LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Patti Smith: Fred Smith
built 605 days ago
Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame March 12, 2007. Zach de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine gave Smith's induction speech. Smith dedicated her award to the memory of her late husband, Fred. Smith gave a performance of the Rolling Stones classic "Gimme Shelter", a song she termed a great anti-war song. As the closing number of 2007 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction evening, Smith's "People Have the Power" was used for the big celebrity jam that always ends the program. Among those playing or singing were Eddie Vedder, Stephen Stills and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. All the other inductees to the Hall that night joined: Sammy Hagar and Mike Anthony of Van Halen, the Ronettes, Grandmaster Flash and Furious Five and R.E.M.
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In 1991, Smith contributed the track, "It Takes Time" to the soundtrack of Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World. A collection of her short stories, entitled Wool Gathering, was published in 1993. The following year, she suffered the sudden loss of both her husband and younger brother Todd within weeks of each other. Before this tragedy, she and Fred Smith had been writing songs for an upcoming album.
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Smith is such a profoundly good artist that it's dangerous to try to surmise what she wanted to accomplish with this material. She could be on another plane entirely from the facile assumption that she's working through and sharing the losses of Fred Smith, her brother Todd, and the young inspiration Cobain. Or sharing what she's learned from the rays of sunshine that sometimes peek through the black clouds of despair. But the simplicity of the acoustic arrangements and the absence of heavyweight hooks seem almost a baring act, a way of keeping her motives uncluttered by the big guitar flourishes of her previous recordings.
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After the success of Easter, Smith stumbled on Wave, evidently the victim of overconfidence. Todd Rundgren's production is inappropriate and Smith's lyrics are preciously self-indulgent; although songs like "Dancing Barefoot" and "Frederick" are accessible and memorable, much of the record is unfocused and halfbaked, frequently insufferable. A misguided cover of the Byrds' "So You Want to Be (A Rock 'n' Roll Star)" rings phony and selfconscious.
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Her biggest hit, “Because the Night,” elicited an intimate recollection of the courtship with her husband, Fred (Sonic) Smith, who died in 1994, in which an anxious evening spent waiting for his phone call found its way into the lyrics. In “People Have the Power” and “Dancing Barefoot” her exhortatory powers provoked a euphoric communal trance.
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Fred Smith