Patti Smith has revealed that Johnny Depp was the first person to read her award-winning 2010 memoir Just Kids and called it a "f---ing masterpiece." Smith made the reveal on the new episode of Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Wiser Than Me podcast.
"Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis had a complex in the south of France, and they had a little chapel that he had renovated, and they let me stay there and finish the book," Smith says on the podcast. "And Johnny was very encouraging. He would tap on the door, and then I'd open the door and there'd be a little tray of food. Sometimes a little glass of very good wine or something. But yes, and never bothered me. And that's where I finished the book. And I'll never forget, when he was done the book, he knocked on my door like he stayed up all night long or whatever. And I said. 'How is it?' And he goes. 'It's a f-king masterpiece.' And I went, oh my gosh, that was my first review."
Just Kids, a National Book Award Winner, details the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who she met in 1967 and remained close with until his death in 1989 from complications of AIDS. In her appearance on Wiser Than Me, Smith performs "Memorial Song," which she wrote for Mapplethorpe's funeral, but has not formally recorded or released.
"When Robert died, I knew that I had to speak at his memorial, and my husband [the late Fred "Sonic" Smith] drove us to North Carolina. We used to get a little place and sit on the beach, because I loved the sea. And, I walked up and down and up and down that beach, trying to think of what to say. And, this little song came into my head. I've never recorded it or anything. I just really wrote it for Robert," she recalled. "So it's called 'Memorial Song'... Robert had very green eyes and we didn't have any money when we were young, but my dream was to someday buy him a beautiful emerald ring because he loved it. Which I never did. But, I wrote him this song instead."
During the episode, Louis-Dreyfus also asked Smith about her decision to leave New York and the music business to start a family with Fred "Sonic" Smith in Detroit in the '80s.
"I never planned to be like a rock star. I'm not a great singer. I had no training, no musical training. I said what I had to say, and then I felt, as I was performing, somewhat redundant...I wasn't growing. I was becoming agitated, somewhat demanding, stressed. I wasn't writing, I felt that I wasn't evolving as a human being...I found the person that I really loved and wanted to spend my life with. And I didn't like being parted with him. He had been a rock and roll star from a young age. [We decided] mutually, to leave the music business and live a quiet life and see where that took us," Smith recalls. "And so it was just time to see what I was made of. It wasn't easy, but I've never once had any regret about it. I never regretted a thing. I loved my husband, and I went into that life willingly."
Smith returned to the music business in 1988 with Dream of Life, which she made with her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith. The album included the classic track "People Have the Power." She again took several years off before returning once again to music in 1996 with the album Gone Again, following the death of her husband, brother Todd and Mapplethorpe.
