Punk rock and feminist as fuck

Book review: Why Patti Smith Matters by Caryn Rose

This is one of those books that when you’ve finished you think to yourself “I’m GLAD I read that.”

And not just because I agree with the title. To the extent that I wrote a blog post with the same title many years ago. 

It’s because, I think, it’s life affirming to hear from someone who really loves the artist they are writing about, and makes you feel the same about them. And at the same time, someone who has the skill to go above and beyond fangirl stuff. 

Yes, Caryn Rose does write as a fan but she also writes as a music journalist. It’s a balancing act and she achieves it. She manages to be very personal and at the same time fairly objective.

So she will take Patti Smith to task for not being part of Team Feminism or for writing a song called Rock’n’Roll N****r. And she will be honest about the records she doesn’t think are up to standard (the later ones, mostly.)

But she will describe the last night of CBGB (in 2006) in a way that makes you want to cry.

So why does Patti Smith matter?

Firstly, because she is a role model, obviously. That’s where Rose the fan comes in.

She quotes Patti as saying she bought an electric guitar “to show that if a puny dumb girl from New Jersey can take this electric guitar and make it into a weapon any kid can do it”.

A few years later, Rose walks into a record shop and buys her own guitar. “I did not know how to play guitar, but I was going to try. Patti made me feel like I had every right to walk into the same store where Pete Townshend or Keith Richards bought their instruments, point to one on the wall, and claim it as my own.”

There’s the look, too, of course. What Lucy O’Brien calls the “Image Question” is a big part of Smith’s appeal to women of a certain generation.  

As Rose describes it: “We wanted to look cool, so we tried to copy her. She wanted to look cool, so she copied Bob Dylan. It is a rock and roll story as old as time.”

The Horses photograph is arguably Patti Smith’s most important legacy (she knows it’s important, too, choosing a similar outfit for important occasions).

The author would probably argue against that (even if, in her heart, she wants to agree). That’s where Rose the music journalist comes in: assessing the artistic legacy and proving there’s a whole lot more to take into account.

There’s a personal note there, too, as she recalls: “Poetry always reminded me of who I was, and who I wasn’t. It was something to hang onto, along with art and rock and roll and books.”

That’s the second reason that Smith matters: because she does all those things – poetry, art, rock and roll, books. She does some better than others if we’re honest, but it is something to admire all the same. 

Rose goes through the albums, the gigs, the books and the art in turn. It’s pretty thorough: if there’s a significant gig she wasn’t at, she’ll listen to bootleg recordings. But for a lot of them, she was there. And she makes you want to be there too.

The third reason Smith matters is again about role models but it goes beyond image. It’s about being true to yourself at whatever life stage you are at.

“Patti Smith taught us how to kick the doors in, and she continues to teach us how to live with integrity…She taught us to do the work, and to just keep doing the work.”

She never, we are told, wanted to make her life a feminist statement: She “consistently pushed her stance that she was ‘beyond gender’…” to avoid the discussion.

But Smith’s “retirement” into Detroit domesticity was pretty radical. It was the opposite of the over-rated “rock and roll lifestyle”. It was what women do. And it was a choice.

It meant, of course, criticism from the rock and roll gatekeepers: “watching the mostly male music press turn on a woman who said ‘no’ with finality and proceed to diminish and dismiss her work of having children and raising a family.”

Later there were different choices: a return to music, exploration of other art forms. And another choice that Rose sees as radical was to publish her lyrics in book form: “ a deliberate act of ownership”

It was, she says: “a woman demanding to be seen and heard, seizing her own destiny, guiding her own legacy. It is both punk rock and feminist as fuck.”