Patti Smith complete (1998)
Patti Smith complete is a 1998 rock music book written by Patti Smith.
This volume gathers Patti Smith's lyrics across her recording life, from the poems that became Horses to the songs of her later returns. Set beside the words are her own reflections and notes, handwritten pages, and photographs that carry the reader from the downtown clubs of the 1970s onward. Smith treats a lyric as she treats a poem, so the book reads as much a working notebook as a songbook. Her voice stays constant across the years: fierce, searching, alive to Blake and Rimbaud and the streets of New York. A record of one artist's language, kept in her own hand.
Quick answers
What is Patti Smith complete about?
This volume gathers Patti Smith's lyrics across her recording life, from the poems that became Horses to the songs of her later returns. Set beside the words are her own reflections and notes, handwritten pages, and photographs that carry the reader from the downtown clubs of the 1970s onward. Smith treats a lyric as she treats a poem, so the book reads as much a working notebook as a songbook. Her voice stays constant across the years: fierce, searching, alive to Blake and Rimbaud and the streets of New York. A record of one artist's language, kept in her own hand.
When was Patti Smith complete published?
Patti Smith complete was published in 1998.
Who made Patti Smith complete?
Patti Smith complete was written by Patti Smith.
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A few thoughts on Patti Smith complete
Pair this with Horses itself, the album where most of these lines first burned. Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids fills in the downtown world behind the words, her years with Robert Mapplethorpe. For the same fusion of poetry and raw sound, Leonard Cohen's Songs of Leonard Cohen shows another writer who never stopped being a poet at the microphone.
Rock stars who write like poets first
Patti Smith complete reads her lyrics as poems, tracing debts to Blake and Rimbaud from Horses onward. Songs of Leonard Cohen and her own Horses record share that same literate, incantatory pull. The Doors follows a frontman who treated a stage as a place to recite, and Here Lies One Whose Name Was Written in Water borrows its title straight from Keats.
The rest of Patti Smith's own bookshelf
This volume gathers her lyrics as a working notebook, and the rest of her books read the same way. Early Work collects the 1970s chapbooks that shaped her voice, Woolgathering and Strange Messenger circle memory and quiet loss, and Devotion, M Train and Year of the Monkey carry that same handwritten, wandering candor into her later decades.