Patti Smith is a poet, musician, artist and writer who’s been sharing this with the world since the sixties. She’s well respected and a huge influence on many people, she’s that good.

Check out Banga, Easter and her debut album with the Patti Smith group Horses. The first thing you hear is:

“Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine”

How class is that.

There’s some great polaroid photos in this book she took on her journey.

The first time I saw this book was in Pontypridd library and after reading a few pages I was enthralled and thought, ooo, I must have a go. I got it a while later and read it very quickly, it’s that gripping.

This memoir follows her wandering round the coast of Santa Cruz in the year of the monkey after a few gigs at The Fillmore in San Francisco at the end of the previous year. Her year and the rest of her life is tinged with sadness after some bad news about one of her closest friends. But the book is not doom and gloom, far from it.

It’s full of strange and weird happenings that will make you laugh. You will be touched by her sincerity, down to earth nature and compassion for the important things, certainly her friends and family.

It’s nuts, you don’t know what’s real and what’s not half the time. She sees things no one else sees and keeps bumping into this guy. But who or what is he?

Have a read, it’s great, and check out her music too and all the other stuff she does.

Here’s a link to some of her music: