Patti Smith Collected Lyrics, 1970-2015

An American original, Patti Smith is a multi-disciplined artist and performer. Her work is rooted in poetry, which infused her 1975 landmark album, Horses. A declaration of existence, Horses was described as 'three chords merged with the power of the word'; it was graced with the now iconic portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe, the subject of her award-winning memoir Just Kids. Initially published in 1998, Patti Smith's Complete Lyrics was a testimony to her uncompromising poetic power. Now, on the fortieth anniversary of the release of Smith's groundbreaking album, Collected Lyrics has been revised and expanded with more than thirty-five additional songs, including her first, 'Work Song', written for Janis Joplin in 1970, and her most current, 'Writer's Song', to be recorded in 2015. The collection is liberally illustrated with original manuscripts of lyrics from Smith's extensive archive. Patti Smith's work continues to retain its relevance, whether controversial, political, romantic or spiritual. Collected Lyrics offers forty-five years of song, an enduring commemoration of Smith's unique contribution to the canon of rock and roll. This book is so honest and pure as to count as a true rapture Joan Didion Patti Smith has graced us with a poetic masterpiece, a rare and privileged invitation to unlatch a treasure chest never before breached Johnny Depp A tender, harrowing, often hilarious portrait of young lovers forging their paths in an eccentric milieu of Beat poets, Warhol socialites, and transvestites, rock stars and artists Vogue The most beautiful, incredible autobiography - it will make you ache for a time and a place that you probably never knew, New York in the 1970s Nick Hornby She was once our savage Rimbaud, but suffering has turned her into our St John of the Cross, a mystic full of compassion Edmund White