Since the early 1970s, punk godmother Patti Smith has served as the guardian of an idiosyncratic — and meandering — brand of artistry. After releasing four critically acclaimed albums (including her seminal 1975 debut, Horses), Patti Smith headed to Michigan with her husband, MC5's Fred "Sonic" Smith, for a quiet, 15-year stretch of family time. "I'm not career bent," she says. And this "strategy" seems to have worked out well for her, as she's earned, in the past five years, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and National Book Award for her memoir, Just Kids.It's important that an artist asks himself if the things he's offering the world have merit.
Are they of worth? Are they worth the paper they’re on, the amount of materials that went into making them? Creating art is supposed to come from the highest part of one's self, so naturally you're going to have questions. In "Constantine's Dream" [a ten-minute-plus improvisational meditation found near the end of Banga], there are many questions. It questions the role of artists in our society. The questions are there, and they're not answerable questions. They're more things that we contemplate and ruminate constantly. As an artist, one thinks, "What is the purpose of art? Can we make a difference? Is art just more pollution in an already polluted world?" There are a million questions one asks oneself.I always have some kind of elegy, because we're always losing someone.
With the song for Amy Winehouse ["This Is the Girl"], I didn’t know her — I wrote it out of respect for her artistry and her youth. The song "Maria" — I did know Maria [Schneider, the actress] in the '70s, but "Maria" is not just about Maria. I would say it is the more emotional song on the record; it's the one that looks back on a beautiful time and sort of encapsulates the '70s in a certain way for me. It's a nice little R&B song, but an emotional song. The rest of the record is really driven by life, and driven by exploration, driven by concern for our environment, driven by, you know, a lot of questions that I’m constantly asking myself as an artist about the process of art.Read the rest of the article at SPIN.
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Are they of worth? Are they worth the paper they’re on, the amount of materials that went into making them? Creating art is supposed to come from the highest part of one's self, so naturally you're going to have questions. In "Constantine's Dream" [a ten-minute-plus improvisational meditation found near the end of Banga], there are many questions. It questions the role of artists in our society. The questions are there, and they're not answerable questions. They're more things that we contemplate and ruminate constantly. As an artist, one thinks, "What is the purpose of art? Can we make a difference? Is art just more pollution in an already polluted world?" There are a million questions one asks oneself.I always have some kind of elegy, because we're always losing someone.
With the song for Amy Winehouse ["This Is the Girl"], I didn’t know her — I wrote it out of respect for her artistry and her youth. The song "Maria" — I did know Maria [Schneider, the actress] in the '70s, but "Maria" is not just about Maria. I would say it is the more emotional song on the record; it's the one that looks back on a beautiful time and sort of encapsulates the '70s in a certain way for me. It's a nice little R&B song, but an emotional song. The rest of the record is really driven by life, and driven by exploration, driven by concern for our environment, driven by, you know, a lot of questions that I’m constantly asking myself as an artist about the process of art.Read the rest of the article at SPIN.