"Standing on a downtown-Manhattan sidewalk on a late-summer afternoon, she wore loose jeans rolled at the cuff, white high-tops, a black blazer, and-on a cool day for August, but still an August day-a wool cap over her long gray hair. We had arranged to meet at a gallery owned by friends of hers and, for the time being, we were locked out."
"Smith, who turns 79 in December, was preparing for a busy fall ahead: the release of her memoir, an international concert tour to mark the 50th anniversary of her seminal album, Horses. In addition to reading the book, I'd spent the preceding weeks listening to her songs on repeat, and one lyric in particular seemed like it might be a kind of key to her career, which over the course of six decades has comprised poetry and performance, memoir and drawing,"
"I already knew that she started chafing early on against authorities and edicts. Smith writes in the memoir about a question that came to her as she sat in Bible study in South Jersey at the dawn of the 1960s: What will happen to art? Her father, Grant-the man who taught her to question everything-had recently taken their family of six to the Philadelphia Museum of Art."
Patti Smith, nearing 79, maintains a distinctive presence and characteristic attire of loose jeans, white high-tops, a black blazer, and a wool cap. She prepared for the release of Bread of Angels and a global tour marking the 50th anniversary of Horses. Her six-decade career spans poetry, performance, memoir, drawing, photography, and painting, with honors including the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and a National Book Award. A defiant lyric from Horses — "People say, 'Beware,' but I don't care" — captures her resistance to rules. Early exposure to Dali and Picasso and a questioning father shaped her artistic trajectory.
Read at The Atlantic
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