Rock and Roll Hall of Fame star to release memoir: “Tricia, the people have the power. Write it down”

If there’s just one member of rock aristocracy with a story to tell it’s Patti Smith. Poet, singer, visual artist, Chelsea Hotel resident, Smith was right at the epicenter of Manhattan’s underground scene in the last 60s and early 70s.

An integral part of New York’s punk and art movements, hangouts ranged from Andy Warhol’s Factory on Union Square West to Max’s Kansas City and CBGB, and her associates included the likes of Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. Then there were those she was the most intimate with - Robert Mapplethorpe and Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith.

She looked back on her relationship with Mapplethorpe in a previous memoir, Just Kids - a love letter to the photographer, who passed away from complications from AIDS in 1989.

Patti Smith delves into her teenage years with the first glimmers of art and romance

Later this year, Patti will be releasing another memoir, Bread of Angels, with the focus on her next big relationship, with MC5 guitarist Fred Smith, who she married in 1980.

The new book also documents the 16 years Smith spent living in St. Clair Shores, Michigan with its ancient willows and fulsome pear trees from 1980 to 1996. It was there that they recorded Patti’s 1988 album, Dream of Life - which opens with People Have The Power - a protest anthem, inspired by her husband.

“People have the power to redeem the work of fools”

“It was around 1986. I was in the kitchen and I was peeling potatoes,“ Patti recalls. ”Fred came in and said, ‘Tricia, people have the power, write it.’ And I was standing there with a potato peeler thinking I’d like to have the power to make him peel these potatoes, that’s what I’d like... but I kept him. So for the next few nights, I really contemplated - because Fred was very political, and we talked about it, what we wanted to do with this line, which was Fred’s. And what we wanted to do was remind the listener of their individual power but also of the collective power of the people, how we can do anything. We wrote it consciously together to inspire people, to inspire people to come together.

“It was really Fred’s song - even though I wrote the words, he wrote the music, the concept was his, and he wanted it to be a song that people sang all over the world to inspire them for different causes. And he didn’t live to see that happen, but I have. I’ve seen people. I’ve walked in marches all over the world where people spontaneously started singing it, you know, and it’s so moving for me to see his dream realized."

The singer says Bread of Angels has been a true labor of love: “It took a decade to write this book, grappling with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime. I’m hoping that people will find something they need.”

Bread of Angels is a story of love and loss and of having to rebuild a life that has fallen apart. It will be published by Random House on November 4 - a hugely significant date for Patti - Mapplethorpe’s birthday and also the date on which Fred Smith passed away from a heart attack in 1994.

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