I guess because of the success of the 2024 movie A Complete Unknown (about Bob Dylan’s early career), the video of the crowning piece of the Dylan Nobel Prize ceremony popped up on Facebook recently: Patti Smith performing Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” as part of her accepting the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature on Dylan’s behalf. I post this because the performance is heart-breakingly wonderful (like many viewers, I was moved to tears), and because I want to celebrate Patti Smith, honor Bob Dylan and his remarkable poetry, and take delight in the fact that they’re still shining (well, we’re a generation — Dylan a bit younger than me and a bit older than my guy Jacques, Smith 6 years younger than me, but still 78, not a kid any more).
I’ll start at the pinnacle — Patti in Stockholm — and then fill in some bits of the background.
At the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony. The video of Patti Smith’s luminous performance (which includes a touching stumble and recovery) is on YouTube here; I urge you to watch the whole thing through at least once before you go on to my comments and background.
(#1) A screen shot from the video: Smith is backed by a pedal steel guitar (played by Swedish musician Johan Lindström), plus an acoustic guitar, with an orchestra providing depth — but it’s really a trio, Smith’s voice and the two differently timbred guitars
The song. “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” is a 1962 poem of protest in the face of darkness and destruction, with the poet raging defiantly against the dark. From the song:
[5th and final verse]
And what will you do now, my blue-eyed son?
And what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-going back out ‘fore the rain starts a-falling
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest
… Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it
And I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking
But I’ll know my song well before I start singing[refrain]
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
Read the comments section on YouTube: wild praise for Smith’s performance and some for Dylan’s song, including this touching testimonial:
This song saved my life. I’m gay. I was [dis]owned by my family. I was homeless. I joined the military. I’m a veteran. I’m alive because of this song. Thank you.
Patti Smith. Quick intro from the Wikipedia entry:
Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter, author, and photographer. Her 1975 debut album Horses made her an influential member of the New-York-City-based punk rock movement. Smith has fused rock and poetry in her work. … her most widely known song [is] “Because the Night” (1978), co-written with Bruce Springsteen
… In November 2010, Smith won the National Book Award for her memoir Just Kids, written to fulfill a promise she made to Robert Mapplethorpe, her longtime partner and friend.
Wildly idiosyncratic and highly collaborative too.
Then from my 3/1/18 posting “Call me by your name”, taking off from
… informal kids ‘young people’, covering those in their mid to late teens though the early twenties, the kids of Patti Smith’s 2010 book Just Kids, a memoir of her relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe.
(#2) Front cover of the bookFrom the back cover:
It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.
Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max’s Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969 [the year they both turned 23], the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous — the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.
Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists’ ascent, a prelude to fame.
The 2024 film. From Wikipedia:
A Complete Unknown is a 2024 American biographical musical drama film directed by James Mangold, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jay Cocks, about American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Based on the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald, the film portrays Dylan through his earliest folk music success until the momentous controversy over his use of electric instruments at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Timothée Chalamet (who also produces) stars as Dylan, with Edward Norton [as Pete Seeger; Chalamet and Norton inhabit their characters], Elle Fanning [as Joan Baez], Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Dan Fogler, Norbert Leo Butz, and Scoot McNairy in supporting roles. The film’s title is derived from the chorus of Dylan’s 1965 single “Like a Rolling Stone”.