At age 78, Patti Smith has much to celebrate, and not only because of her prolific career, but also because novelties are still present in her life. In honor of her new memoir, Bread of Angels and the 50th anniversary of Horses, which made the iconic singer and poet famous, Smith accompanied CBS Mornings journalist Anthony Mason on a visit to a stationary store to talk about her creative process.
“I have to say, I never get tired of stationary stores,” says Smith, whose previous literary work includes Just Kids (2011) and M Train (2015). “I love everything: the scissors, the pens, the paper clips…it’s all for me, like glorified school supplies,” she says while surveying the stock of paper goods. “Every notebook is a possibility. You open it up, and it’s a new adventure.”
Mason then asks Smith, who refers to herself as an “accidental rockstar,” during their wider interview segment, if she always has to write her work by hand before digitizing it. “I write 80% by hand,” Smith replies. “I never sit at the computer to write something. I’ve always written in notebooks. I like the sense of the mind and the pen, you know, with no technology. You have your paper and your pen. And I love the feel of writing. I loved it so much, I learned to write with a quill and a nib and ink bottle in school.”
Smith then transports viewers back to her childhood in across Chicago and South Jersey. “I used to spend a lot of time trying to copy the Declaration of Independence and that’s why my handwriting is sort of nice,” she explains of her penmanship, “because I spent hours just trying to replicate the way they wrote. Thomas Jefferson’s handwriting is beautiful, really,” she adds.
The foreword to her memoir, which contains reveals such as the true paternity of Patti Smith’s father, is a veritable ode to handwriting. “The pen scribbles across the page ‘rebel hump rebel hump rebel hump rebel hump rebel hump’ What do those words mean, asks the pen. I don’t know, replies the hand,” Smith writes. “God whispers through a wrinkle in the wallpaper, a drop of water bursting like an equation.”
The Venice Film Festival has begun—get ready for 11 days of some of the best red carpet fashion of the year. WireImage
While last year’s Venice Film Festival was a quieter, more subdued occasion than usual due to the SAG-AFTRA and WAG strikes, the 2024 iteration is expected to bring the usual array of A-list filmmakers and celebrities to the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido for a week and a half of premieres, screenings and parties.
Isabelle Huppert is the 2024 jury president, and this year’s cinematic line-up is packed with some of the most anticipated movies of the year. Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, is set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival, as is Luca Guadagnino’s Queer (with Daniel Craig and Jason Schwartzman), Pablo Larrain’s Maria (starring Angelina Jolie) and Halina Reijn’s Babygirl (Nicole Kidman), among many others. Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, screened out of competition, will open the festival.
Along with plenty of must-see films, the stars also bring their sartorial best for the glamorous film festival in Venice, Italy, strutting down the red carpet in fashionable designs—this is, after all, the very event that brought us couture moments like Florence Pugh’s dazzling black glitter Valentino ensemble at the Don’t Worry Darling premiere, along with Zendaya’s custom leather Balmain dress in 2021 and Dakota Johnson in bejeweled Gucci.
The 81st annual Venice International Film Festival kicks off on August 28 and runs through September 7, which means a whole lot of high-fashion moments are headed for Lido. Below, see the best red carpet fashion from the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
When I was 18, I liked to drive into the city by myself and explore whatever was going on. One day, on a whim, I went to the Getty museum and checked out their special exhibit. It was a tour of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs, which stunned and inspired me so much that I was compelled to buy a book on the way out (he’s still my favorite photographer).
That book was Just Kids by Patti Smith, and it quickly became one of the most impactful pieces of media I’d ever engaged with. My whole life, I was told that artistry was a frivolous thing that held no merit in our brassy capitalist world, and that there were only two ways to truly pursue art: To dedicate yourself to the soul-crushing industries that exploit you and your art, or to just keep it as a hobby. Neither of those sounded appealing to me, and I was called naïve for it. Yet here was Patti Smith, moving to NYC at the young age of 19 with scarcely anything but the clothes on her back, determined to forge her own path.
It was inspiring, and it filled me with hope—enough hope to even make me believe in magic a little. I brought that book with me everywhere. I loaned it to friends and then demanded it back only a week later. It’s the most beat-up little book on my bookshelf, and I will treasure it for the rest of my life.
But then, to quote Diane Ngyuen: Life’s a bitch and you keep on living. The years between then and now were full of trials I didn’t anticipate, and the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Madeline of yore had to get tougher. There wasn’t a lot of room for magic in between all the immediate bullshit I had to deal with. And while I never stopped holding Patti close to my heart, I gradually became more jaded, unable to see the world with the same color and awe as I had before.
Then, miraculously, as my friend and I were recently trying to make plans for a night out, I saw that Patti was going to be at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills. Our mutual love of Patti was one of the things we bonded over when we first met. So there was no question: We were going, work nights be damned. And after a mix-up with the ticket sales, we were somehow able to score seats in the middle of the orchestra section, with a clear, direct view to the stage.
My friend had a perfect word for the night: Serendipitous. It was an utterly serendipitous night. I got to feel magic again, if only for a brief moment.
A Book of Days
(Norman Seeff)
Watching an idol stroll out onstage is something I thought I’d gotten used to by now, after attending so many readings and concerts and festivals, but it’s different when the idol in question is as storied as Patti Smith. And since the event was hosted by the Los Angeles Public Library, all the library-goers in the crowd seemed to feel equally as awkward as they tried to figure out how to respond to this powerful person casing out the scene in her quintessential manner.
Yeah, at 75, Patti Smith is still just that cool. The sort of cool that comes from a person who knows what they’re about and has dedicated their life to it. Accompanying her was her current band’s bassist, Tony Shanahan, who’d step on and off stage and sometimes sit at the piano. In between talking and reading, Patti would sing us songs, culminating in a night truly dedicated to the art of storytelling—a thing she’s always been good at, even at the very start of her career when she was reading poetry with music in New York.
Of course, at its core, this event was part of a tour to promote her new book, A Book of Days—aptly titled, considering it’s not a novel (like her prior works), and instead a book of photography detailing notable sights from every day of the year. For instance, my dog shares a birthday with Keanu Reeves, who is a friend of Patti’s, so when I turn to the page for September 2, the corresponding image is a birthday pic of the two of them. Other images include gravestones in cemeteries she’s visited, heroic people she finds notable, and simple pleasures in life that she wants to recognize (such as a “thinking chair” that she never uses, and is only called such because it looks like it’s pondering something, sitting alone in a corner). As such, she spoke to us as she flipped through images in a slideshow—photographs taken by Smith, for the most part, with few exceptions—and told us stories about each one.
There’s something truly childlike in the way that Patti describes things—not in the sense that she’s somehow juvenile, but the awe and holiness with which she imbues her findings. Initially, I wondered if it was a front to keep up with the times, but by the end of the night I realized Patti was much like the rest of us: Just trying to find some beauty in the world, both immediate and from afar, while the world continues to bite back. She told a fascinating story about the person who helped cure leprosy, Alice Ball, a Black woman whose story was stolen from her and went unrecognized for far too long. And while some people tell such stories with an air of performative self-indulgence, you could tell that Patti really cared about this story, treating Alice with the reverence she was due and imploring us to read more about her.
In between stories and songs, Patti would also answer some questions from flashcards provided by a local school that was in attendance. I was tickled by one question and answer in particular: Asked about her favorite concert(s) ever, Patti opened with the opera of “Tristan und Isolde,” speaking of it with an almost dreamlike quality. She immediately followed up with the time she saw My Bloody Valentine in the 90s—My Bloody Valentine, the shoegaze band with sounds so loud, their frontman became partially deaf when he fell asleep while editing a track. I was a little drunk (not intentionally; I had one drink and it was nefariously strong), so I couldn’t help but let out a holler at that admission.
In a way, that just perfectly encapsulates what’s so wonderful about Patti Smith. She isn’t confined by artistic or aesthetic expectations: Her career as an artist has been built on the exploration of the world around her. To Patti, there is no such thing as being “too cool” to enjoy something that was created in earnest. She is constantly searching for new things, and building on the things she already loves. Sure, she’ll talk about piss, sex, and liquor, but then she’ll wind down the day with a few volumes of Death Note. It’s something that’s always resonated with me, and a large reason why I took after her so heartily when I was a girl. I didn’t know you could be like this. I thought that, as a creator, you had to pick a lane and stay in it, or else you’d be alone.
Patti ended the evening by performing one of her most beloved songs with little to no fanfare, stripped down to just her, Tony, and their guitars. She wrote this song, she said, for her boyfriend, who ended up becoming her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith, but whom she still thought of as her boyfriend for all the fun and joy they had (her stories about him that night made me cry). The song was “Because The Night.” And look, I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest fan of her music, but even I stood up to dance with my friend. Patti’s voice is still so strong and powerful, how could you not dance?
When we left and started the brisk walk back to our cars, I couldn’t believe it; that old feeling of magic and awe had returned to me. It didn’t last, of course—nothing good ever does. But for the most beautiful, brief moment, I felt it. It made me want to look at the dirty, lonesome Beverly Hills streets with the same level of reverence I once held, when I was young enough that everything still felt new, somehow. It made me realize how special an artist Patti Smith is, to be able to evoke that in others. She reminded me of one of art’s essential purposes: To evoke.
Seeing her perform is truly an experience like no other. There really is no one quite like Patti Smith.
These are the stories making headlines in fashion on Monday.
Patti Smith covers the Harper’s Bazaar Art Issue The musician, artist and writer speaks to Chloe Cooper Jones for the cover story of Harper’s Bazaar‘s Art Issue. The two discuss her latest book, ‘A Book of Days,’ which features one photograph and caption for each day of the year. Nowadays, Smith says she’s in a state of “nothingness.” However, her longtime literary agent and close friend, Betsy Lerner, says the opposite. “She’s always in some physical state of movement. I don’t just mean literally. I just also think, in her mind, she’s just really going fast. That’s a hot brain we’re talking about.” {Harper’s Bazaar}
Inside the making of a holiday window For The New York Times, Sarah Bahr explores the longtime tradition of New York City’s most famed department stores decorating their windows for the holidays. This year, Saks Fifth Avenue‘s unveiling of its long-awaited windows was paired with a performance by Elton John. “I was always so excited to see the new displays each year,” he said. “It was a highlight of Christmastime.” The process took more than 250 people and 40,000 hours to complete. Bahr also speaks to the designers behind the windows of Bergdorf Goodman, Bloomingdale’s and more. {The New York Times}
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Brain care is the latest wellness trend Since mental health became more of a focus during post-lockdown periods in 2020, the concept of taking care of your mind has now been rebranded in the wellness industry as “brain care.” Dr. Bowen Jiang, a neurosurgeon and wellness advisor for the brand No. 8, says brain care is more in-depth than self-care. He describes self-care as “a conscious act someone takes to enhance their well-being, that nourishes you and makes you feel connected and cared for,” while brain care specifically targets brain health and impacts the ability to pay attention, solve problems and resist stress. Activities such as meditation, journaling and setting a time limit for social media usage are examples of positive practices. {Glossy}
Homepage Photo: Pieter Hugo for Harper’s Bazaar/Courtesy of Hearst
NEW YORK (AP) — Bryan Adams, R.E.M., Blondie, Snoop Dogg, Gloria Estefan, Heart and The Doobie Brothers are among the nominees for the 2023 Songwriters Hall of Fame, part of a dazzling list of talented acts who left their mark on country, pop, rap, Broadway, post-punk, Latin and New Jack Swing.
The ballot includes the musical theater duo of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, who wrote “Ragtime” and “Anastasia,” as well as soul-jazz vocalist Sade, whose 1980s soft rock hits include “Smooth Operator” and “The Sweetest Taboo.”
Two veteran rock stars are also nominees: Patti Smith — whose songs include “Because the Night” and “Dancing Barefoot” — and Steve Winwood, whose hits include “Higher Love” and “Roll With It.” Vince Gill is once again a nominee, having first made the ballot in 2018.
Eligible voting members have until Dec. 28 to turn in ballots with their choices of three nominees from the songwriter category and three from the performing-songwriter category. The Associated Press got an early copy of the list.
Jeff Lynne of ELO, who penned “Mr. Blue Sky” and “Evil Woman,” faces off against the “Losing My Religion” R.E.M. quartet led by Michael Stipe, as well as sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, who showed women could rock hard with songs like “Barracuda” and “Crazy On You.”
Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and Clem Burke are eligible for the hall as Blondie, who gave us the New Wave hits “Call Me” and “Rapture,” and Snoop Dogg would join such rappers as Missy Elliott and Jay-Z should he make the cut. Estefan is credited for popularizing Latin rhythms with such crossover smashes as “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You” and “Let’s Get Loud.”
Two classic rock icons compete as Adams — with radio staples like “Summer of ’69” and “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” — contends with The Doobie Brothers and their always-in-rotation “Listen to the Music” and “Long Train Running.”
Nominees who work behind the scenes include Glen Ballard, who helped write Alanis Morissette’s monster 1995 album “Jagged Little Pill” and was involved in the recording and writing of Michael Jackson’s albums “Thriller,” “Bad” and “Dangerous.”
Veteran songwriter Tom Snow, who worked with Olivia Newton-John, Barbra Streisand, Cher, The Pointer Sisters and co-wrote “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” from the movie “Footloose,” is also eligible. “Footloose” connects another nominee, Dean Pitchford, who collaborated on the score, which went to No. 1 on the Billboard album charts, knocking off “Thriller” in 1984.
The nominee list includes Teddy Riley, the singer, songwriter, and producer credited with creating New Jack Swing and its top anthems like Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative” and Keith Sweat’s “I Want Her,” and Liz Rose, who co-wrote many songs with Taylor Swift, including “You Belong with Me,” “Teardrops on My Guitar” and “White Horse.”
There’s also country songwriter Dean Dillon, who wrote songs with Toby Keith, George Strait and Lee Ann Womack; pop songwriter Franne Golde, behind such hits as Jody Watley’s “Don’t You Want Me” and “Nightshift” by the Commodores; and the duo of Bobby Hart and Tommy Boyce, who penned many of The Monkees’ hits.
The Songwriters Hall of Fame was established in 1969 to honor those creating the popular music. A songwriter with a notable catalog of songs qualifies for induction 20 years after the first commercial release of a song.
Some already in the hall include Carole King, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Brian Wilson, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Lionel Richie, Bill Withers, Neil Diamond and Phil Collins.
