, that I could do that.
I daresay you were right. Anyway, I heard you were the one who christened Janis Joplin 'Pearl' one night when you guys were hanging out. Is that correct?
As I was leaving, she looked in the mirror, adjusting her boas. 'How do I look, man?'
'Like a pearl,' I answered.
Patti, that sounds outrageously fabricated, but I believe everything you say anyway.
'A pearl of a girl.
'
Look, I'm sorry but we have to finish it there, but I love you and I hope everyone buys your memoir, and furthermore, I hope they all buy it from independent bookstores because Amazon should be boycotted for taking so long to send me my order. And besides, good independent bookshops are the linchpin of our nation, particularly when their employees are dressed like Anna Karina out of Bande à part. Wouldn't you agree?
He wrote me a note to say we would create art together and we would make it, with or without the rest of the world.
Huh? Oh yeah, you're still talking about Robert. Shh, Patti, that's enough now. We'll find out all about it when we read the book.
