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Patti Smith |
Patti: I wanted to buy poets’ home
In exclusive interview, rock star reveals that lack of cash prevented her snapping up house
LEGENDARY punk rocker Patti Smith has told the New Journal in an exclusive interview that she wanted to buy the Camden Town building where the iconic poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine once lived.
She said: “I’ve studied Arthur Rimbaud so much in my life I practically know everything he did in there that’s documented.”
Smith was approached in July last year – along with folk hero Bob Dylan – by a campaign group who feared that, with No 8 Royal College Street on the market, it could be bulldozed if it fell into the hands of a developer.
The musicians are well-known fans of the French poets’ work. The poets lived in the block in 1873, becoming lovers before a fiery falling out saw Verlaine slap Rimbaud around the face with a wet fish.
Smith was famously inspired by Illuminations, a book written by Rimbaud – probably part-written in his Camden Town home – which she stole from a bookshop during her early years when she worked in a factory.
Smith told the New Journal that, following the approach, she had wanted to buy the house but did not have enough money. No 8 was being offered at £1.2 million as a package along with Nos 6 and 10 Royal College Street.
“I don’t have that kind of money or, of course, I would have bought it,” she said. “They think I’m more prosperous than I am.”
Smith, who rose to fame in the 1970s after the release of her debut album Horses, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in February this year.
Despite her “legendary” status she has never enjoyed real commercial success and has not made vast sums of money.
Speaking to the New Journal in Lynchburg, Tennessee on Saturday – before a birthday celebration gig for Jack Daniel’s at its whiskey distillery – she revealed how she has performed a concert in Rimbaud’s memory every year since the 1970s.
She will be playing a birthday gig for the poet, called Rock ’n’ Rimbaud, at Shepherd’s Bush Empire on Saturday.
“I’ve been doing stuff on Arthur Rimbaud’s birthday since 1972 and never done one in London, and it just so happens I am in London on October 20,” she said.
“I know I’ve just played there and the last thing London needs is me back in town, but it’s just, I’m there, so we can have a celebration.”
Smith, who has been to the poet’s house in the past, said she’d “love to see it” again and hopes to visit the building this week during her stay in England. “I’m gonna go again,” she vowed.
The three Georgian houses were bought from the Royal Veterinary College for more than £2 million by property entrepreneur Michael Ogun in February.
Unaware of their history when he bought them at auction, he said he plans to sell them on in a few years after renting them out as private flats.
See next week’s New Journal for a full interview with Patti Smith and a review of her gig in Lynchburg. |
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