Patti Smith is back on stage 50 years after her album “Horses”, which made history in music, and is now presenting her new memoir, “Bread of Angels”. The book is a love letter written to the people who touched her life — her family, friends, and those she has lost.
“The idea for the book came to me in a dream,” says Smith. This time, the focus is on the New York counterculture scene of the 1970s and Smith’s path intersecting with legends like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and William Burroughs.
Smith describes that period, when she didn’t succumb to the pressure of male producers, as follows: “I had armor, and it wasn’t easily pierced.” Her first album, Horses, was a manifesto for the marginalized and silenced.
Even today, singing “People Have the Power” to packed halls with thousands of people is a “humbling to the point of bringing tears to her eyes experience.”
She wrote the song with her husband, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, whom she lost at a young age: “He wrote this song for the people of the future, for marches and protests.” Her new book is a thank you not only to Fred, but also to her family, her brother, and everyone who inspired her. However, Smith’s life also contains shocking discoveries. After her mother’s death, a DNA test revealed that her biological father was someone else. “My heart was a little broken, but that’s part of my story,” she says. Her new book is a thank you not only to Fred, but also to her family, her brother, and everyone who inspired her. But Smith’s life also contains shocking discoveries. After her mother’s death, a DNA test revealed that her biological father was someone else. “My heart was a little broken, but that’s part of my story,” she says. Her childhood illnesses, poverty, memories of her first encounters with art, including Picasso and Puccini, and her early admiration for Rimbaud are intertwined in Smith’s writing. “Poetry took me to a map of infinite imagination,” she writes. Today, the “cool queen,” who is 77 years old, continues to be both an inspiration to young artists and a symbol of originality. She responds modestly to the praise of names like Dua Lipa and Taylor Swift: “The girls are strong. They handle the world well.”
