With her fiercely literate brand of rock ‘n’ roll and her uncompromisingly ambitious spirit, Patti Smith is often remembered as she appears on the cover of her 1975 debut album Horses — a steely, androgynous rebel with a cause. But The High Priestess of Punk didn’t stay in New York forever, eventually trading in the limelight for a quiet family life. She married the late Fred “Sonic” Smith of MC5 and moved to St. Clair Shores, where they raised their two children — including Jackson Smith, who would go on to marry Meg White of The White Stripes.
It’s this latter part of her life that Smith explores in her new memoir, a follow-up to 2010’s prize-winning Just Kids, which chronicled her early artistic life with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. M Train will be published on October 6 via Knopf and includes Polaroids taken by Smith. The book’s cover depicts the author at Cafe ‘Ino in NYC’s Greenwich Village, where the story picks up.
Knopf describes the book as “a journey through eighteen ‘stations.’ Woven throughout are reflections on the writer’s craft and on artistic creation, alongside signature memories including her life in Michigan with her husband, guitarist Fred Sonic Smith, whose untimely death was an irremediable loss. For it is loss, as well as the consolation we might salvage from it, that lies at the heart of this exquisitely told memoir, one augmented by stunning black-and-white Polaroids taken by Smith herself.”
M Train is scheduled for official release October 6, 2015, but readers can pre-order the title via Amazon here.