Author, singer, performer, painter ... If you ask Patti Smith (Chicago, 73) how many Patti there are, she answers with these words from Walt Whitman:
"I contain multitudes"
.
Witness of a New York with cheap rents and
"drugs that have had the skin of a lot of people",
she entered the
Beat Generation
and Warhol's entourage when the New Jersey bicycle factory where she worked closed and at age 19, she moved to Lower Manhattan.
It was in 1971 that photographer Robert Mapplethorpe urged her to sing his poems.
This one - before becoming a gay icon - was one of his great loves.
Another was playwright Sam Shepard.
And for her husband, guitarist Fred Sonic Smith, she gave up this world to retire to Detroit to raise her children.
But Sonic is dead, and "
to feed the children,
" Smith is back on stage.
She was 44 years old.
To read also: Patti Smith, punk poet
At 55, she began to publish her memoirs.
Just Kids (Lumen)
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