Posts Tagged ‘Patti Smith’

Patti Smith and Neil Young present their books (The New Yorker)

…and will go on a tour together this summer.

Neil Young and Patti Smith at B.E.A.

PatrickMcMullan.com via AP Images

BookExpo America has its own rock stars: Barbara Kingsolver, Daniel Handler, Dean Koontz, whose name was on hundreds of posters on the front doors of the Javits Center. This year, it also had two actual rock stars: Neil Young and Patti Smith, who appeared on Wednesday afternoon at B.E.A. for an onstage conversation.

Both have new albums out: Young has just released “Americana,” a collection of folk songs such as “Oh Susanna” and “Clementine” updated as sprawling garage-rock and performed with his longtime partners in noise, Crazy Horse; and Smith has put out “Banga,” a collection that also touches on the American myth by adapting the journals of Amerigo Vespucci and, for that matter, includes a cover of Young’s “After the Gold Rush.” But they were at B.E.A. doing book business: Young’s memoir “Waging Heavy Peace” is due out in October, and Smith’s “Just Kids” won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2010. And while the two have crossed paths throughout the years—they sang together at Young’s Bridge Benefit concert in 1996, and they’ll join forces this fall for a tour we (and, we hope, they) are code-naming the Crazy Horses Tour…

…more on The New Yorker.

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Patti Smith to interview Neil

What Patti Smith and Neil Young won’t be doing at BEA
May 22, 2012 | 10:32am

The nation’s biggest publishing conference, Book Expo America, announced Monday that it had scored a rock ‘n’ roll coup: On its second day, Patti Smith will interview Neil Young on stage. That’s far more rock power than the annual conference, taking place June 5-7 in Manhattan, usually has in-house.

Publishers have come to see that Smith, a legendary rocker since the release of her 1975 album “Horses,” and longtime poet, is a literary asset. Her recent memoir “Just Kids,” in which she wrote of her early years in New York with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe, was a runaway bestseller. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the L.A. Times Book Prize, one of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 books of 2010, and won the National Book Award for nonfiction.

Maybe some of that literary fortune will rub off on Young, who enters the publishing marketplace with his own memoir “Waging Heavy Peace” in October. The book, publisher Blue Rider Press promises, chronicles his youth in Canada, playing in Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and his years with the band Crazy Horse. It will include, among other things, stories of “the LSD-laden boulevards of 1966 Los Angeles.”

The conversation at Book Expo between Smith and Young promises to be a highlight of the conference, for 2012 and over its long history. The two will have a lot to talk about, and who knows, maybe they’ll even hum a few bars.

But no matter what creative sparks fly between them, nothing can compare to the performance above. Despite the low-quality video, the performance of Neil Young’s song “Helpless” is stunning. When Patti Smith comes in, around the 4:29 mark, she is a majestic, commanding force, and her additional lyrics give the song a whole new dimension. Keep watching: she and Neil Young share a mic for the chorus at about 6:40.

The performance was in 1996, at one of Young’s annual Bridge School Benefits. Pearl Jam was also on the bill that year. They won’t, as far as I know, be joining them at BEA.

Here for video:
latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2012/05/rock-legends-at-bea-patti-smith-and-neil-young

Tags: helpless, Patti Smith
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