The last time Patti Smith wrote a memento mori it was for Kurt Cobain and was her last full fledged masterpiece, "About A Boy". That was a long time ago and in the interim I have become increasingly disillusioned with the Queen Mother of Punk Poetry.
It is not true I was never a big fan. I thought Horses was such a great album it sustained me through decades of work which were, simply self-indulgent, atonal, disappointing. Both Easter and Radio Ethiopia had their moments but neither had enough of them and decades later, it still took Bruce Spingsteen to get get her a Top 10 hit never to be replicated.
Sure, music isn't only a popularity contest but it is surely partially a popularity contest.
A contest Amy Winehouse was pretty good at and here comes word that Patti has written a tribute to Amy for her upcoming album. Patti told Uncut: "We wrote a very nice little song for Amy Winehouse and I think a beautiful song for Maria Schneider, the actress who was a friend of mine in the '70s. They just happened, like gifts.The little song for Amy just blossomed in the studio. We were at Electric Lady doing a whole other song and I wrote Amy a little poem when she died and my bass player, Tony Shanahan, wrote a piece of music and the two matched perfectly."