Reading Patti Smith's Just Kids
My photographer friend, Stan, a New York based photographer who I have known since I was about 16, recently told me that he showed Robert Mapplethorpe how to use his Hasselblad. Its a great story, one of those classic New York brushes with fame/six degrees of separation stories. It intersects with my reading of Patti Smith's wonderful new memoir of her time with Mapplethorpe, Just Kids.
We were having dinner with Stan, talking about books and Petra mentioned that she was reading Patti Smith's new book, which I have since started as well. That was when Stan told us of his encounter with Mapplethorpe. In about 1972, when Stan was living in a loft at 24 Bond Street, Mapplethorpe was his upstairs neighbor. He would see him, in passing, quite often. This was before - but not by much - Mapplethorpe became a household name in the world of photography. One day, as Stan's story goes, Mapplethorpe came downstairs and, knowing that Stan was a photographer, knocked on Stan's door and asked him to show him how to use his camera. The rest, as they say is history.
"(Mapplethorpe's) Hassleblad was a medium format camera fitted with a Polaroid back," Smith writes in Just Kids. "Its complexity required the use of a light meter, and the interchangeable lens gave Robert a greater depth of field. It allowed him more choices and flexibility, more control over his use of light. Robert had defined his visual vocabulary. The new camera taught him nothing, just allowed him to get exactly what he was looking for."
I can't remember exactly when I bought Patti Smith's 1975 debut album, Horses, or exactly why, but mapplethorpe's cover image - taken with this camera - surely helped to sell it. Maybe it was John Rockwell's rave Rolling Stone review in February, 1976. Maybe it was in the Village Voice. Maybe a friend told me about it. I can't remember. But what I do know is that by the early '76, it was on heavy rotation on my stereo. I had never seen or heard anything like it and I loved it.
First there is the album cover, which is like no other, the archetypal, androgenous image of Patti Smith as shot by Robert Mapplethorpe.
"There was never any question, "Smith writes in Just Kids, "that Robert would take the portrait for the cover of Horses, my aural sword sheathed with Robert's image. I had no sense of how it would look, just that it would be true. The only thing I promised Robert was that I would wear a clean shirt with no stains on it....I went to the Salvation Army on the Bowery and bought a stack of white shirts. Some were too big for me, but the one I really liked was neatly pressed with a monogram below the breast pocket. It reminded me of a Brassai shot of Jean Genet wearing a white monogrammed shirt with rolled up sleeves."
The music inside is even more sensational, still one of my favorite records, essential on vinyl with every trace of its replaying audible in the pops and scratches of my vintage copy. Somehow, for me, those traces of my reckless overplaying add to my listening experience today. The songs are vivid and raw and poetic and mysterious and the recording of the songs lets Patti's vocals and Lenny Kasye's lead guitar take center stage. No frills.
Legendary critic Lester Bangs wrote a memorable review of the album, which included these lines:
"Horses was one of the greatest records I've ever heard. Like all true art, it drew you into recognizable situations and illuminated, poetically heightened them ...rather than just preaching at you and ranting that its creator was an Artist...Horses changed my life, but I've recognized that there was something almost supernatural about the powers it tapped, that no artist or audience can expect that kind of baptism in the firmamental flames every time."
Just Kids is a snapshot of the period leading up to this epic recording. It describes New York's art world, Warhol's Factory, and life at the Chelsea Hotel in words that somehow describe Smith and Mapplethorpe's struggles and ambitions - and magic.
Comments