Whatever Happened to the Heroes?

I have been reading Victor Bockris' biography of Patti Smith since Meltdown. The trouble with reading about your heroes is that, in the quest for greater knowledge and understanding, you sometimes find out stuff you'd really rather not know.

The part of the book that made me uncomfortable is the section that deals with her much romanticised marriage to Fred Sonic Smith. Far from the blissful relationship I had imagined, the picture painted is more of Patti being holed up in Detroit with her man, cut off from her friends and unable to do anything much without having received Fred's approval first. It's hard to imagine why she would do that, though it obviously felt right for her at the time and who am I to judge?

I'm certainly not down with the people like Penny Arcade who started accusing her of being a "bad feminist". The problem with feminism is it often results in swapping one set of rules for another, hardly what I'd call liberation.

It seems that Fred slowly drank himself to death, and though some of his friends thought of staging an intervention to force him into rehab, the concensus was that Patti wouldn't allow it. Bockris hints that maybe allowing Fred to die was the only way Patti could see to escape. It is certainly odd that such a devoted wife would be unwilling to do anything to assist her ailing husband.

I guess it's the old adage of not knowing what goes on behind closed doors. Maybe she was happy to have somebody make all the arrangements and take control so she could just get on with other stuff. Maybe it's my feminist sensibilities that see that as being weak and ridiculous. So maybe I'm as bad as Penny Arcade after all.