In 2010, NPR interviewed Patti Smith upon the release of Just Kids. Smith met the
21-year-old Robert Mapplethorpe in the summer of 1967, both children of
religious upbringings, both influenced by ideas about art and outsider culture.
Smith writes of staying up late to paint and listen to records in their shared
apartment on Hall Street in Brooklyn, but when they first became friends, they
were so poor, they sometimes slept on the street.
As Smith describes him in Just Kids, Mapplethorpe was
striking, a "Hippie shepherd boy" with dark curls. She said the pair
— two-of-a-kind, lanky outsiders who shared artistic drive and a physical
connection — "fulfilled a role for each other." The following are
excerpts from the NPR interview.
"As it says in the book," Smith says, "we
woke up knowing that we were no longer alone." They also influenced each other's art. But Smith stops short
of taking credit for guiding Mapplethorpe to the medium that made him famous. "I said, 'You should take your own photographs.' I
didn't mean for him to become a photographer," she says. "Once he
started taking pictures, he just fell in love with photography."
Mapplethorpe took the iconic cover photograph for Smith's
first album, Horses, which
came out in 1975. "The only rule we had was, Robert told me if I wore a
white shirt, not to wear a dirty one," Smith says. "I got my favorite
ribbon and my favorite jacket, and he took about 12 pictures. By the eighth one
he said, 'I got it.' "
In Just Kids, Smith
writes that when she looks at the photo today, "I never see me. I see
us."
"Really, when I met Robert, we were unformed. That's why
I called the book Just Kids," Smith says. "I really want people
to comprehend that we were young. And it took a while to become who we evolved
into. And I think for Robert it was a struggle, because at a certain point it
meant that he had to make a choice."
Mapplethorpe's choice was to explore his sexuality, to leave
New York for San Francisco and come back with a boyfriend, to create
photographs with explicit, sometimes shocking nudity.
"I knew that I could never have a relationship with him
the way that he would with a male," Smith says. "But of course as
time went by, I realized that what Robert and I had, no one else would have,
male or female."
Mapplethorpe died in 1989 after battling AIDS. Both he and
Smith knew it was coming.
"Oh, it was very painful," Smith says. But they
remained partners until the end. "I promised Robert the day before he died that I would
write our story," Smith says. "And it took me 20 years, but I kept my
promise."
