The Words & Music Of Patti Smith
by Joe Tarr

Beginner’s guide to Queen Of Punk

Fittingly for a woman who’s long professed to be just another rock’n’roll fan who obeyed the call and got up onstage herself, this overview is reverential in the extreme. Tarr opens subjectively, recalling his first encounter with Smith, and though from thereon the book adopts a more traditional chronological format, he keeps a stern but loving devotee’s eye trained on high points and low. Wisely, he doesn’t fall into the trap of treating her lyrics as poetry to be read and deconstructed as literature, keeping the music and the context in view. He even goes as far as accusing Smith of “pretention”, occasionally berating her for her greatest strength: her unabashedly intellectual and poetic lyrics. Sometimes, though, when Tarr accuses her of overabstraction or opacity, you can’t help but feel the fault lies more with him.

Another problem with this generally fine evaluation is an apparent dearth of reference points (despite the lengthy bibliography): the same quotes are used more than once in different chapters. The discography is fairly basic, and the proofing leaves something to be desired (Kirsten Hersh?), but as a set of water-wings for your first plunge into Patti’s sea of possibility, it’s more than buoyant.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

ISBN 9780275994112

Reviewed by Isobel George
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