The Tripod

In her second annual performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday, Oct. 17, Patti Smith did not simply take the stage of the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium - she seized it. The event was presented in conjunction with the exhibition "Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans," which will run until January 3. The exhibition celebrates the 50th anniversary of a book of 83 photographs that changed the history of photography. The concert was sold-out and standing room-only tickets were at a premium. Smith walked to center stage and stated, "I just spent time in Italy, and was asked what I was going to do when I returned to the USA. I told them going to play the Met … the other Met. I'm trampin', trampin' trying to make heaven my home [a line from Smith's "Trampin'," a song she recorded in 2004]."

In 1975, Smith released her debut album, Horses, a record that deeply influenced the punk rock movement in New York City. Her music integrated beat poetry performance style with three-chord rock and earned her the moniker, "Godmother of Punk." She and her band were favorites of CBGB's, the New York City music hall where the punk rock scene began, and the infamous club where Blondie and the Ramones performed. She once lived with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. In fact, the cover photograph for Horses was taken by Mapplethorpe using natural lighting in a Greenwich Village penthouse. Mapple-thorpe's photograph of Smith in casual androgynous style is now iconic. The first line on the album is "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine." Her poetry, like her lyrics, is provocative and gripping.

Smith is a veteran of performance poetry, showing skill in her slow and purposeful delivery. She has earned the audience's rapt attention. Her focus moved to the reason for the evening, to pay homage to the photographer. Smith and Frank have been friends for 12 years. They are both photographers who were ingrained in the Beat Generation cultural phenomenon. She described a visit Frank paid her to view her photographs: "He's the nicest fella, so thoughtful, lots of beautiful memories." She told the audience that he had unexpected problems with his leg and knee and he had a cane when he came to visit her at her home. "He wanted to see my pictures!" she declared. "It made me feel, like, well if Robert Frank likes my pictures then who needs anybody else?" He studied her self-portraits taken with a Polaroid Land 250 camera. He looked at the end result, noticing the shadow present in all the photographs. After several moments of contemplation he asked, "Why didn't you take the cover off?"

She mentioned that she was privileged to know him and his wife, the sculptor June Leaf, as friends, saying, "If anyone asks me what Robert Frank is like I just say, 'He's really nice.'" Smith performed "People Have the Power," from the album of the same name, displaying a wide vocal range in doing so. She ended with a slow version of "Tom Dooley," a song based on the 1866 murder of a woman named Laura Foster in Wilkes County, N.C., a version of which made The Kingston Trio famous in 1958.

The audience was been taken on an American journey. Smith's poetry and music and Frank's photography were the vehicles they used, and they were clearly enjoying every minute of the ride. If this was her second annual performance, it might be wise to mark your calendars now for next October.

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