Reading the review of Steven Sebring’s eleven-years-in-the-making “Patti Smith: Dream of Life,” the new film about Patti Smith, I was struck by this quote: If you want to know about punk, what it was like to play CBGB when itmattered (or on its final night, as Ms. Smith did in 2006), lookelsewhere. The same goes if you want to know what it was like to be ontop of the world and on top of the charts, to watch Robert Mapplethorpeget his nipple pierced, sit at the feet of William S. Burroughs, andshack up with Sam Shepard at the Chelsea Hotel.
When I was the 18-year-old art director of ROCK magazine (early ’69), I worked with Patti, an associate editor and staff writer, and then a totally unknown rock “fan,” who let it slip only on one occassion that she knew Sam Shepard and never spoke at all about Mapplethorpe. She did, however, drop Todd
Rundgren’s name often, and repeatedly talked about how much she wanted to meet Dylan.
During her brief stint at ROCK, Patti wrote a few stories (see below) about her love of 45 rpm records and her rock ‘n’ roll brothers. Her journalism was more poetry than reportage, but each of her articles contained a real passion for her rock obsession. Nonetheless, after only a few issues (two months), she was fired by the editor who wanted less of an ethereal dreamer and more of a hardnosed reporter. I didn’t see or hear about Patti again until three or four years later when she was the rock star she always dreamed of becoming. Honestly, I would never have guessed.