the essential Close friend of Patti Smith, the Toulouse resident Alain Lahana tells us about the artist, who published on September 28, with Gallimard, “A book of days”, combining photographs and short texts, and illustrates the reissue of “Une season in hell, 1873”, by Rimbaud, his beloved poet.
Alain Lahana has worked with many artists, from Bernard Lavilliers to Phil Collins, from David Bowie to Iggy Pop, for whom he has organized numerous concerts. But he has built a very special relationship with Patti Smith, whose friend, confidant, accomplice and leader of somewhat crazy projects he is.
“Our first meeting dates from the time when she returned to the stage, in 1996, after around fifteen years of interruption to take care of her family,” remembers Alain Lahana. It was a July day, at the Olympia, and I was so happy to work with her. The days that followed we went to Saint-Malo and that’s where we felt that many things connected us. I was returning from Cambodia and Vietnam with Stephan Eicher. She was going there and we talked about it. Since then, we haven’t stopped seeing each other, in Paris and elsewhere. »
Rimbaud’s house
Alain Lahana has plenty of anecdotes in his bag of tricks. He is a storyteller, always warm, often funny. He evokes “affinities” with Patti Smith, a “constant dialogue” which he describes as “very familial”. The understanding is such that for each French project, the artist says to his interlocutors: “Ask Alain, he knows perfectly well what suits me. »
Arthur Rimbaud, for whom Patti Smith has had an absolute fascination since her adolescence (read in box), is at the heart of their symbiotic functioning. “
Apart from 1973, I was on all of Patti’s trips to Charleville-Mézières (town of birth of the poet, in 1854, Editor’s note). I opened the theater so she could give a concert. And we bought together, before Covid, the house built on the ruins of the Rimbaud farm, which was destroyed by a fire. »
Alain Lahana was among the first to discover the new large format version, illustrated by Patti Smith, of “A Season in Hell, 1873”. “I found the book incredible. It looks like it was all done at the same time, not 150 years apart. There is such harmony! I wrote to Patti: It’s a masterpiece. She had not yet seen the work in print. She was very touched. »
As for the “Book of days” that Gallimard publishes jointly, Alain Lahana followed its development gradually, since several photographs constituting it were posted on Instagram. Patti Smith is the author of the essentials, supplemented by a few images taken by others… including three by Alain Lahana.
On Genet’s grave
“Everyone has their own story. The one on the tomb of Jean Genet, for example. Years earlier, Patti and her husband Fred had picked up three stones at the Cayenne penal colony (several times imprisoned, Genet had written a book on the penal colony, Editor’s note). One day, I suggested that he place them on the writer’s grave, in Farouche, in Morocco. There was a conference on the Beatnicks in Tangier. We went there. I organized two concerts in palaces, I opened the cemetery… and that’s it. »
Another atmosphere with Patti Smith, in the rain, near the Arc de Triomphe, symbol of a city, she writes, which “dazzled” her and for which she feels “a particular affection”.
“We were coming out of a signing in the morning at the Publicis Drugstore. We did not imagine that, a few hours later, the monument would be stormed and vandalized by demonstrators. I like this photo: it shows Patti’s freedom, hair down, smile on her lips. »
“A Book of Days” is an emotional wandering, the fruit of Patti Smith’s long walks. “Since I’ve known her, there hasn’t been a day without us walking together for at least an hour,” concludes Alain Lahana. During our last visit to Toulouse (in 2011), we didn’t have time to do it. But, after the concert, we loaded Patti into my goddaughter’s car for a memorable night drive. I spoke to him about my youth here, the concerts where half of the spectators did not pay, the CRS charges. We had put Nougaro on full blast. We were laughing like crazy. What party ! »
“The sacred duty of remembrance”
Small format, gray cardboard cover, “A Book of Days” looks like a missal. Logical because Patti Smith is a mystic, who loves churches and cemeteries. The work brings together, over a year, portraits and objects paying tribute to those she admired (Virginia Woolf, Michaël Boulgakov, Sylvia Plath…) and those she loved so much (William Burroughs, Sam Shepard, Henning Mankell, her husband Frederic…), Patti Smith thus fulfilling “the sacred duty of remembrance”. Images and texts form a tender self-portrait of the artist as an always curious traveler (Gallimard, 400 pages, €26.50).
Another publication, large format, of “A season in hell, 1873 (and other poems”), by Arthur Rimbaud, founding texts for Patti Smith, “drug of (her) young years”, “elixir of charm exhilarating” which she had carte blanche to illustrate. It’s simple and beautiful – in a word, magic (Gallimard, 176 pages, €45).
2023-09-25 04:30:00
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