Will Hermes Applauds New Patti Smith Audiobook

At the New York Times, read Will Hermes's take on Patti Smith's new audiobook, Patti Smith: Words and Music. Hermes explains, "whatever 'Patti Smith at the Minetta Lane: Words and Music' exactly is — audiobook, live concert recording, podcast, radio theater or combination thereof — the hybrid form feels completely natural to her talents." Taking it from there: 

The recording, which has a bootleg quality to it, assembles pieces from the three-night run into a single seamless show, though showing seams is a big part of her approach. She begins as if she’s hosting a salon, promising a night of “hyper-living theater,” with no nudity but for “the naked mind — and even more dangerous, the collective naked mind.” She reverently reads a Rilke poem, “Autumn Day,” taking minor musical liberties, her daughter, Jesse Paris Smith, accompanying her on piano in a style evoking Erik Satie. That’s followed by an offhand reflection on making a leaf-shaped ashtray in grade school that becomes a well-turned shaggy dog tale, complete with punch line. Smith has spoken about studying the work of “my two Johnnys” — Coltrane and Carson — in honing her improvisatory way with words. She sure has great timing.

As “Springsteen on Broadway” draws on a memoir, “Born to Run,” the through-line here draws on “Just Kids,” Smith’s book about coming of age in New York with her soul mate Robert Mapplethorpe, and the more fanciful, impressionistic follow-up, “M Train,” which focuses on her later life. From the former volume she recites a passage about wandering the city in 1967 looking for a job, and stumbling on a memorial service for Coltrane, who’d died only days earlier, where she observed mourners “sobbing as the love cry” of the saxophonist Albert Ayler “spirited the atmosphere.” From “M Train” she describes a dream sequence in which she sees her late husband, Fred (Sonic) Smith: “I awoke and it was still dark. I lay there for a time reliving the dream, feeling other dreams stacked behind it. I slowly began to recall the entire body, telescoping backwards, letting my mind stitch the fleeting pieces together.”

Learn more at New York Times.