PBS to put spotlight on rocker Patti Smith on ‘P.O.V.’

By LUAINE LEE

PASADENA, Calif. — Poet and punk musician Patti Smith may have hibernated for 16 years, but she’s back stronger than ever.

Once called the “godmother of punk,” Smith is best-known for her song “Because the Night,” which she co-wrote with Bruce Springsteen, and her constant efforts to communicate through her voice, words and performance art.

On Wednesday at 9 p.m., Smith will be the subject of a documentary on PBS’ “P.O.V.” called “Patti Smith: Dream of Life,” filmed by her friend and professional photographer Steven Sebring.

Though Smith was at her peak at the end of the ’70s, she wasn’t like many of her peers who were wasted on drugs and alcohol and strung out for the rest of their lives.

“I withdrew from the public eye in 1979 and went to Detroit and got married and had a family,” she says.

“And my husband and I — he had been in the [band] MC5, and both of us wanted our children to have a traditional childhood, which didn’t include being dragged from place to place on the road. So we decided to live a simpler life.”

That was fine while it lasted. But her spouse, guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith, died suddenly at 45. “When my husband passed away in late ’94, I had to start a new life. I had to make a living for my children. And the thing I knew best was performing,” she says.

“So I was asked by Bob Dylan to tour with him. Allen Ginsberg had told him of my fate, and a lot of people sort of rallied to help me,” says Smith, who’s wearing a white men’s shirt, black tie, black pants and cowboy boots.

“And I went on the road for a tour with him. And he really encouraged me to come back into the fold and to perform for the people. So I did, as best I could, within my children’s school schedule.”

Leaving at the top of her game wasn’t easy. “It was a difficult decision, but one that I’ve never regretted. I think that we all have to evolve as human beings, and I ... had done what I had set out to do in rock ’n’ roll in 1979, and that was to create space for new people. And I thought that it was time for me to learn new things, to evolve as a human being, and to commit myself to the person that I loved and to my children. I wanted my children to know who I was, that I was their mother, that I wasn’t someone who was absent all of the time that they saw in newspapers or magazines. I wanted them to know me simply as their mother. And both of my kids will tell you that that’s what they think of me, as their mom. The rest of it, they find perhaps interesting or amusing, but I’m Mom first.”

Her son, Jackson, is now 27, and her daughter, Jesse, is 22.

“Being a mother requires a lot of sacrifice,” says Smith, “cooking and cleaning and nursing and washing diapers and scrubbing floors and teaching children to pray and hopefully be good citizens. It’s a full-time job, and I was devoted to it. But I still had time set aside for myself ... early in the mornings or some time each day to study, work on poetry, sometimes write songs with my husband. So it was a time of pursuit of knowledge, which I like. I like to study. So I was never bored. I was never without the creative impulse, and it was a good life.”

Though Smith is considered an early punk icon, she says her work melded rock ’n’ roll with the newer form of music.

“We’re more like the bridge between traditional — and when I say ‘traditional,’ I mean it in the highest sense and the most revolutionary sense, but traditional rock ’n’ roll and the — well, the punk movement. Because we were very conscious about ... what we wanted to do when we entered the scene. And what we wanted to do was remind people of the power and the innate power and the fact that rock ’n’ roll did belong to the people, that it was our cultural voice, and we were trying to move from the glamorous, indulgent aspects of rock ’n’ roll in the early ’70s,” she recalls.