Patti Smith plans to release one last album.
The 75-year-old punk poet – who hasn’t released a record since 2012’s ‘Banga’ – has revealed she’s been working on material for her final full-length effort.
In an interview with The Guardian newspaper, she said: “I do have plans and I’ve written a lot of songs. I’d like to do one more album and my record company, Columbia, has very generously left the door open.”
The ‘Because the Night’ hitmaker was semi-retired in 1980, just five years after releasing her acclaimed debut studio album, ‘Horses’, and spent 17 years focusing on raising her children – Jackson, 40, and Jesse, 35 – with her late husband Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith.
Patti admits she was a “demanding a**hole” leading up to her career break and had a “bad attitude”, as she didn’t feel she was “growing” as an artist.
What’s more, Patti was suffering from a “bronchial condition”, which meant performing was bad for her health, and she wished to spend more time with her family.
She explained: “In 1979, I wasn’t huge in America but in Europe, the last job I did was in an Italian arena for 80,000 people. I was at the pinnacle of real success and financial success, but I wasn’t growing as an artist or human being. Not due to drugs or anything – that wasn’t part of my lifestyle – but attitude. A lot of hubris. I was a really demanding a**hole sometimes and I wasn’t writing as much. Plus, I had a bronchial condition so playing in smoky halls was physically debilitating, and I was away from the person I loved.”
Patti feared no one would remember who she was when she decided to make her comeback, but she needed to make a living as she had fallen on hard times, and she is grateful to R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe and Bob Dylan for helping her feel less alone.
Patti – who not only lost her husband but her brother, too – added: “I’d only ever intended to do one record and hopefully create space for other people, which I felt ‘Horses’ did. So withdrawing felt liberating. Coming back was very different. After the deaths of my husband and brother, I was alone in Michigan. I had two young children. I had financial difficulties. I had to go back to work and it was scary, wondering if people would remember me. I returned owing to a set of terrible circumstances, but I met Michael Stipe, who was like my guardian angel. Bob Dylan gave me my first tour. Allen Ginsberg was there, William Burroughs, Jeff Buckley … So I wasn’t alone. I had evolved, but there was still part of me that might put her foot through an amplifier or tear the strings off a guitar.”