As part of her book tour in support of her latest release, M Train (out now on Knopf), Patti Smith took part in a Hearst Master Class this Monday. She was wise and charming - offering answers that immediately reminded you she's a poet, but also when the interviewer, David Granger (editor-in-chief Esquire Magazine), made a remark about how it seems everyone in the world has read Just Kids, she asked "has Putin read it?"
The discussion began around M Train. There are a lot of coffee and detective TV show references throughout, two things Smith is a big fan of. Interestingly enough, she doesn't love the shows for their intensity or for the crime solving, but for the look at the "mind of the detectives." She recalled how she would spend her time on tour in hotel rooms in different countries. After shows her adrenaline would be rushing, and so she'd go back to her room and watch crime shows dubbed in Polish or some other language. When she got back home she decided to watch all of the shows in English, which seems to have sparked a life long admiration for fictional detectives.
Shows like The Killing and Law & Order serve as backdrops of the book, but another thing you'll notice are names like Andy Warhol and Janis Joplin pop up in various stories. She said her kids accuse her of "name droppin'," but to her they were just regular people living similar lives. All creatives in New York in the 60's and 70's, they'd stay at The Chelsea Hotel and seemed to avoid "the cult of celebrity" which was reserved for "movie stars" and "socialites." At that time she was living with Robert Maplethorpe, famed artist and subject of Just Kids. She said she felt such a "responsibility" with that book, but "wanted to be free" when it came to writing M Train.
When talking about her favorite works, she said she loved the Declaration of Independence as a child. When she went to see the real thing, she bought a copy of it for 25 cents, but was so young she thought she actually had a real Declaration of Independence. Written works like that were her main inspirations for awhile, until she saw "Picasso [paintings] in person" which changed everything. She was also listening to rock and roll at the same time, which obviously had a large impact on her.
When reminiscing about her rock and roll days, she said one in particular stood out - a concert in Florence, Italy she played in 1979. The ban on rock had been lifted recently, so it drew a large crowd of about 80,000 people. At the time she knew that the show would be her last before taking a break from "public life," though the public itself did not yet know this fact. She said "it was always my belief that rock and roll belonged to the people," and so at the end of the show she gave her instruments, microphones, and the stage to the people of the audience.
It was a story that only Patti Smith could tell. One that embraces rock and roll as well as her beliefs of freedom, mentioned several times during the talk.
These days, she spends her time doing rather normal activities. Though she may have to go give Joan Baez a medal in Berlin or jet off for some similar adventure, she generally gets coffee, writes for a couple of hours, and is just "killing time until there's something good on TV." Though most of our lives will not mirror what's found in M Train, we can certainly all relate to that.