From Simon Schama’s new Financial Times profile of Patti Smith, a quick look at her as a political animal, and one who is greatly disappointed with the “good Republican” Barack Obama:
“In 1980 she married Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith of MC5, took a more political turn and wrote with him, ‘People Have the Power.’ Politics didn’t come naturally to her, she says, but she had worked for Robert Kennedy’s senatorial campaign. When he was assassinated, she withdrew from the political world and it took the more activist Fred to quicken those combative political instincts. ‘In my usual way I consulted Blake and the Bible. ‘The meek shall inherit the earth.’ I certainly got that.’ Becoming interested in St Francis and making an informal pilgrimage to Assisi, she thought it something of a miracle when a pope came along who adopted the name and, apparently, the social evangelism that went with it. ‘They said there would never be a Jesuit pope nor a Franciscan one. Now they have both.’
Every so often the old fury of ‘Radio Baghdad‘ comes back. She remembers with quiet contempt a virtual conspiracy of media silence when a protest rally against the Iraq war, a hundred thousand strong, received barely any coverage. Though she rejoiced at the election of an African-American to the White House, like millions of others on the left she has not forgiven him for keeping Guantánamo open and prosecuting the war in Afghanistan. ‘To me he’s just like a good Republican.’ The ‘celebrity-driven, materialist’ culture saddens her, especially when she sees ‘three-year-olds being comforted by cellphones and video games instead of being told stories.’ The ongoing destruction of the environment fills her with yet more bleak sorrow. With a little sigh she returns to Blake. ‘More than ever as I get older I can feel what it takes to be him – a casualty of the industrial revolution while he sits at home hand-colouring prints of shepherds.’
But then, she says, resolutely, pushing back the gloom, ‘I am still a very optimistic person. I continue to do work with joy.’ The Beethoven strain comes through. The first opera she saw was Fidelio, a work so perfectly fitted to her temperament that she wanted to make a film of it. ‘I know the opening shots. I am Leonore/Fidelio, with waist-length hair. I pick up the scissors and cut it.'”•
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Smith, in 1979, singing Debby Boone’s hit, “You Light Up My Life,” on children’s show Kids Are People Too. She’s accompanied on piano by the song’s composer, Joseph Brooks, who would commit suicide in 2011 after being charged with serial sex crimes. A little more than two years later, Brooks’ son Nicholas was convicted of murdering his girlfriend.
