Patti Smith plays dress-up for a pirate-inspired photo shoot by Annie Liebovitz in the London studio where the latest Johnny Depp pirate movie is being filmed for Disney. The shoot took place last September.
In the video, Patti makes the connection between rock and rollers and pirates and manages to look like both.
“Hey hey I’m a Monkee.”
While Dangerous Minds’ co-founder Richard Metzger is in the thrall of Monkeemania, I’d thought I’d share something with you and him that I found quite charming. This is Patti Smith (who I am always in the thrall of) doing an acoustic version of “Daydream Believer” last week in Paris. Lenny Kaye on guitar. Enjoy.
William Burroughs at home in Lawrence, Kansas smoking dope and shooting the shit with his friends Allen Ginsberg and Steve Buscemi as Patti Smith serenades them in the background. Filmed by Wayne Probst in August of 1996.
It seems El Hombre Invisible didn’t learn his lesson regarding lethal weapons. He flashes a knife around with careless abandon. But no one gets hurt.
In part two of the video Burroughs shows off his blackjack while Patti sings “Southern Cross” and Ginsberg eats dinner. Not much happening here, but goddamn it’s William Burroughs in his lair which is more than enough for me.
Part two after the jump…
If you love Patti Smith and like antique French porcelain, then you’re certainly going to dig the Patti Smith plate from Etsy seller Beat Up Creations.
This plate can be used for dining. I recommend washing by hand to preserve gold. Great display item as well. Wonderful alternative to traditional framed art.
The plate measures 6” in diameter and sells for $42.00.
Gilda Radner as “Candy Slice,” her Patti Smith-like character from SNL’s glory days of the 70s. In hindsight, “Candy” seems much more like Amy Winehouse, of course, than Patti Smith, who was never much of a “rock-n-roll animal.”
The clip below is from Gilda Live
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Gilda Radner: Let’s Talk Dirty to the Animals
Patti Smith is enchanting in this casual interview with Bill Kelly.
New Yorker Judy Linn’s photographs of Patti Smith are an indelible part of the collective consciousness of Patti’s fans and admirers. But, the Dylan one is new to me.
A book of around 100 black and white photographs Lynn took between the years of 1969-1977 of Patti, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sam Shepard, Gerard Malanga, among others, is being published next March by Abrams.
More of Linn’s photographs of Patti after the jump…
If you heard about Patti Smith getting an honorary degree at Pratt last week, her sweet/funny speech at Radio City Music Hall to the graduating students is now on YouTube.
Bonus clip of The Patti Smith Group performing Horses and Hey Joe and on the Old Grey Whistle Test program.
Via The Awl
Last weekend in New York, as part of the PEN World Voices Festival, Patti Smith spoke to author Jonathan Lethem (Chronic City, The Fortress of Solitude). You can stream the entire interview here, but Vanishing New York singled out a particularly telling moment.
After Dame Smith touches on everything from sneaker semiotics to her new book on Robert Mapplethorpe, Just Kids, she offers a rather grim assessment of the city she’s best associated with:
New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie… New York City has been taken away from you… So my advice is: Find a new city.”
Kids of the world take note: Patti knows what’s good for you! She’s always been on your side! Witness below the classic clip from TV’s Kids Are People Too. Oddly enough (nearly as odd, I suppose, as seeing a group of kids engaging in some mutual adoration with Patti Smith) the song she chooses to sing is You Light Up My Life.
(via L Magazine)
Reviews for Just Kids, Patti Smith‘s musings on her early days with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe are trickling in, and, happily for this fan, they’re ranging from good to glowing. Bookforum calls it “occasionally corny and often deeply affecting.” Janet Maslin of The New York Times compares it, favorably, to Bob Dylan’s impressionistic take on his own budding youth, Chronicles, Volume I.
And much like Dylan’s own look back, Patti Smith ends her story on a golden note: fame is looming fast, but the deaths of Mapplethorpe and, later, her husband and musical collaborator, Fred “Sonic” Smith, are still very far away. A clip of Smith and Mapplethorpe follows below:
See also: Remembrances of the Punk Prose Poetess
