Patti Smith’s musical talent and on stage presence is as gripping as the words in her memoir ‘Just Kids’ – (I was lucky enough to see her perform this year at Doune the Rabbit Hole Festival (a light drizzle in the air, and a beer in hand, swaying along with friends). Smith writes with an honest sentimentality that paints vivid memories, each chapter a time capsule of her life in sixties New York City, as a young adolescent trying to find her feet in the big city.  I was very late to the hype of this book; which it deserves, I know a lot of my friends read it eagerly in their early teens.

 

Notably, above all the ways I have seen this book described I think it is a sort of ode to Smith’s life-long friend, at one point or another; her muse, her lover, and companion until the end of his life – Robert Maplethorpe.  It’s always bemusing to read about a coming-of-age-story, as it always brings about feelings of nostalgia about your own, and this was all the more touching due to its autobiographical and multimedia style, with photographs and artworks interspersed every few pages.  It felt like reading someone’s very well edited journal. It also reads like a very edgy, love story, where both identities grow up together, evolve, create, and discover parts of themselves which they wouldn’t  without the other. In between the multiple love affairs with other big names roaming about NYC at the time, during a very eventful time in history, their loyalty and friendship stands the test of time.

 

It was the summer that Coltrane died the summer of “Crystal Ship.”  Flower children raised their empty arms and China exploded the H-bomb. Jimi Hendrix set his guitar in flames in Monterey.  AM radio played “Ode to Billie Joe.”  There were riots in Newark, Milwaukee, and Detroit.  It was the summer of Elvira Madigan, the summer of love.  And in this shifting, inhospitable atmosphere, a chance encounter changed the course of my life.

It was the summer I met Robert Mapplethorpe. 31

 

Secondly this memoir is about art, the pursuit of creating, and letting it be seen by the rest of the world as well as simply appreciating it in all its forms.

 

In my low periods, I wondered what was the point of creating art.  For whom?  Are we animating God?  Are we talking to ourselves? And what was the ultimate goal?  To have one’s work caged in art’s great zoos – the Modern, the Met, the Louvre?  65

 

Patti Smith is an icon, a multifaceted artist – a writer; as exhibited by this book, a poet, a musician and a painter, and this memoir tells about her humble beginnings, a young child, stomping round the streets of New York without a penny to her name, hoping to strike a break, realising the only thing that could save her, was herself and her ability to create.

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Rating: 8/10

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