Patti Smith Interviewed on KCRW’s Bookworm today

Patti Smith sat down with Bookworm host Michael Silverblatt for a revealing interview that will be aired in two parts on March 4 and 11 at 2:30pm PST. While Smith shared quite a bit in her recently released biography “Just Kids,” she opened up to Michael about some little known facts – including her admiration for the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov and his novel, The Master and Margarita. The book happens to be the source for the first line in the Rolling Stones’ track “Sympathy for the Devil” (“Please allow me to introduce myself”…). That’s just one of the many ways rock ‘n’ roll and literature intersect.

Michael says Patti “really shared what it’s like to be a young artist in America.” She also commented on the current state of art, telling Michael that she feels genius always resurrects itself and that she’s confident we will always have art.

Part 1 – Airing March 4 at 2:30pm PST.

Poverty and insanity are terrible things—but then there is bohemian poverty and insanity, and these are infused with the romance of becoming an artist. In the first of this two-part interview,Patti Smith speaks of her youth in New York, when she and Robert Mapplethorpe sought to manifest their artistic ambitions.

Part 2 – Airing March 11 at 2:30pm PST.

In the second of this two-part interview we hear about Patti Smith as a bookworm. You probably know about her love for Rimbaud, but did you know she worships the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov and his great novel, The Master and Margarita? A voracious reader, Smith has written three unpublished novels and has created hundreds of visual pieces. She speaks of her unbounded appetite for creativity.