Patti
Smith : An Unauthorized Biography
by Victor Bockris, Roberta Bayley, Patti Smith
Patti Smith, pioneering punk diva, has always worshipped at the altar
of the word, and she opens this book with a quote from her mentor and friend,
the late Allen Ginsberg: "The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice
is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy." If that is true, then
this volume serves as Smith's Book of Common Prayer, containing all the
lyrics from her past seven albums, and spanning two and a half decades.
She picks out both salient and arcane compositions and annotates them with
an unstinting eye for detail and history, allowing us to stand a moment
in her flat-heeled karate shoes and see what inspired her to pen these
songs. Who among us suspected that 1971's "Redondo Beach," with its grizzly
images of loss and suicide, was written about an argument Smith had with
her sister? In addition to the thumbnail sketches and the unexpurgated
journal entries, Smith has collected more than 150 photographs (some never
before published) by the likes of Annie Liebovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe,
Michael Stipe, and Linda McCartney. There is one particularly disturbing
image of the singer during her painful recovery from a broken back, which
she suffered as a result of a stage fall in 1977, proving that there is
little that the singer has held back in her effort to communicate who she
is to her fans.
Why did she go to all the trouble? According to Smith, her fans had
been clamoring for her to publish her lyrics for years, but until recently
she didn't feel she had a substantial enough body of work. Besides, she
claims that she was tired of everyone else deconstructing her songs and
publishing what they thought she meant. "And they were always inaccurate,"
she writes. So, now, Patti Smith is finally able to set the record straight.
--Jaan Uhelszki - Amazon.com
Paperback: 264 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.87 x
9.96 x 8.12
Publisher: Anchor Books; Illustrated edition (October
19, 1999)
ISBN: 0385490801
Patti
Smith Complete: Lyrics, Notes and Reflections
by Patti Smith
(Paperback)
Patti
Smith: Strange Messenger
by John W. Smith (Editor), David Greenberg
(Paperback - April 2003)
Early
Work: 1970-1979
by Patti Smith
(Paperback - May 1995)
The
Coral Sea
by Patti Smith
Poetry by Patti, photography by Robert Mapplethorpe.
(Paperback - June 1997)
More
Life Ways
by Patti Smith (Editor), Signe Eklund Schaefer (Editor)
(Paperback - September 1997)
Two Times Intro : On the Road With Patti Smith
by Michael Stipe
When singer Patti Smith toured in 1995, for the first time in almost
20 years, R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe tagged along as tour photographer.
Two Times Intro is the resulting photo diary--as Stipe calls it--and it's
filled with his moody black-and-white prints and Polaroids (taken with
an ancient camera by Smith guitarist Oliver Ray) that capture a specific
mood of Smith's as she moves through the shifting, impersonal spaces--taxis,
concrete backstage areas, empty theaters--of life on tour. Stipe is a long-time
Smith fan, as he recalls in an essay in the book: he "bought her first
album the day it came out. It was mind-blowing--emotional and imperfect,
swirling, B&W." His photographs of Smith and her band mates display
the same emotional intensity and incongruity that her music originally
stirred in him. The layout, executed completely in black and white with
echoes of imperfections like torn Scotch tape, creases, and torn edges
seemingly photocopied onto the page, gives readers a sense of watching
an ancient black-and-white television--scratchy, static-filled, impenetrable,
and mysterious, but also somehow comforting. All of this is evocative of
both Smith's music and her lyrics, and in that it is a strange but fitting
homage to her. Stipe intersperses throughout the images musings about Smith
by the likes of William S. Burroughs, who calls her "a shaman--that is
someone in touch with other levels of reality," Sonic Youth's Thurston
Moore and Kim Gordon, and long-time friend and fellow musician Lenny Kaye.
Ultimately, the book is not a photographic triumph but it should be very
compelling to Smith and Stipe fans alike. Amazon.com
Hardcover: 112 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.50 x
11.00 x 7.75
Publisher: Little Brown & Company; (April 1998)
ASIN: 0316815721
Out of Print - Try Used
Books
Patti Smith : A Biography
by Nick Johnstone
Paperback: 200 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.00 x
9.50 x 6.25
Publisher: Omnibus Press; (November 1997)
ASIN: 071196193X
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