Patti Smith "Just Kids"

If you haven't yet read Patti Smith's wonderful memoir of her early days in New York with artist/partner/muse Robert Mapplethorpe.... do yourself a favor and READ IT RIGHT NOW!

Mapplethorpe, who photographed Patti's album iconic covers, lived with her in Brooklyn and Manhattan in the late 60s and 70s, prodding each other into exploring and creating art, poetry, photography, and song...

The book offers fascinating insights into New York in the 60s and 70s, especially the art bohemian scene, most memorably The Chelsea Hotel, with cameos (wouldn't this make a fucking great movie!??!??!!?) by folk anthologist Harry Smith, poet Allen Ginsberg, author William Burroughs, Janis Joplin, the ghost of Dylan Thomas, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan....

We also see the naive tender young love between Robert & Patti, for in addition to inspiring each other's art, they were also lovers... before, ultimately, Robert landed up with his art patron/lover Sam Wagstaff and Patti in Michigan with Fred "Sonic" Smith, guitarist for the 60s Detroit hard rock band MC5 ("Kick Out the Jams, Motherfuckers!")...

After many years apart, Patti and Robert reunite to photograph one more album cover. Mapplethorpe also took Polaroids of Patti, Fred, and their two children - son Jackson (now a musician married to White Stripes drummer Meg White) and daughter Jesse (then an infant).

We didn't know the true story of Patti and Robert previously. We knew he shot those wonderful album covers. We knew his X-rated photographs of gay S&M, and photographs of flowers - stamen, stigma, pistil - in extreme close-up which often verged on the erotic as well; somehow made to resemble human genitalia - (well, i guess that's not too much of a stretch, really....).... and that an early Culture War battle was fought over the issue of NEA funding for controversial art like Robert's... and that pressure from right-wing nut jobs led to a 1989 cancellation of Robert's exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. and a 1990 (the year after Robert died) trial for "pandering obscenity" over an exhibit of Robert's art in Cincinnati...

"Will you pretend you're my boyfriend?"
                                                                     "Sure!"......

                         "A bad girl trying to be a good and a good boy trying to be bad..."

We knew that Robert & Patti had been, uh, roommates, at the Chelsea Hotel and elsewhere, but were never really sure if they were boyfriend/girlfriend brother/sister, or what... Yeah yeah yeah, what's the difference if they had sex or not? They were close as close could be. They were soulmates. They breathed life into each other's art.... but we do really want to know... Damned prurient pilgrims, prudes, Puritans..... ok, according to this book, they were lovers, which we were wondering about, since Mapplethorpe was later so identified with the gay world, but, yeah... they did it... (and looking at their pictures in the late 60s and early 70s, who wouldn't?.....)

Not that Patti dwells on this. Not at all. She writes about intimacy in the most sophisticated dignified way.

You can see much more of Robert's work by clicking here...

It's a little sad to see them struggle as a couple, as Mapplethorpe becomes more and more aware (and indulgent) of his gay side. Yet they remained the dearest of friends.

And, when Robert becomes ill and eventually succumbs to the scourge of AIDS, which ravaged New York (especially in Mapplethorpe's demimonde) in the 1980s and 90s... well.... you WILL cry.....

i did.....