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“I’m my own roadie,” Patti Smith told the adoring crowd at the Smithsonian American Art Museum Friday night, as she hauled on-stage not only her guitar, but books and reams of paper as well.
After fiddling with her guitar strap, she joked that she usually has “three guys taking care of me.” And later, after making a small mistake on the guitar, she continued, “I usuallyhave fellas playing the guitars for me, too.”
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But Smith wasn’t only playing; her appearance to benefit the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art also included spoken word sections and readings from the letters and papers of American artists.
She read from her own “archives” as well, including a love note to her from the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whom she dated in the late ’60s.
“It’s so nice when even your memories get applause,” the punk icon joked after relating another story. “I’ve got a million of them, too.”
She dedicated the song “Grateful” to Washington’s own Walt Whitman, “because he loved this building.”
Smith made her only mention of politics just before the encore of the 90-minute set, saying the presidential election was “never intended to be, not should it be, a two-party choice.”
She added that she doesn’t have a candidate yet in the presidential race. “I don’t know, I’m still studying things,” she said. “I don’t know more than anybody else. I’m just the citizen who has the stage.”
